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The Amsterdam School

The city's own answer to the housing question: working-class flats built like sculpture. Once you have seen the look you start noticing it everywhere. Here is where to go and see it for yourself.

Last checked - June 2026

For about fifteen years after 1915, a handful of young architects - Michel de Klerk, Piet Kramer, Joan van der Mey - turned plain brick into something that curves, swells and climbs into little towers that hold nothing at all. The radical part was who it was for: ordinary tenants, in social housing, at a time when most of them lived in single rooms with no running water. The idea was that workers deserved beauty, not just plumbing. The buildings are scattered across the city, but a handful are easy to reach. Start with the museum in West and, if it gets under your skin, the building near Centraal where the whole thing got its name.

01Architecture museum / West

Museum Het Schip the building is the exhibit

Oostzaanstraat 45, Spaarndammerbuurt · tram 2 or bus 22 · closed Mondays, hours vary by season

Het Schip, "the ship", is De Klerk's block for the Eigen Haard housing cooperative, built between 1919 and 1921 and shaped a little like a vessel, complete with a slim spire that serves no purpose but to finish the line. The museum lives inside it, in the old post office and school, so you walk through a restored 1920s worker's flat and the permanent show on how the housing associations and this style rose together. It also rotates temporary exhibitions: a recent run was given over to the women of the Amsterdam School, long left out of the story. Go for the building first, the displays second. Skip it if your time is tight and you have not done the headline museums yet.

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02Streets / West / free

The rest of the Spaarndammerbuurt no ticket needed

Spaarndammerplantsoen and the Zaanhof · a few minutes on foot from Het Schip

Het Schip is the third of three blocks De Klerk built here for Eigen Haard. The other two face each other across the Spaarndammerplantsoen, finished in 1915 and 1916, and you can walk straight up to them for nothing. Carry on toward the Zaanstraat and the Zaanhof opens up: a calm green courtyard wrapped in housing, laid out by Herman Walenkamp around 1916. It is more sober than De Klerk's work, closer to Berlage than to the Amsterdam School's exuberance, but the instinct to hide a garden inside a city block is the same. Easy to miss, and the best ten minutes you will spend out here.

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03The first one / Centre

The Scheepvaarthuis where the style got its name

Prins Hendrikkade 108 · a short walk east of Centraal · now the Grand Hotel Amrath

This office block for the city's shipping firms, finished in 1916 by Joan van der Mey with De Klerk and Kramer on the detailing, is reckoned the first complete Amsterdam School building. The critic Jan Gratama coined the name describing it. Van der Mey cut it into the shape of a ship's prow and crusted the brick with carved sea creatures, ropes and figureheads. It is a hotel now, so you can step into the lobby, and they run the odd tour; even from the pavement the facade is worth the five minutes from Centraal.

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The man behind the bricks

Michel de Klerk was born in the old Jewish quarter in 1884, the son of a diamond worker, in a family that had little. He left school early and at fourteen went to work as a draughtsman in the office of the architect Eduard Cuypers, learning the trade by doing it. He married Lea Jessurun in 1910.

He was an artist as much as a builder. He drew, he designed furniture, and he shaped the look of the movement's magazine, Wendingen, whose covers carried his hand. Most of what he put on paper was never built. He died in 1923, on his thirty-ninth birthday, with only a handful of finished buildings to his name - and yet the city still carries his mark in brick. If one of these places makes you fall for the style, the Scheepvaarthuis near Centraal is the easiest to fold into a normal day in town.

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Common questions

Is Museum Het Schip worth visiting?

Yes, if you are interested in architecture or design, or want something off the tourist circuit. The building itself is the exhibit, a 1919 to 1921 social housing block and one of the finest examples of the style. It also runs changing exhibitions alongside the permanent one. If your time is tight and you have not done the main museums yet, save it for a second trip.

Where else can I see Amsterdam School architecture?

Three easy stops. Museum Het Schip in West is the main one. The Scheepvaarthuis near Centraal, the first complete building in the style, is now the Grand Hotel Amrath, so you can look into the lobby. And the streets around Het Schip, the Spaarndammerplantsoen blocks and the Zaanhof courtyard, are free to wander.

How do I get to Museum Het Schip?

Take tram 2 toward Nieuw Sloten and get off at Spaarndammerstraat, or bus 22 to Zaanstraat. It is in the Spaarndammerbuurt in West, not walkable from the centre, about 20 minutes by tram from Amsterdam Centraal. Check opening hours before going; it is closed on Mondays.

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