Diaconie Weeshuis

In the latter half of the 17th century, the Diaconie Weeshuis, an Amsterdam orphanage managed by a protestant church, proudly overlooked the Amstel river. It was located on former ‘Vlooienburg’, an island constructed in the Amstel river for urban expansion around 1600. The orphanage was constructed in 1656, after the plague epidemic of 1654-55 which had turned many children to orphanhood. It was sited on a previously unbuilt quay area on the edge of Vlooienburg. To make space for this large building, a new strip of land had to be reclaimed from the Amstel river. This building stood here for 230 years before it got replaced by a new orphanage building in Neogothic style in 1888. Neither of the two buildings have survived, and especially for the older building there are only few remaining visual sources. This 3D reconstruction for the first time synthesises these sources into a model of this lost piece of architecture of Amsterdam.