G. Feenstra (1890-1985) Youth in Friesland Gerrit Feenstra was born on April 12, 1890 in the village of Hijlaard in the municipality of Baarderadeel. He was the third son of Luitjen Meines Feenstra and Antje Sjerps Terluin. The Feenstra family had a farm and a cheese business in Hijlaard. Although Antje was of Reformed descent, both attended the Dutch Reformed church. Gerrit Feenstra grew up in a time of social, political and religious unrest. Many went over to the new Reformed church. Gerrit's school also joined this. This left the pupils of Reformed parents without an education. The municipal council of Baarderadeel finally decided to appoint a teacher for them. Education was given in the cheese attic of the Feenstra family. Social and religious developments had a great influence on Gerrit Feenstra. He was affected by the poverty among the underclass in the Frisian countryside and also developed a strong religious consciousness.(1) Education and work at agencies At school, Gerrit stood out because of his drawings. A pastor therefore advised him to study architecture. Feenstra followed this advice and went to the trade school in Leeuwarden. During a practical year in Sneek, he worked on the waterworks and the water tower in that town. He also took a course on steel and concrete structures. In 1909, Feenstra received an appointment with the Provincial Water Board of Friesland. That same year he left for an architectural firm in Almelo. He then worked for the then famous architect Karel Joan Muller (1857-1942) in Hengelo. In 1911, under Muller's direction, Feenstra became head of the drawing office of the newly founded office 'Het Lansink'. This office worked on the garden village 't Lansink in Hengelo. In 1913 and 1914, Feenstra completed training as an architectural draftsman and architectural supervisor for the Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Bouwkunde. After the outbreak of World War I, the economic situation also deteriorated in the Netherlands. Work in Hengelo came to a halt and Feenstra was transferred to Zuilen near Utrecht, where he worked on the Tuindorp Elinkwijk. This garden village was commissioned by Werkspoor. Feenstra settles in Arnhem Shortly after starting in Zuilen, Feenstra was called up for military service in the Corps of Engineers. At that time, he responded to a vacancy from the Municipality of Arnhem, which was looking for an employee for a city extension. Feenstra was hired immediately and, thanks to the mediation of the mayor of Arnhem, was granted leave from military service. In Arnhem, he worked on the new districts of Geitenkamp and Gulden Bodem. On June 29, 1918 Feenstra married in Norg Johanna Nijboer, who had been born on June 9, 1886 in this town in Drenthe. They settled at Amsterdamseweg 154 in Arnhem. From their marriage two daughters and a son were later born. In 1920, Feenstra resigned from municipal service and started his own architectural firm. In collaboration with architect L. van Zoelen Hzn. he designed a garden village for the Woningbouwvereeniging Ede and Patrimoniums Woningbouwvereeniging in Ede. His first independent commission was to build a house on Dalweg in Arnhem. After that he designed several country houses and farms. In the 1920s and 1930s he also worked with architect Hendrik Barend van Broekhuizen (1889-1948) under the name Architectenbureau Feenstra and Van Broekhuizen. Feenstra joined the BNA in 1923 and in the following year was elected secretary of the Arnhem circle of this association. He was also a member of the Gelderland Beauty Committee of the Gelderland Society from 1924 to 1966. The twenties and thirties The office did well and in 1925 Feenstra moved to the Middei Hichte country house, designed by himself, at Van Lawick van Pabststraat number 70 in Arnhem. H.B. van Broekhuizen, in consultation with Feenstra, designed the furniture for this house. The furniture was designed in the style of the Hague School. In the same year, together with G.J. Postel, P.H. Endt and W.J. Gerretsen, Feenstra was commissioned to design the reconstruction of Borculo for the Gelders Genootschap. Borculo had been hit by a storm disaster on Aug. 10, 1925, which had destroyed much of the town. Postel was in charge of the Construction Bureau. During the 1920s, Feenstra's office was located first at number 6 Bakkerstraat and then at Coehoornstraat. During these years Feenstra began to concentrate on the design of his projects, while increasingly leaving the technical elaboration to his employees. During the 1920s and 1930s Feenstra completed about 445 building projects in the Netherlands, including churches, offices and factories. Various works were published in professional journals, such as the Vrijzinnig-Hervormde Kerk on Parkstraat in Arnhem and a shopping arcade on Sonsbeeksingel in Arnhem. In Arnhem he further designed, among others, the building of Kunstoefening, the Arnhem Youth Hostel Alteveer and the CAMIZ dairy on the Westervoortsedijk. Feenstra built many dairies for the Geldersch-Overijsselsche Bond van Coöperatieve Zuivelfabrieken (GOZ) and also its office in Zutphen. He also gained fame as an architect of villas and