City hall Gouda by Eus Driessen

About "City hall Gouda"

by Eus Driessen

About the artwork

The town hall of Gouda is located on the Markt. The fifteenth-century town hall is one of the oldest Gothic town halls in the Netherlands.
In 1395 the city council of Gouda bought the market field of Messrs Van der Goude to build a town hall there. Yet it would take until 1448 before the construction was started. According to city historian Ignatius Walvis, the poor financial position of the city was the cause of the continuous postponement. The new city hall served as a substitute for the old, which, according to Walvis aan de Gouwe, stood on the site of the later brewery De Zwaan. Others, however, are the precursor (from 1395) of the current town hall just to the east of the former police station on the Markt, with possibly a predecessor in a hall in the southern tip of the Markt.

One of the stonecutters was Jan III Keldermans, a member of a Brabant family of architects Keldermans from Mechelen. The building was built from Belgian limestone. The foundation was not driven, but a number of rafts of heavy oak beams were used. In 1459 the construction of the town hall, after the delivery of the turret, was completed, although it had already been put into operation in 1450. In 1497 the town hall was refurbished on the occasion of Philip the Fair's visit to the city. In 1517/1518 the building was renovated. According to the historian Walvis, the town hall was surrounded by water until 1603 and could be reached by means of a bridge. In that year (1603) the current platform in