¹¹Meubelen, Stoffen, Tapijten

Put the corner's advertisements side by side, across a run of firms and most of a century, and the businesses start to look like one. They share a house style tied to the address, and the first sign of it is a claim to be makers that grows louder over time instead of fading. Meubelmakers en Stoffeerders, cabinet-makers and upholsterers, becomes Meubelfabrikanten, furniture manufacturers, and then the flat capitals of FABRIEKEN, factories, printed against the single address¹.

Beneath that changing claim, three words stayed put. Meubelen, Stoffen, Tapijten, furniture, fabrics and carpets, recurs almost verbatim from Furnishco in July 1936 to J. A. van Duyn in October 1939, in the same order and across a change of owner². Furnishco and van Duyn also both pressed ENGROS, wholesale³. That word speaks of the price and how the goods were sold, so it is a separate claim and not another step up the maker's ladder⁴. Four of these display advertisements survive as dated figures in their own type: Van Duffelen & Pelt in 1909 and 1910, Beens' Woninginrichting in 1926, and van Duyn in 1939⁵.

The last tenant followed the same pattern. Van Duyn advertised as plain Fa. J. A. van Duyn in 1964, added Woninginrichting, home furnishing, from 1967, called itself Interieurverzorging, interior care, in January 1969, and by that December had settled on Meubelen en Tapijten⁶. In its own staff notice of 1978 the firm called itself Woninginrichting en Scheepsstoffering, home furnishing and ship's upholstery⁷. So the maker's claim was more than nostalgia for a plant long gone. Upholstery, ship's outfitting and an independent cabinet-maker's workshop upstairs kept some making going here beside the selling^8 9.

A telephone number gave the corner the continuity its firms could not. The earliest number known at no. 169 had two digits: 47, printed on 6 April 1903 for the Van Duffelen & Pelt works bij de 's Gravendijkwal, together with 3341 for the showroom downtown¹. By 1929 the line was 30047, and it held through every change in what the front of the building said about itself. That year it was registered to the N.V. Continental Carpet and Furnishing Company². It passed with the premises to Furnishco through the 1930s and belonged to J. A. van Duyn from 1938³. When van Reeuwijk opened its emergency showrooms in May 1940, it printed 30047 as the number of its new showroom⁴. The number was the premises line, registered to the corner before it was any one tenant's⁵.

The number changed only late, first to 254992 and then to 762833, which the closing-down advertisement of 1987 printed as 010-4762833⁶. The line broke only in the venue years. A Dodorama web page captured on 11 May 2000 gives an unrelated contact block, 010-476 22 90 and 476 71 59, with no traced link to the furniture-era number⁷. For most of the century, though, one line rang at this corner whichever firm held the premises, and the telephone deep dive follows it from start to finish.

The best guide to the work inside the building is the notices it placed for people to do it. Taken together, the corner's job advertisements span seventy-four years. It wanted MEUBELMAKERS, cabinet-makers, from June 1900 and still in 1974; STOFFEERDERS, upholsterers, from 1900; and from 1905 halfwassen, half-trained men, and a machinaal houtbewerker, a machine woodworker¹. On 1 July 1907 Van Duffelen & Pelt asked for a meubelmakersjongen and a stoffeerdersjongen, apprentice boys for cabinet-making and upholstery². In January 1910 it wanted een Jongen voor de Meubelmakerij, a boy for the furniture-making³, and in January 1918 it was still hiring half-trained chair-makers⁴. Two generations later, in March 1968, van Duyn advertised for a clerk to handle administration and the telephone⁵. In March 1977 it sought an upholsterer, who by then had to hold a driving licence⁶.

Behind these vacancies stood an organised trade. In 1907 Rotterdam had three furniture-makers' unions: the Christian Helpt Elkander, the De Toekomst society and the Roman Catholic St. Jozeph guild⁷. They disagreed over how to shorten the working day, and that January two of them sent the demand to the employers by circular⁸. The national union behind them was probably founded in 1871, and it passed through the liberal, syndicalist and social-democratic federations before it was, by 1907, an NVV union⁹. That lineage comes from union histories rather than the union's own books, so it is held as probable¹⁰. By 1927 five bodies signed the trade's collective agreement, two of employers and three of workers, and the Christian one was based in Rotterdam¹¹. Organised labour stopped the benches here once, in the city-wide furniture strike of March 1923¹². N.V. Beens' Woninginrichting, whose factory was no. 169, was named among the struck employers¹³, and the deep dive on the 1923 strike tells that day.

Taken together, these notices correct what the era titles might lead a reader to assume. The making never quite stopped at this corner¹⁴. It just stopped being the main business. Van Duyn's last notice was a closing-down sale, and after it the furniture trade here went dark¹⁵. Some years later a wholly different trade switched the lights back on, and that is where the next part begins.