country houses, such as the modern house Oase that he built for a doctor in Ede in 1928. Feenstra designed many houses and housing complexes in Arnhem, including on Velperweg, Van Heemstralaan and Diepenbrocklaan. Many of these commissions came from contractors and "project developers" who bought up land and built middle-class houses. The two most important of these clients were H. Fokkens of Arnhem and D.H.B. van Neck of Oosterbeek. Commercial success and a heavy workload did not take away from Feenstra's continued interest in social, political and denominational problems. During the interwar period, when excessive drinking was a major problem, he joined the temperance movement. Furthermore, he had been a member of the Social Democratic Workers Party (SDAP)since 1914 and sought a synthesis between socialism and religion. Feenstra was an enthusiastic member of the Woodbrook community or Barchem movement in Barchem and befriended Dr. W. Banning. The Woodbrooker movement originated in Selly Oak near Birmingham, England. In the early twentieth century, a group of Dutch theology students visited the Woodbrooke study center. Impressed by the subdued spiritual atmosphere, they founded the Vereeniging Oud-Woodbrookers in 1908. This continued as Vereeniging Woodbrookers in Holland and later as Vereniging Woodbrookers Barchem. In addition, the Workers' Society of Woodbrookers in Bentveld came into being. This association decided at its membership meeting on January 28, 1995 to dissolve and merge into the newly founded association "De Rode Hoed. The board of the new association would join forces with the board of the already existing progressive Catholic foundation 'De Rode Hoed' in Amsterdam. In 1912 the community in Barchem was given a piece of land, where successively a chapel and in 1924 the Woodbrook house were built. This house was designed by the aforementioned architect Postel from Lochem. In 1930, Feenstra designed the House of Community in the dunes near Bentveld (Zandvoort municipality), which was remodeled and expanded several times during the 1930s. He was also commissioned to build a religious-socialist center for the north in 1936. This was located at Kortehemmen in Friesland. Feenstra was involved in several cultural organizations in Arnhem. For example, he played a role in the Arnhem Film League and was active in the "Fryske Krite. Furthermore, he gave lectures throughout the country and wrote articles in various magazines. As an editorial assistant of the R.K. Bouwblad, later Katholiek Bouwblad, he provided a number of articles on Protestant church building. In 1932, the Feenstra family moved to the Schuilhof house on Diepenbrocklaan in Arnhem. In the late 1930s, Feenstra accepted a commission to develop security arrangements for Nijmegen's inner city because of the imminent danger of war. He also joined the board of the Amsterdamsche Bank in Arnhem and became a board member of the Arnhemsch Genootschap van Oudheidkunde of 1910. War and reconstruction In June 1940, the family moved again, to the third house that Feenstra designed for himself. Actually, the house was intended for a client who had it built as an investment, but Feenstra took it over after completion. He called the house "De Stins. During World War II, the number of commissions declined rapidly, and the scarcity of materials made it virtually impossible to build any more buildings from 1942 on. However, there were some clients who had plans prepared for the time after the war. In this way, consultation took place with the dairy industry. Feenstra refused on principle to work for the occupying forces, which got him into trouble in 1943. He and his family were evicted from his home and had to live temporarily in the office, which was located in Coehoornstraat. After the Battle of Arnhem in 1944, the people of Arnhem were forcibly evacuated and Feenstra also had to leave the city. The family spent the winter in a summer house in the woods near Beekbergen. After the liberation, Feenstra returned to Arnhem with his son to help rebuild the city. Then it turned out that both of his former homes, Middei Hichte and De Schuilhof, had been destroyed. In 1946-1947, he designed another new house for his family, which was built on the site of De Schuilhof. Shortly after the war, Feenstra suffered a lot of name confusion with his almost namesake G.J. Veenstra. This architect had led the Technical Assistance Service during the evacuation of Arnhem. This organization, modelled on the Technische Nothilfe in Germany, tried to manage the abandoned city in cooperation with the occupying forces. Because the Germans were looting, the auxiliary service also got a bad rap. Furthermore, Veenstra had a bad name because he was a member of the National Socialist Movement (NSB). It was claimed of him that he walked around with a letter from Reich Minister Albert Speer in his pocket and that with it he could get anything done from the Germans. According to one version of the story, he had once studied with Speer at the same college, while another version claimed he built emergency housing in bombed-out cities in Germany. Although some say Veenstra would have used his influence to benefit the Arnheimers during the evacuation, to many he was still considered "wrong. For Feenstra, the confusion with Veenstra was particularly annoying, because he had in fact kept far from any cooperation with the occupying forces.