Philipsdorp phase 1A, 1B & 2: picturesque workers housing in Eindhoven

At present only a small portion of the oldest buildings survive as most were torn down with the removal of the Elizabethlaan to accommodate a bigger football stadium. This block of terraced housing on the Gagelstraat still survives and gives a good impression of the architecture of building phase 1A.

A view down the Johannastraat of phase 1B with the typical architecture reminiscent of the houses on the Gagelstraat. The large PSV Stadium dominates the horizon. At its conception this curved street planted with trees would have ended in a park with football pitch with an ample avenue around it.

The Hulstlaan of phase 2 was originally laid out with a planted central reservation. This street replaces the playing fields of the original 1911 design by G.J. de Jongh. The houses are by the same architect -L. Kooken- as those in phases 1A and 1B, which shows clearly.

The curve of the streets are negotiated by angling the terraces. In between narrow alleyways (left) give access to the deep back gardens. The houses typically have no front gardens, although these houses in the Hulstlaan originally did have these. Front garden were judged to create problems in providing a coherent and neat image of every street.

The Henriëttastraat was built as a short cul-de-sac ending on the edge of fields near "The Heap" a small slum. The old housing at the beginning with its expressive facades with exposed brick and light render contrast markedly with the red brick terraces built by a housing association after the slums had been cleared in 1923.

The houses in this building phase typically have a red brick bottom portion with the upper part of the facade in white render. Structural details e.g. brick courses above the windows and doors were left exposed as an ornamental feature. The orange clay tiles on the roofs provide a nice contrast with the rendered surfaces.

The Annastraat connects to the Keerweerstraat, the dead-end that gave access to Den Bult (= the heap), a slum owned by Elias. These houses are very similar to those in the Johannastraat. Terraces with partially rendered facades are interspersed with brick-built blocks.

In the restauration the original green front doors (that came in 7 types throughout Philipsdorp) will be reinstated as every street is restored. On the left an example of a rare original door in the typical moss green colour. In the 1970s the original doors were replaced by these red ones (on the right) with a large pain of glass. The low dormers are an original feature, and typical for Dutch vernacular architecture.

The Frederiklaan was planted as a wide avenue. Of this only some vestiges remain. The view here is dominated by the towering building of the Philips Company School for Electrics. On the right a row of terraces with partially rendered facades. On the opposite side the facades are all executed in red brick. This gives a great sense of place and direction to this curve in the main street.

Philipsdorp, factory housing as part of company policy

Gerard Philips studied under Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) at the University of Glasgow in 1886 aged 28. Originally a mechanical engineer trained at the Delft Polytechnic, Gerard Philips became very interested in the possibilities of artificial lighting. After gaining experience working in installation and sales, he decides his future is in manufacturing and sets up his own production plant for light bulbs. Funded by a loan from his father he buys an abandoned factory in Eindhoven on the city moat in 1891. This building was originally built as a steam powered nail factory in 1869. It became a buckskins factory from 1876. After a fire it was rebuilt in 1888 but quickly went into administration. Gerard Philips and his father Frederik started Philips & Co and manufactured incandescent light bulbs and carbon-filaments.

The tiny medieval city of Eindhoven at the confluence of the Dommel and Gender rivers was surrounded by 5 villages: Woensel, Tongelre, Stratum, Gestel and Strijp. Of these Woensel was the most important with more inhabitants than the neighbouring town. At the end of the 19th century the city attracted manufacturing, which was in part developed outside of the city limits on much cheaper land in one of the surrounding villages. Gerard's younger brother Anton Philips joined the company in 1899. After 1900 light bulb production quickly rose and the company needed more workers. For this the firm acquired the marshy land along the Gender opposite their first factory within the village of Strijp. This village would become the core of their activities in the following decades. A large new factory was built in 1909 (The Light Tower). As the company grew housing became an issue. There was little provision for factory workers, staff and researchers as most housing available in and around Eindhoven was very poor in quality. Housing provision by industrialists was small-scale, haphazard and ad hoc.

Anton Philips decided to set up a housing association: Thuis Best (best translated as "no place like home"). On the road linking Eindhoven and Strijp Philips acquires a large leasehold farm in 1909 with the aim to build workers housing here. The idea of a factory village incorporated the vision on the living conditions of the modern factory worker, such as a healthy dwelling, a kitchen garden, amenities and the workplace nearby. All amenities were to be located within the factory village e.g. company stores, industrial bakery, bath house, schools, sports pitches and music clubs. The aim was to provide a complete community, controlled by the employer to secure the loyalty of the workers to the company.

