Drift 11
Today’s Drift starts at the Buiksloterweg ferry dock, behind Amsterdam Centraal Station at 15:00.
– SoundCloud streaming
– Direct download link (143MB)
– The route
We depart from CS and cross the Ij river to Overhoeksplein, now a tourist attraction, then a gallows for the city’s criminals, castaways, and unwanted.
We pass the former gallows and walk through Tolhuistuin, a park set up behind the former Shell Oil canteen, before following the Buiksloterkanaal and surveying all the new construction across the canal.
Next, we stay close to the canal as we enter the Van Der Pekt area. This residential area was built as worker housing during and after WWI, in particular housing workers from the shipyard at NDSM but also housing workers in the emerging airplane manufacturing company in Noord — Fokkers.
During the occupation during WWII, Nazis took over the Fokkers airplane factory, adjacent to where De Ceuvel is today, and appropriated it for the Nazi war effort.
In July 1943, Allied planes attempted to bomb the Fokkers airplane factory, and instead rained bombs down throughout the neighborhood we’ll be walking in.
Keep an eye out for the non-brick, white buildings in the midst of all the brick buildings near the playground. This is where the deadliest of the friendly fire bombings took place.
Next we’ll walk along the canal through Disteldorp, another socialist worker housing block built just after WWI. We’ll then walk around a former hospital that’s now a hotel, before giving way to the remnants of the neighborhood’s gentrification project — the last remaining light industrial businesses and workshops that line the street on the way to De Ceuvel.
