Havenstraat: The Disappearing Soul of Amsterdam

The Havenstraat, located in the Oud-Zuid district of Amsterdam, looks rather quiet on a Winter morning. Only the first two buildings open their big tin doors and invite customers inside: a gigantic second-hand store, and a gezellig vintage clothing shop. The rest of the warehouses lining  the street look almost deserted, tinged with rust and covered in graffiti art, begging the question: what stories hide behind this rough exterior?

Compared to the rest of Amsterdam, almost fully modernized, walking on Havenstraat teleports you to a different universe: dark brick buildings with tall white windows suddenly transform into a street made up of large, round, low warehouses. Therein lies Gideon Italiaander’s thrift store, cluttered with vintage and second-hand objects, the vintage Kilo Store filled with eclectic clothing pieces, a harpsichord builder’s business, the electric tramline museum, Arthur van Oest’s special effects studio — and this is just the tip of the iceberg of Havenstraat’s deep and complex character. Behind them is a quiet alley where old tram tracks cross, bordered by green grass, brush and a handful of mushrooms. 
Unfortunately, the vibrant imagery of Havenstraat could disappear at any moment due to the municipality’s plans to evict the businesses, demolish the warehouses, and transform the area into a living area for 500 houses. As of today, the current planned eviction date is 6 March. However, since this date has long been moved around, some residents of Havenstraat take it with a grain of salt.

One of those residents is Arthur van Oest, an 81 year-old expert in special effects and explosives. Arthur was the first to come to the Havenstraat, when he opened his special effects business in one of the warehouses here in 1974.
Walking into his spacious tin warehouse, every corner of the room is filled to the brim with different objects, banners, posters and movie props. Currently, Van Oest is taking his work slow but he is still very much active. In the morning that we speak to him, he is eagerly awaiting the delivery of a car which he will mimic the impact of bullets on. As we are invited into his office, scattered with personal items and old photos, one can already sense the extent of how special this space is to him. “It’s like my second home,” he says.
After half a century in the Havenstraat, van Oest’s warehouse bears many stories and memories, almost writ into the building itself. He recounts the films he has worked on with pride, which include Steven Spielberg’s “Empire of the Sun” and “Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade” and, most recently, Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk”. “That was a lot of fun,” he reminisces, “but now I’m not so interested in traveling for months. I do it slowly.” 

He says he first heard plans for its demolition merely a year after settling, in 1975

As the Havenstraat’s oldest resident and the neighbourhood’s de facto spokesperson for 25 years, van Oest is greatly familiar with the government’s plans to convert the street into housing. He says he first heard plans for its demolition merely a year after settling, in 1975, and was responsible for talking with the municipality. “The government was saying for 50 years that we have to leave and they will build houses, but I don’t know for whom.” Van Oest continues, saying that the houses will not be affordable for the common Amsterdammer, only for the wealthy due to the high cost of redevelopment, exacerbating the housing crisis.. When it comes to bureaucratic matters, he struggles to find the right words in English, but there is a clear throughline: “It’s very stressful. It’s frustrating, really.” Since the municipality has been changing its plans for almost half a century, van Oest tries hard to balance the search for other locations with the disbelief that the street will be demolished anytime soon – the future of his “second home” hanging in the balance. “The government says that by the sixth of March, everything has to be gone. That’s impossible,” he thinks. In order to ease the process, van Oest says that the Havenstraat team have hired a solicitor to write a letter to the municipality on their behalf about the leegstand (vacancy). For now, the only thing to do is wait. 

Gideon Italiandeer, on the other hand, is the Havenstraat’s newest neighbor. He opened his second-hand shop business “Mevius” in one of the warehouses 14 years ago. Already when moving into the space, Italiaander was told that he could only stay for a maximum of one year. His buy-and-sell store is now home to a wide range of objects like simple cutlery, toys, clothes, furniture and books. His low prices invite everyone in the city, from trendy Gen-Z thrifters to older local Amsterdammers, to scavenge for hidden gems.
Italiaander attends to all of his customers with a wide, warm smile on his face. Because his store is rather popular and busy, he invites us to join him behind the counter so that he can keep working with customers. He is very good at multitasking, he says. Upon meeting Italiaander, his peculiarly kind, charismatic and extroverted personality is obvious.
Due to his store having resisted a decade of deadlines to vacate, Italiaander keeps a fairly positive outlook regarding the eviction. “Whatever the gemeente (municipality) says, I don’t care anymore.” The credibility has been lost after all the years spent in instability, and although they currently have the new eviction date of March 6th, he refuses to leave. “I’m not moving until I see the bulldozers at my door,” he says, always with his distinct smile, making it hard to tell exactly to what extent he is joking or not. However, Italiaander still remains hopeful: “Maybe in another 10 years I will still be here.” Nevertheless, Gideon Italiaander continues to run a very successful business, and always with a smile on his face. 

In November of 2023, a documentary series was released named “De Strijd om de Havenstraat” (The Battle for Havenstraat), which placed the street back into the spotlight. Ronald Olsthoorn, a journalist at AT5 who created and directed the series, would pass by the area often, wondering, “who are these people?”. His fascination with the street, which started a couple years ago, eventually drove him to create the five episode docuseries over the last 18 months. For Olsthoorn, both the process of transforming the street into a living area and the people of Havenstraat are important.

All the politicians that I spoke with for my work in the recent years always said ‘we’re doing this to save the soul of the city

He noticed that the residents and business-people of Havenstraat did not seem to be especially concerned with the current deadline for eviction in March. As the process has been extremely lengthy, people started diminishing the credibility eviction dates. “There’s always an insecurity about whether they should leave or not,” Olsthoorn adds. He also observed a mistrust towards the municipality and the types of houses they are going to build: “Are these going to be houses for the wealthy?”
De Strijd om de Havenstraat also includes the perspective of the municipality on the issue. “All the politicians that I spoke with for my work in the recent years always said ‘we’re doing this to save the soul of the city,’” Olsthoorn recalls, and questions what they take for Amsterdam’s soul.  “You speak of the soul of Amsterdam. We call it classy and shabby next to each other,” Olsthoorn says, and refers to the private expensive British school right next to Havenstraat. 
Arthur van Oest does not think that the government cares about the city, as the officials seem to reside in different towns of the Netherlands altogether. He also believes that 100 percent of Amsterdammers want the Havenstraat to stay as it is. In response to the documentary, van Oest explains that people say that the street is the last of its kind, and hope for its survival. However, no real change is really being affected. As he expands, van Oest also rails against the modern style of new residential buildings through Amsterdam as “horrible” and rejects the idea of the Havenstraat looking like that. “There’s no charm there,” he laments, “it’s all just buildings. It’s awful,” he adds, this time chuckling.
For Olsthoorn, Havenstraat is representative of a broader conversation in Amsterdam. Not only of its great urban debates such as the housing crisis, gentrification and the relationship between the citizens and authorities, but also of the question of the soul of the city. “We need houses,” he agrees, though he still reminds that “the city is more than houses alone.” Olsthoorn is concerned that, if the municipality focuses solely on the development of housing, “we will just get another monoculture of people who are living in boxes.” Remembering that culture and variety are crucial constituents of the city is “important for the living environment,” he says. Ultimately, Olsthorn hopes that the policy makers will begin to realize that more. “I hope I made a contribution to be more aware of that.”