Gerrit Jan de Jongh was employed to draft the proposals for this new factory village. He drew plans for the streets, the positioning of the housing and the sewage system. This spatial plan was worked up into architectural drawings by others. G.J. de Jongh came from Rotterdam where he had gained a reputation as an urban planner for his work on the new harbour basins and the housing in Feijenoord and the Kralingse Bos. He had familiar ties to the company as his daughter Anna had married Anton Philips in 1898. Anton and Gerrit had visited Tuindorp 't Lansink and Port Sunlight for inspiration. They decided the factory village should have a relaxed village-feel with a lot of greenery to best accommodate the workers that mostly came from a rural background. Central (but spatially peripheral) in the design for the factory village is a large green with a football pitch, a small park and schools. Towards the train tracks allotments were made available.

Phase one was built directly next to the green with slightly curved streets named after women in the Philips family: Anna, Johanna, Henriëtte, Huberta and Elisabeth. The housing was designed by Louis Kooken, who was also responsible for the Volkssterrenwacht (Peoples Astronomical Observatory) and the Radiomonument. All housing was built in terraces of 4 or 8 with deep back gardens, but without front gardens. As a first for Strijp all houses were plumbed-in with gas and water and had a sewer connection. Phase 1 was completed in two building campaigns.

As a result of the great demand for housing, all houses in this first section had double the number of official residents by 1916, as families took lodgers and relations in. More housing was urgently needed. It would take until 1918 until the second building phase was completed. First the land that phase 1 wrapped around needed to be acquired by Philips. The streets until that time were cull-de-sacs of the Frederiklaan. After years of negotiations the industrialist Elias agreed to sell his field that was reached by a short dead end known as the Keerweerstraat (litterally: turn around street). On this land the Hulstlaan (Holly Lane) was laid out.

The houses along this street were intended especially for glass blowers that the company had brought in from elsewhere to work in the new glass factory on Strijp S. The houses on the Hulstlaan did have front gardens and a central reservation planted with trees. So did the roads along the "central" green where a small park, schools, a korfball pitch and a football pitch were built. This was part of a new vision on urban living in the rapidly urbanising villages around Eindhoven. The intention was to keep city dwellers connected with nature by bringing nature into the urban environment. for both aesthetic, and educational as well as recreational reasons. In 1920 the central city incorporated the adjoining villages to form Greater-Eindhoven.

Karel de Bazel was the man who was employed to design the subsequent expansion of the company village. He had worked with famous architects and had gained experience in social housing provision as the municipal architect of Bussum. His design for the Bredius Quarter were adapted for the next addition to Philipsdorp which was built from 1918 onwards. All housing was designed within a single aesthetic. The street was treated as an outdoor room with the facades of the buildings as the walls. This Berlagean concept doesn't differ much from typical Unwinesque urban design. The streets were named after trees, something that was started in the Hulstlaan. Streets named after trees were seen as more in keeping with the ideas of the garden village. In the Lindenstraat lime trees were planted. The name of the street thus corresponded with the natural element added.

De Bazel also starts work on the Area initially set aside for allotment. Here the cooperative bread factory (later ETOS an acronym of  Eendracht, Toewijding, Overleg en Samenwerking) was built in 1919. Behind it a small neighbourhood around a small square was developed. It is known as the Rowan Quarter after the central garden square named Lijsterbesplein. On the side of the park a double villa for engineers is erected.

The influence of Berlage is clearly visible in the layout of the forth building phase of Philipsdorp which  is built between the hamlet of Schoot, the village centre of Strijp and the large factory site known as Strijp-S. In 1919 De Bazel also submitted plans for this section of the factory housing project. His initial plan included a planned ring road that was never built here. Instead the Kastanjelaan (Chestnut Lane) is laid out is a wide avenue along the edge of the large factory site and the adjacent housing. This neigbourhood centres around a large garden square planted with London Plane trees; the Platanenplein (Plane Square). The houses are a copy of the housing in phase 3.

The final and fifth building phase includes the completion of the streets of the first two phases by developing an area known as De Bult (the heap) where until 1923 some slums had stood at the end of the Keerweerstraat. These houses were however not built by the company's housing associations, although the land was bought and provided to another housing association by the Philips Company. After 1920 on a triangle of land next to the factory site barracks were erected to house more glass blowers and their families. These were replaced in the 1930s by two schools: a company school and a technical college. On part of the terrain a public garden was planted, although this spot is known as the Essenplein (Ash Square).

