The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

Some houses don’t lean forward, they lean sideways. Usually, it’s because something has gone wrong with the foundation, or it can’t handle the weight of some remodel that was unforeseen when the original foundation was put in. Read more about that here. Either way, I do enjoy seeing the leaning houses.

The forward tilt, usually for hooks. Since it’s difficult or impossible to get furniture up the steep staircases in most Amsterdam homes, it has to go through the windows. Often, houses tilt forward so the furniture doesn’t hit the house when it gets pulled up. I suspect some houses tilt because they’re sinking too! You can even buy stock photography of these house hooks too.

Filled-in windows. Sometimes I think the designers of the building wanted uniformity, even if some of the openings were never going to be used as windows. But sometimes it really looks like windows that were filled in. I really don’t know why.

Bridge views. Some bridges are big enough that you don’t even notice them as a bridge, just a road or tram line. But some are pretty nice to look at.

Building down into the water. Or maybe, letting the water rise up your walls. If you come visit, I’m happy to take you to the little restaurants that are on the water’s edge that you can see in the photo on the left. The view from the white spot is the photo at the bottom.

House plaques. If you look closely enough, you can find a variety of them on the canal houses. You can even buy photos of them from this site. They usually represent what the house was originally used for, or what the owner’s profession was. Although I suspect are just nice pieces of art too.

I think just about every house in Amsterdam was originally built for some reason, but over a few hundred years I guess that’s about to happen. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam#Architecture for more about that. Today’s photo is of a building (or 3) that were built to store spices, probably brought to Amsterdam by the Dutch East India Company.

I think all of the houses on the canals in Amsterdam have some sort of ornate front, with a façade of some sort at the top. Notice how you can see through the window at the top of one of these.

It’s time for another round of photos, which is my form of an art project. This time, we have interesting things to notice about the housing in the heart of Amsterdam around the canals. We start with some of the very skinny houses, or at least sections of houses. I’ve never gone through one of the doors for these, but I’d hope that the home is only as wide as a single door. I’m sure it’s not, but it looks like it from the street.

Near the Amsterdam Zuid station.