Museum 3, 1880

• Virtual Museum Schielandhuis
• Paul van de Laar, real exhibition
• Five March, virtual reconstruction

First room of the exhibition.
Rotterdam as a quiet town around 1850 is shown on paintings. Until 1850 ‘progress’ as this is called was kept far from Rotterdam. But the advantages of the position of Rotterdam as a harbour and the technical innovations, like the railway could not be hindered any longer.

Caland planned and engineered the Waterway, a canal connecting Rotterdam to the see. This canal was designed to keep itself clean and deep, by allowing the tide to come on a length of 60 km, so for instance in Gouda, famous for its cheese the tidal effect is felt.

Then with the harbours the people flooded in from the south of Holland where there was a lot of unemployment. And, of course people made fortunes with the new harbours. So there was a mixture of poverty and richness, displayed in items in this first room. Work, the primary item of Rotterdam, is shown in several utensils of the harbour. Work, work, work.

G J de Jongh is shown. He planned the big inner harbours in the south of Rotterdam. Port Rijnhaven, Maashaven and the huge Waalhaven. Although many difficulties had to be solved the expansions of the harbour capacity really boosted Rotterdam to a global trading port.

But also the start of large shops is shown, the first covered shopping street of Rotterdam.

The atmosphere of this time is optimistic and orientated to the future.

In between the first and the second room there is a symbolic reconstruction of the famous shopping street "the Passage", dating from 1879. A street with a roof, like in Paris and London. In the virtual exhibition, there was a chance to enhance this first feast of light and color.

Several small embellishments are made in the virtual exhibition, without changing the character of the exhibition totally.

Special items are the sculpty shovels, indeed here reality is unsurpassed: the real thing of a real tool is so beautiful! So only here a real picture is shown of the exhibition...:-)

http://www.hmr.rotterdam.nl