Philipsdorp in Eindhoven-Strijp is dominated by the large football stadium built at the site of the original PSV pitch (1) in the small park (2) that has since been developed for housing and offices. On the edge of the community park the Philips School (3)  ULO school (4, a secondary school).On the edge of the company housing the Cooperative Bakery (5) was located. In several places ETOS shops (6) were to be located. Incidentally, all corner plots on the Frederiklaan were used as small shops. On a vacant lot  a small evangelical church was built (7) known as Van Prijt's Church.In the heart of the factory village a large M.T.S. or technical middle school (8) was built with beyond the multi-storey brick-modernist block of the Philips Company Training School (9), now a vocational college. The NatLab (10) was located on the edge of the factory site and housed the R&D department. Philipsdorp sits directly next to the old village centre of Strijp with the impressive Church of Saint Trudo. The Church of Saint Anthony (12), better known as the Steentjeskerk (Pebble Church) was built in 1919 as a daughter church of the St Trudo congregation.

Since 2010 the whole of Philipsdorp together with the other company village of Drentsdorp were given protected status as a conservation area. Both will be restored by the current owner a social housing association. As an important [part of the urban and industrial heritage of Eindhoven the city has designated Philipsdorp a listed area.The Elizabethlaan was torn down to make room for the enlargment of the stadium and a new thoroughfare.

Blossom Bonanza: for the botanical connoisseur

After a slow start nature has finally caught up with the times and springtime is in full swing. May is the month that many exotic trees and shrubs, and yes even bulbs and perennials show of their blooms against the emerging leaves. The Magnolias and Rhododendrons are well known examples, but these trees and shrubs are familiar to most people. Around this time there is more to be seen, if only one has a keen eye for the unusual or unexpected!

Fraxinus ornus, the Flowering ash, grows naturally from Hungary east into the Caucasus. The scented creamy white plumes (shown left) are nice to look at, but I personally don't like the smell. Styrax japonica is unknown to many, but these small trees are covered in dangling white blossoms (in the middle) that some find to resemble snowdrops. The warm weather and subsequent cold spell has caused the plant to flower profusely (on the right).

Wisteria (on the left) is known to many as it is a much-used ornamental climber. In most gardens it is grown against a wall or an a pergola. It naturally clambers up trees and the effect is incredible as the picture shows. Although most ornamental cherries have finished flowering. This Japanese Village Cherrie (Prunus 'Ukon') with its somewhat green, creamy-white flowers with a cherry-pink centre typically flowers later end of April or early May. Another Asian exotic is the Paulownia tomentosa with its very fragrant lilac flowers in large pinnacles (on the right). For these flowers it's known as the Foxglove Tree. An alternative name is the Royal Empress Tree, as it was named by Von Siebold in honour of Anna Paulovna, a Romanov princess who became Queen of the Netherlands by her marriage to William II.

Heveadorp, the remnants of social entrepreneurship

At present only a small portion of the old factory village survives. What remains is now protected. The factory village Heveadorp only pays lip service to the garden village in the architecture, the layout is a formal grid of three connected parallel streets.

The architecture is romantic in nature and refers to the good life in the countryside. The houses have been inspired by English Arts and Crafts architecture and is basically vernacular. Great attention was paid to provide a varied exterior and roofline to counteract the formal placement along the narrow streets.

Two rows of terraced cottages with large dormers and lunette-vaulted gable ends. The terraces have been designed as a single entity with no clear demarcation of the separate houses within each building. In the background a row of post-war terraced housing, in  the typical bland style of the 1980s.

The romantic English reference is achieved by the use of high chimneystacks. Vernacular Dutch chimneys are much lower and are never structural (never carrying the central roof beam).Here the chimneys are mostly ornamental and separate from the roof construction. The double cottage on the right has a plaque with "Borneo". Each of the 4 blocks of terraced cottages was named after one of the Indonesian islands where rubber was (and still is) produced.

The Middellaan (Middle Lane) forms the central axis of the factory village of Heveadorp. It follows an older dirt road that lead down to the Rhine where a ford was located just after the confluence of the Seelbeek brooke with that large river. The formal placement of the housing is clear as they are all built on the same building line along the narrow street.

One of the typically Dutch additions to the "English cottages" are these decorative awnings over the front door (shown left). The red ridge tiles are typical also for thatched cottages in the Netherlands. They make the roof more durable and also serve a decorative purpose here as the emphasize the outline of the variable roof shape. 

There are only three types of houses in Heveadorp. This is a terraced type with the front doors in a recessed entrance emphasised by a triangular gable end overhead. Originally these cottages stood on the street. The green was created in 1985 when a new road was built lower on the slope.

The executive cottages and villas have been built in a similar vernacular style as the workers cottages. Some are still standing on the south side of the former rubber factory site.

An example of 1950s and 1960s architecture. These terraces were built next to the old factory village to provide roomier accommodation and replace some of the war-damaged cottages. These sections of Heveadorp have not been given conservation status.