(2) After the misunderstanding was cleared up, the number of assignments for Feenstra increased rapidly. Initially it was mainly repairing war damage, including dozens of farms. In addition, the first orders soon came from the dairy industry, including the rebuilding of the large CAMIZ factory on the Westervoortsedijk in Arnhem. Feenstra built hundreds of dairies in the Northern and Eastern Netherlands in the period 1945-1960. This specialty became such an important part of his work that he made a study trip to Sweden for this purpose. He also designed several churches and built a number of homes for the elderly. Also in the postwar years, Feenstra devoted himself to cultural organizations in Arnhem. In December 1948, he was elected president of the Arnhem Society of Archaeology, of which he had been a member since 1924 and a board member since 1939. Feenstra held this position until 1950, when a merger took place with the Gelderland Society of Literature under the motto "Prodesse Conamur" of 1792. Feenstra gave several lectures on architecture over the years. In 1957, he was appointed Officer in the Order of Orange Nassau. Three years later he retired from the Feenstra architectural firm, which continued under his name. Feenstra and Van Broekhuizen When Feenstra joined Gemeentewerken of Arnhem in 1918, the aforementioned architect H.B. van Broekhuizen also joined the firm. The architects lived next door to each other and worked together a lot, including on competitions. Van Broekhuizen remained in municipal service longer, but also wanted to start as a private architect in the early 1930s. Under the name Feenstra and Van Broekhuizen, the two architects entered into an association. In 1934, Feenstra was commissioned to liquidate the office of architect A.K. Beudt, who had died that year, in Hengelo. Feenstra knew Beudt from working for the construction office of the aforementioned garden village 't Lansink. Van Broekhuizen took over Beudt's firm and continued it under the name "Feenstra and Van Broekhuizen. Because commissions were scarce during the crisis period, Feenstra occasionally helped Van Broekhuizen with assignments in Arnhem. The Hengelo office gradually received more commissions, but in the late 1930s Van Broekhuizen fell ill. Feenstra mentions in his obituary about Van Broekhuizen, that during World War II he resisted the occupier in many ways and did a lot of good work, especially for artists. During the war years illness struck again. Meanwhile, his oldest son was forced to work in Germany and his youngest son joined the resistance. After the war, Van Broekhuizen recovered. Feenstra no longer needed to support his work and the association was dissolved. Feenstra, however, remained closely associated with the agency. Van Broekhuizen, however, fell ill again. He still experienced the promotion of his eldest son to structural engineer. After Van Broekhuizen's death in 1948, the bureau was continued by his wife and eldest son.(3) Architectural conception With his work, Feenstra always chose a middle course between traditionalism and modernism. He attached great importance to traditional materials such as brick and often gave his buildings tiled roofs. The relationship between building and landscape was very important to Feenstra. Especially in the countryside he chose traditional forms. Nevertheless, he also produced distinctly modern designs, such as the Oase house in Ede, which clearly betrays influence from De Stijl. This influence can also be seen in his furniture designs from the interwar period. In his lectures, he opposed the extremes. For example, he called the Amsterdam School "sultry, weak romanticism" and the New Objectivity an "anti-religious style. However, these statements were mainly directed against the extreme expressions. He also showed appreciation for the "Neue Sachlichkeit," as evidenced by this quote from the Bouwkundig Weekblad: "In our age from fascism to communism, we must 'construct' before all else and leave to the course of time whether this construction will be shrouded with an eternity robe. As such, the N.S. is entitled to our appreciation although I myself lack the courage to face reality in this way.'(4) Feenstra himself preferred the Delft School: 'This art is not in the first place objective, but therefore not ineffective. It is in fact professionalism put under a religious light.' However, he was not a scholarly supporter of the Delft movement and also retained an eye for innovative developments. An example is the almost functionalist office building he designed for Het Vrije Volk in Arnhem in 1952.(5) J.G. Wattjes summarized Feenstra's architectural approach well in an article about the country house Zonnewende in Oosterbeek. He contrasted Feenstra's approach with the various currents of the interwar period: 'One can also simply build a house, which from the outside appears quite ordinary as a composition of walls broken by windows and doors and covered by a roof. That too is art and requires [...] sensitive artistry. Feenstra proceeded in this completely unaffected and entirely theory-free manner with the modest little house [...].