A NEW VENICE

Evening Star, Issue 21717, 11 May 1934, Page 5

A NEW VENICE

CITY Of ROTTERDAM “ A sort of vulgar Venice,” says Thomas Hood, in a poem he writes about Rotterdam, and there is no line which epitomises the town quite so well. ,lt is a city of canals and shipping, where there are streets of water everywhere and the masts stand up like trees among the houses, says the ‘ Manchester Guardian.’ Not that it is picturesque on a small scale; it is a huge, commercial place, and the Rhine that flows past it is like a street full of noisy traffic. Indeed, the river flows in and out of the city; for Rotterdam lies on both sides of the Maas—which is a broad stretch of the river spanned by a bridge, and on all sides there seem to be further parts of the town reached by crossing other section of the river. So from one part of the city to another you may take a cheap ferry and dash dowhstream amid the traffic, arid, swinging round, bring up at another part of the town. At evening the clouds above the Maas as one looks outward down the river, become massive and fiery—a sunset like a painting; the ships become misty, a confusion of lines and masts; a grey softness is spread over the river and the buildings, and then the lights on the bridge shine out like a' great festoon across the water, and the lights on all the , ships appear and make the Maas an illuminated waterway. Everywhere there are canals which turn off into the town and are bridged where the streets cross over the water. The canals are full of brightly-coloured shipping,, moored on both sides as well as passing up and down; and the closeness of water and- streets, road traffic and barge traffic, gives the city a strange appearance, as. compounded of two worlds. ! FASCINATING LINES. There is a beauty of colour in the city; in the quieter parts there are softly-coloured houses standing around the end of the canals, which thus come to look like ornamental waters, and in the mellow light that always seems to shine over Holland the water has a dark green colour, a velvety smoothness of texture to the eye, and won can see all the richness and quietness of Vermeer’s painting. But there is, too, a fascination in the lines of things. It is in the shipping, the multitude of masts and sails and different shapes and forms; the great cargo boats out on, the river, the pleasure steamers and the long line of barges, the old sailing ships and the fleets of noisy tugs. It is also in the lines of the buildings and the trees. Rotterdam has a road along the river front, the Bampjes, which is planted at intervals with scraggy elm trees. It is nothing like so handsome as the Embankment, but the thin trees and the tall buildings behind them seem to fit with the confusion of shipping, and the sight has an intricacy of line and a delicacy of colouring which remain long in the memory. All buildings in Rotterdam, as everywhere in Holland, take on a soft and weathered v appearance because of the widely diffused light. The flatness of the country makes a windmill seem enormous, even when it stands on the outskirts of Rotterdam; while a church even of an ordinary size, towers up into the_ sky. So, as you approach the town, with nothing to impede the view, you get the impression of a crowded city, gradually growing and clustering up to the sombre height of the Great Church in the centre. That is so dark that not even the mildest light could make it seem anything but cold and forbidding as one stands in the narrow streets at ,its foot. MANY AT HOME. Many of the newer buildings in the town are architecturally at home, and look simple without being stark. The, new Post Office and Town Hal! in Rotterdam, standing beside an open space —again bordered with elm trees —are two graceful buildings of soft, grey stone, with large, well-proportioned window spaces and steep roofs of dark red tiles. A line of cafes opposite to them gives prolonged opportunity to observe how well the red of the roofs looks against the soft, drifting sky which is typical of the country. Yet just down the road someone has gone badly astray in designing a yellow brick warehouse and shops, in which there is no mistake as far as the top of an enormously high tower, but on the top has been placed a huge and hideous glass pineapple, which is illuminated at night and can unfortunately be seen for miles. Looking at this beacon-fruit one could wish that the lighting had taken any other form. Generally the new developments are not ugly, and some arc good. But the attraction of the city is not in its old gables or its new facades; it is in the waterways, the commerce, the air of business and industry, and, above all, in the life of the river. We do not use the Thames for passenger traffic, but in Rotterdam there are always boats running to all points, and small paddle-steamers, carrying mixed cargo and passengers, which run to the little towns further up the river. The water is as much a part of the city’s life as are the streets, and because it all has such a solidity, and air of sense and business, underneath the enchantment of colour, and light, it is easy to sec why Hood, looking down the “ wat’ry vistas,” felt impelled to call it a “ sort of vulgar Venice.”