¹⁷All Deep Dives

Beside every chapter runs a second column of deep dives. Each one takes a single point from the story and opens it out with the dates, sources, names and doubts the main text leaves out. A deep dive sits next to the moment it belongs to, but many bear on more than one chapter. So here they all are on one page, eighty of them, grouped by the part of the story they belong to. Click a title to open it.

Before the building

• The corner before the corner: maps of the polder and the planned streets, from 1625 to 1900.
• Land van Hoboken: the estate across the road that would not sell, and why half the street stayed empty.
• Anthony van Hoboken and the Afrikaanse werving: the shipowner who bought that estate, and his firm's part in recruiting African soldiers for the Dutch East Indies.
• Why 169?: how the first building on the street came to be number 169.
• Charles Rochussen, painter: the painter the street is named after.

Building the corner

• Nicolaas Tinbergen, and what is left: the architect who signed the 1899 drawings, and what survives of his work.
• How we read the architect's signature: how a misleading signature was read as his.
• The builder the architect had bought: the old carpentry firm named as builder, which the architect had taken over.
• Four sheets and two property cards: the building permit of 1899, sheet by sheet.
• The Hinderwet file we cannot read: the nuisance-permit file that may survive in the archive, still unread.
• A hundred years, a handful of lines: a century of the building's municipal record, from 1899 to 2002.
• Who owned the building?: who owned the building, a question the records answer only for recent years.

Van Duffelen & Pelt

• Van Duffelen & Pelt, the firm that built the corner: the furniture firm that built the corner, from partnership to its departure in 1916.
• Inside the works: Industrieel Weekblad, 1907: a trade weekly's illustrated visit to the works, 1906–07.
• Haagscheveer, Coolvest, Witte de Withstraat: the firm's downtown workshop and showrooms, and two chairs kept by the family.
• 1899 preserved, 1909 lost: the partnership deeds of 1899 and 1909: one kept, one lost.
• The carved-oak book-cabinet, and where it went: the carved-oak cabinet of 1895, and the trail of where it went.
• Dr S. J. Halbertsma, arts te Rotterdam: the Rotterdam doctor who received that cabinet as a jubilee gift.
• The partner whose later life is in Apeldoorn: the third partner of 1909, and his later life in Apeldoorn.
• No mark, no medal, no fair — yet: searches for a trademark, a medal or a trade fair, so far without result.

The founding families

• Reading the Pelt gezinskaart: Cornelis Pelt's household card, read line by line.
• Both parents, all eight children: the one known group photograph of the Pelt family, face by face.
• The Pelt line, to the living generation: the Pelt line from 1856 to the living generation.
• Cleveland, Klambir Lima, Loosduinen: the van Duffelen family, from Vlaardingen to Cleveland and Sumatra.
• Gerrit van Duffelen, painter and etcher: the boy who laid the first stone, and his life as a painter and etcher.
• Twelve works, and his palette: twelve of his works and his palette, from his granddaughter's collection.
• A Painter's Album, Kept in the Family: family snapshots and the painter's works, photographed by the family.
• How we handle De Waag: how the site treats his 1942 interview in an occupation-era weekly.
• Two houses, one estate, no facade: the painter's family home in the early 1920s, of which no verified picture has been found.

The furnishing houses

• N.V. Beens' Woninginrichting-Maatschappij: the furnishing company that held the works for seven years, and how it wound up.
• Kam & Van Rhijn, and the Exportkist: a Schiedam furniture house and its packing crate that became a bed.
• Fifty paintings, and where the claim stops: the summer of 1918 when Beens showed some fifty paintings.
• Hours, holidays and a stoppage: holidays, late work and the furniture strike of 1923.
• What became of the Beens brothers: what became of the two Beens brothers after the company.
• Continental Carpet, and its afterlife: the carpet company at 169a, from 1928 to its long afterlife on paper.
• Furnishco, and a director we cannot confirm: whether J. A. van Duyn was one of Furnishco's directors.
• 47 · 30047 · 254992 · 762833: one address, four telephone numbers, across the firms.
• Maker-claim, triad, engros, telephone: the advertising habits the corner's furniture firms shared for most of a century.
• N.V. Mij. voor Woninginrichting P. van Reeuwijk: the furnishing house that filled the building for a few months in 1940.
• Five jubilees at P. van Reeuwijk: five staff jubilees at van Reeuwijk, 1954–1962.
• Three directors detained; no outcome found in the digitised press: three directors detained in 1945, and no outcome found.
• Three Rochussenstraat households in the ERR register: the wartime seizure of Jewish household goods, on the Rochussenstraat.
• KvK 24049735, with an open ending: Firma J. A. van Duyn, close to fifty years at the corner.
• The van Duijns of Rochussenstraat 169: the van Duijn family, traced through the 1978 death notices.
• Ships, hotels, brands and maker marks: what the corner made, supplied and sold: ships, hotels and brands.

