A History of the Diamantbuurt in Amsterdam

Exploring the Diamantbuurt

Reading about the Diamantbuurt gives the feeling that this is a ghettoish place where you have to be careful while walking around; with criminal groups and ‘hangjongeren’/youngsters hanging around who are making trouble. Actually going to the place shows a peaceful area with interesting architecture, nice shops, calm people and historic buildings such as the Asscher Diamond Factory and the bathhouse.
    The Diamantbuurt is a two-faced place, clearly expressed by the people living in the neighborhood. On the one hand you have people who do not want to be associated with this neighborhood and who say: “No, this is not the Diamantbuurt, it is over there. This is just ‘de Pijp’.” On the other hand you have people who are proud of it and who do not see any danger in this area. A women explained: “I live here five years now and I always let my daughter play on the streets, nothing happens.”

    In order to see where those different views come from, we will look at the history of the Diamantbuurt; where do those buildings, architecture and environmental planning come from and who were the people that lived here?

History

The diamantbuurt gained its name because it housed the Asscher Diamond Factory which was the main building for the Royal Asscher Diamond Company. The factory was famous for the quality it produces and the streets which were built around it gained the name of precious stones. For the most part the neighbourhood was built in the 1930's and the buildings are in the Amsterdam School style, which is characterized by the red brick and ornaments on the building fronts using either brick or carved stone. The diamond factory is the main monument of the neighbourhood is was designed by Gerrit van Arkel who used a toned-down version of Jugendstil.

Former Nieuwer Amstel City Hall and Municipal Archive

The land which became the diamantbuurt belonged to a small municipality that was namedNieuwer Amstel and, for so far as it is still the same, we now know as Amstelveen. The small municipality feared annexation and tried to fend it of as long as possible. This political battle was fought through buildings and there are still traces of this fight in the current neighbourhood. Most prominently, Nieuwer Amstel built their city hall at the edge of the city in 1892, it is a beautiful Neo-gothic building on the Amstel. After the annexation, it served as the city archive from 1914 to 2007. It was a clear sign of resistance to build it so close to their growing neighbour.

    Similarly, the decision to commission the new, prestigious diamond factory at the edge of the city was also a political manoeuvre on the part of Amsterdam. The owners of company at the time Joseph and Abraham Asscher were of Jewish descent and the factory attracted many other Jewish families to the neighbourhood. In 1937 a synagoge was built opposite the factory, this was the synagoge that Anne Frank and her family came to worship. Before the World War Two, the factory building also served as place where Zionist youth group gathered every Saturday.

Asscher Diamond Factory

    During the war, it housed meetings for the Jewish Council which was headed by Abraham Asscher. The council mediated the occupation's government demands to the Jewish community, in short Abraham Asscher help the organisation of the deportations of Jews to concentration camps. In 1943 the Abraham Asscher, the rest of his family, most members of the Jewish Council and most of the diamond polishers were deported to concentration camps. The Asscher brothers survived Bergen-Belsen, but only fifteen of the five hundred polishers did.

    After the war there was no more company to come back to and for Abraham Asscher also no community. He was accused of collaboration and hated by the Jewish community. He was only exonerated after his death in 1950. His two sons, Joop and Lodewijk Asscher declined an offer to put their skills to use in the New York diamond industry and opted to rebuild the company in Amsterdam. The factory building still houses there business headquarters although it is no longer a factory.

After the Second World War, the neighborhood, which had been predominantly Jewish working class changed dramatically, nowadays the majority of the houses are part of social housing. Social housing in the Netherlands means that these houses are only available for people with a low income (Stadsdeel Zuid: De staat van de buurten in Zuid 2012, folder).

The population of the district was influenced by the large flow of immigrants from the 1960s onwards by the booming economy and the need for cheap labor. Mainly Moroccan and Turkish ‘guest workers’ moved to the Netherlands. Their immigration became permanent and their wives and children joined them. In the 80s the economy went down and the first measures were taken to put a hold to the immigration. The socioeconomic status of non-Western immigrants is overall poorer than the ‘Dutch’ level, so a large group got to live in social housing projects.