(6) A few years later, J.P. Mieras expressed a similar opinion on the occasion of an exhibition of the BNA in the Gemeentemuseum in Arnhem: 'Arch. Feenstra shows much love for subtly executed pencil drawings of country houses. The country houses and residential houses themselves also often have good 'construction', good distribution of rooms and more qualities, such as for example the famous house in the Jollesstraat'.(7) After 1960 After retiring from the office, Feenstra devoted himself entirely to collecting and studying antique Dutch tiles. His interest in tiles was piqued when he bought a 'commander's house' on Terschelling dating from 1741 in 1952. Some of the walls of this house were covered with tiles, and Feenstra set out to find replacement tiles for some damaged ones. He then noticed that antique tiles were disappearing abroad in large numbers. Feenstra then decided to build his own collection so that examples of the various types of tiles would be preserved in the Netherlands. The collection soon became too large for his own home, and on July 12, 1961, he opened the tile museum It Noflik Sté (Het Genoeglijk Plekje) in Otterlo. From this, the Dutch Tile Museum later evolved. Close to the museum, Feenstra built a bungalow, where he and his wife went to live. In 1973 Feenstra and his wife moved to De Drie Gasthuizen in Arnhem, which had been built to his design in the years 1951-1952. There, too, he still had a small side room with a number of masterpieces from his tile collection. In 1982 Feenstra received the golden medal of honor from the Province of Gelderland in appreciation for his work in connection with the establishment of the tile museum in Otterlo. The city council of Ede subsequently decided to name a street in Otterlo after him. On February 26, 1984, his wife Johanna died. Feenstra died on August 7, 1985. He was buried in Otterlo, the place where he had lived for many years and had laid the foundation for the Dutch Tile Museum. The list of works No complete list of Feenstra's works is known. The oeuvre list of BONAS was compiled on the basis of literature research and research at the Gelders Archives in Arnhem. However, in 1992 L. Feenstra, the son G. Feenstra, published an overview of numbers of works, classified by categories of buildings. This list is reproduced here.(8) The numbers represent the numbers of buildings up to 1940 and from 1940 on: Residential 172 - 319 Stores 12 - 21 Farms 2 - 84 Industry, offices 33-35 Church buildings 14 - 22 Dairies 43 - 472 Hotels, restaurants 1 - 5 Hospitals, nursing homes, youth hostels 12 - 27 Schools 3 - 12 Miscellaneous 153 - 243 L. Feenstra's list gives a figure of 445 works for the period up to and including 1939, and a figure of 1240 works for the period from 1940. In total, he assumes 1685 projects directed by Feenstra. Notes 1. This biography is based on: L. Feenstra, Gerrit Feenstra (1890-1985), in: A.G. Schulte (ed.), Arnhems Historisch Genootschap Prodesse Conamur 1792-1992. Everywhere they left their traces, Zutphen 1992. 2. P.R.A. van Iddekinge, Arnhem 44-45. Evacuation, destruction, looting, liberation, return, Arnhem 1981, pp. 151-153; B. Kerkhofs, Arnhem, city of the homeless. Dossier '44-'45, Nijmegen 1981, p. 48-49. 3. G. Feenstra, 'H.B. van Broekhuizen', Bouwkundig Weekblad, jg. 66, 1948, no. 9, p. 65, J. Vredenberg, 'The architecture of H.B. van Broekhuizen in Arnhem', Arnhem de Genoeglijkste, jg. 17, 1997, no. 1, p. 8-17. 4. G. Feenstra, 'Kentering', Bouwkundig Weekblad, jg. 52, 1931, no. 5, p. 42. 5. Y. Segers, At the Crossroads of Old and New. Het Gelders Genootschap 1919-1994: 75 jaar op de bres voor de schoonheid van Gelderland, The Hague 1994, p. 79-81. 6. J.G. Wattjes, 'Residential house in Oosterbeek - Arch. G. Feenstra', Construction Company, jg. 4, 1927, no. 4, p. 81. 7. J.P. Mieras, 'Exhibition of the work of the B.N.A. members' circle at Arnhem', Bouwkundig Weekblad Architectura, jg. 54, 1933, no. 29, p. 236-237. 8. L. Feenstra, Gerrit Feenstra (1890-1985), in: A.G. Schulte (ed.), Arnhems Historisch Genootschap Prodesse Conamur 1792-1992. Everywhere they left their traces, Zutphen 1992, p. 249/ Additional functions: Commission of Advice for the Development of the Geitenkamp and the Schuttersberg/member/1923;School of Arts and Crafts/teacher of architecture/1924 (about);Closed competition for the Juliana Church in Apeldoorn/ juror/1928;Study competition for a church building/ juror/1929;Geldersche Schoonheidscommissie/member/1924-1966;Geldersche Schoonheidscommissie/delegate for Elst, Bemmel, Gendt, Heteren, Huissen and Valburg/1924-1955;Fryske Akedemy, competition Fryske pleats mei foarein of kop-hals-romp-boerderij/jurylid/1942;Editorial Board of Central Journal of Building Companies for the Netherlands and Colonies/member/1919 (about);Volkshoogeschool Allardsoog Bakkeveen, course in architecture/teacher/1935;Zeeuwsche boerderij-prijsvraag/jurylid/1946