Nelleke tells about; Wittevrouwen

The name of this district has its origin in the city within the canals, named after the Wittevrouwenklooster. The Wittevrouwenpoort was located in the city wall next to the canal (this wall has been demolished) where the Wittevrouwenstraat begins.
Many Wittevrouwen names are around here:
Wittevrouwenstraat, Wittevrouwenkade, Wittevrouwensingel, Wittevrouwenpoort, etc. The area outside this wall was then still agricultural land. It is therefore quite logical that the street names committee called the new district Wittevrouwen at the time.

Gas Factory

If you follow the canal for a bit, you arrive at the former gas factory site.
A long time ago there was a gas factory on the Vredenburg. That is now completely unimaginable. In 1860 this gas factory was moved to a site along the Blauwkapelseweg. That was a long way out of town. But the expanding housing stock caught up with the plan.
The housewives of that time often couldn't hang their laundry outside to dry, because there was a lot of dirt floating through the air. You could smell the gas in the whole neighborhood.
For years, the two gasholders determined the appearance.

And then there was natural gas. The gas factory had become redundant.
The factory had to be demolished and that was a delight for the local residents. The popular Griftpark is now located here. Popularly, it is sometimes called the "Gif" Park which means poison park.



GriftPark

After the factory was demolished, the municipality originally planned to build houses on the vacant site. But the ground was so polluted that the whole plan was put on hold. After many council meetings, it was decided to turn it into a park. That plan caught on.
An attempt was made to get slightly cleaner soil up to many meters deep into the ground. That was a money-consuming job. But the municipality of Utrecht did not have much choice. Mature trees were temporarily placed elsewhere from the Blauwkapelseweg. After a few years they were put back in their original place, with result! Adjacent gardens were also excavated a few meters and replanted. Residents were compensated for the nuisance. Although that could not be expressed in money.
In the end, the environment could enjoy the new park.

Stores in Wittevrouwen

In the surrounding neighborhood there were quite a few small houses, mostly workers' houses. They were built around 1900.
A friend of mine lived in the Bekkerstraat in her youth. She said there was a shop on every street corner. For example, you could sometimes find 3 grocery stores in every street in that district. The question is whether every store could make a good profit. You can still see at most corner houses that there used to be a shop. Today there are still a number of nice authentic shops, including the popular grocery store #Ganseman, which started as a potato farmer in 1923.


A childhood memory of Nelleke,

My grandmother lived in the Bollenhofsestraat. In my memory, it was a tiny house. Then it would have been even smaller in reality. Downstairs a small front room, then an alcove, that is an intermediate room that received little light and then the back room. It overlooked a small garden.. There was a door in the rather small kitchen. Behind it was a toilet. A so called poo box. That was in the 1950's.
You may think, yes that was quite normal for the time. But my daughter went to play with a friend in the Daalsedijk. She said: Mom, they have such a weird toilet it was a board with a hole in it. So still a poo. And that was in the mid-70s. I was quite surprised.

The Wittevrouwen district bordered on the grounds of the former National Veterinary School. Training for veterinarians.

I will write more about that in another blog.

Nelleke.

On the map