Around 2004 a sort of media hype emerged around the ‘Moroccan problem’ in the Diamantbuurt. Moroccan youngsters were ‘terrorizing’ the neighborhood and a few families were bullied out of the area. Anouk de Koning (2012: 56-71) argues that the Diamantbuurt has become literally a symbol for ethnic tension. Since 2004 stories about the district mainly about youth criminality regularly made it to the news. These problems and the commotion around the Diamantbuurt reflect the national discourse of fear of Islamic immigrants. In different European countries a fear of ‘difference’ was growing. The Diamantbuurt became a vivid symbol for the discomfort of the Dutch population with the Islamic immigrants.

How is the Diamantbuurt being remembered? After speaking to several long term residents it got quite clear that the unpleasant events from a few years ago are still fresh. We started our research at the side of the van Woustraat that’s been ‘added’ to the Diamantbuurt in 2005. The residents we spoke to of this part of the neighborhood were convinced that this part was not the Diamantbuurt. We could notice a strong division between the two sides of the Van Woustraat, and that the neighborhood around the Diamond Company still had to deal with a bad image. The residents argued that you could notice the difference in sphere as the boys hanging out at the squares or play yards were all ‘buitenlanders’, the Dutch word for foreigners which in most cases means Moroccan or other Islamic immigrant groups, which would be really threatening. The use of the public space by these ‘buitenlanders’ changed the neighborhood’s image. After crossing the Van Woustraat we spoke to a lot more positive residents. They argue things have changed in the neighborhood and that they do not understand why the area still has a bad image.

Rest of the environment

Note on the Fence informing the viewer there is a temporary monument here

As said, the municipal is situated next to the Asscher Diamond Factory, but this building was just one of the nine municipal buidings. Nowadays, there is a big empty field at the place where those other buildings were situated, with a doubtful note attached to the fence.

Since the municipal archive  moved to the Vijzelgracht, the eight buildings were demolished and there appeared a space for new ideas, called Archiefterrein/Archive terrain. The redevelopment of this terrain, that will start in the second half of 2013, is seen as a new opportunity for the Diamantbuurt to get a better image and make it a place full of art, culture, living and recreation.

Archive Terrain

           The bad reputation of the Diamantbuurt is not due to the environment; in fact, the planning and architecture has a great potential to be an eminent neighborhood. To bring in the theory of urban theorist Jane Jacobs the Diamantbuurt has all the four factors to create liveliness in an urban place, as Jacobs describes it (Doedée 2012: 14).

           In the first place, the Diamantbuurt has several users functions, such as living, working, shopping and recreation. For example, the Van Woustraat has many shops where people are always moving around. Secondly, the neighborhood has small building blocks that should improve social contact and a wider dissemination of people, which increases the social control and safety. Thirdly, the Diamantbuurt contains old buildings that are cheap and therefore attractive to small and new companies which creates more possibilities for the first factor that is mentioned here. Finally, the neighborhood is very diverse as well; for instance, 36% of the population consists of non-Western immigrants (Stadsdeel Zuid, De staat van de buurten in Zuid 2012: 3). This diversity would, according to Jacobs, create a better social cohesion and economic situation (ibid.: 14-16).

           All those factors should create a well-bounded environment in which the people are very much connected to the surroundings and to each other, which makes it nice and safe to live in. Although, in reality it is not necessarily true for the Diamantbuurt, since it had to deal with the misbehave of young people that gave it a bad connotation. Because of this, in October 2011 there are several cameras placed in the neighborhood. They are placed at the corner of Carillonstraat and the Van Woustraat, at the small gate to Smaragdplein en Smaragdplein itself.# Those are or were apparently the most problematic areas but are, possibly due to this extra security changes, improving in the last few years.

Sources

Doedée, M.P.E.
    2012    Masterthesis Kunstbeleid en -Management. Utrecht: Universiteit Utrecht.    

http://www.zuid.amsterdam.nl/wonen_en/bouwprojecten/archiefterrein/http://www.zuid.amsterdam.nl/wonen_en/buurten-zuid/diamantbuurt
http://www.joodsamsterdam.nl/strdiamantbuurt.htm 

http://www.jhm.nl/cultuur-en-geschiedenis/personen/a/asscher,+abraham                  

Uitgave: Stadsdeel Zuid, versie 24-4-2012

Tekst en figuren: Bureau Onderzoek en Statistiek / Stadsdeel Zuid