Early Vlooienburg was assigned an important wood trading location. Therefore, many wood traders settled here, buying plots on which they built homes near to their trade. All around the island, an area of 20 meters in front of the houses was occupied by unbuilt space on which the street and beyond that the 'houttuinen' (timber yards) were located. In these timber yards wood was stacked up sometimes as high as the houses themselves, as can be seen on various depictions of the period. These massive timber stacks would have dominated the visual space in early Vlooienburg.
The timber merchants made repeatable requests to the city council to be allocated more space for storage (Hell 2024). Initially, the maximum height of the stacks was increased from 5.5 tot 8.5 m (!), and in a following step more land was reclaimed from the Amstel river. Due to its trapezoidal shape, a requirement of the local topography, the houses with the longest newly added strip also increased in value significantly more than those that received a shorter strip.
Hell, M., 2024. Verloren wereld in de Amstelbocht. Leven op Vlooienburg, 1600-1815. Walburg pers.