The street around it

• Same viewpoint, different century: the corner in pictures, from 1907 to 2020.
• Maastunnel, S100, Tunnelzicht, l'Ambassadeur: the crossing from 1939 to 1967: a tunnel, a block of flats and a nightclub.
• l'Ambassadeur, Rochussenstraat 172: the wartime nightclub at Rochussenstraat 172.

Theatre and music

• One year between shop and squat: a year of theatre in 1989, between the shop and the squat.
• Gerard Kranendonk, and the others: gerard Kranendonk, who started Dodorama, and the others around it.
• The venue programme register: dated Dodorama and WORM programme entries.
• The act register: every act linked to the venue's programmes, listed once.
• Recordings from no. 169, release by release: releases with recordings made at no. 169.
• dodorama.nl and wormweb.nl, as archived: the venue's own websites, as the Internet Archive saved them.
• Two labels, a studio, one program: two record labels, a studio and a piece of software from the building's last years.
• The venue and theatre makers: the living theatre and venue makers, named in their public role.

Registers across the whole story

• Who was recorded at Rochussenstraat 169: every firm and resident recorded at the address, year by year.
• The years we cannot fill: the years without known residents, sorted by cause.
• Dienstbode, dagmeisje, werkster: advertisements for domestic help, 1921–1960.
• Every job advertised at this address: every job advertised at the address.
• Dated turning points: the corner's turning points, in date order.
• Recorded relationships: family ties, company roles and firm successions.
• People, firms, places, acts: all the people, firms, places and acts in the record.
• Meubelmaker to gedoogstatus: the Dutch trade and archive words the site keeps in the original.

Open questions and corrections

• The Files Still Open, and the Ones We Closed: every research question, open or closed, with the best answer so far.
• Routes that are closed: searches that stopped, and what would justify trying again.
• The dead-claims ledger: mistakes the project made, and what replaced them.
• A silence is not an absence: how to read the address book: a silence is not an absence.
• The four ways this address lies: the ways a search for this address turns up the wrong building.

How the research works

• What the record is made of: the sources and evidence, sorted by type and archive.
• What annotation companions record: transcriptions, translations and notes kept beside each item.
• The record in numbers: the record in figures, as of 10 September 2026.
• One fact, end to end: one citation followed from claim to document.
• How a change is accepted: how a new finding is checked before it is accepted.
• A blind cross-read: why handwriting is always read twice, independently.
• How each document is read: which tools read which kinds of document.
• The outline pipeline: how the shape of this site was drafted and reviewed.
• Measuring the proof chain: measures of the proof chain, worked out at every build.
• The people who answered: the descendants who answered, and what they shared.
• Institutions and tools: the archives, platforms and tools the project used.

Every deep dive keeps the same promises, so you know what to expect the moment one opens. Its picture really shows its subject; where no such picture can be shown, the dive says so instead of borrowing one. It gives you at least one reference to follow: facts we have recorded, a whole register, a standalone study, an open question, or a named document in a repository. Each claim carries its standing, confirmed, probable or lead, with the label beside the sentence and the evidence a click away. And where a living person appears, a publication gate records whether consent is held or whether a fallback label must be printed in place of the name.

The plate below is one sheet of the 1899 building permit, with floor plans that run from the pile foundation and the cellar up through the storeys above¹. A deep dive pinned beside its chapter opens out dated documents like this one in full.

The largest deep dives are the registers, whole tables that hold nothing back, and the next page is theirs.