Saving Leiden: What's Wrong with Dutch Monument Law?

Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs, Director
Leiden American Pilgrim Museum

The inner city of Leiden, the entire area within the ancient city moat, is legally a "protected urban landscape" ("beschermd stadsgezicht"). The Vrouwekerk ruin, with its historical associations with Francis Cooke, Hester Mayhew, Philip Delano, and other early settlers of New England and New York, is a national monument, just as other buildings that are threatened with destruction in the Aalmarkt area are listed as either national or municipal monuments. In a country with adequate monument protection laws, as The Netherlands claims to be, there should be no problem, as long as all the existing procedures are properly followed. Various Dutch officials have said as much when asked whether there is any real danger to historic monuments in Leiden. So let us take a good look at what those laws say and how those laws work.

The current law is the Monument Law of 1988 ("Law Containing New Regulations for the Preservation of Monuments of Architecture and Archaeology," 1988). Under Chapter II, Protected Monuments, the first section establishes and regulates the indication or establishment, by the Minister of Education, Culture, and Sciences, of certain immovable monuments as "protected." The second section deals with "Permits for alteration, demolition or removal." Article 11, to which Dutch officials point with wounded pride whenever anyone dares to claim that monuments are effectively not protected from demolition by city governments, states: "(1) It is forbidden to damage or destroy a protected monument. (2) It is forbidden (a) to demolish a protected monument, to disturb, to move, or in any way to alter it; (b) to restore a protected monument, to use or let it be used in a manner by which it would be defaced or placed in danger, without or in a way departing from a permit." But these prohibitions are vitiated by another part of the same law.

Chapter IV is "Protected Urban and Village Landscapes." Article 35 establishes and regulates the indication or establishment, by the Minister of Education, Culture, and Sciences, of urban and village landscapes as "protected." (This has been accomplished for the entire inner city of Leiden.) Article 36 states that "The city council establishes a zoning plan … for the protection of a protected urban or village landscape." As Mr. Cees Waal, chairman of the Leiden Antiquarian Society (Vereniging Oud Leiden) has pointed out in that organization's Objections to the town's Plan for the Aalmarkt Area [see appendix], Leiden has cleverly and unobtrusively put its existing zoning plans with their attention to monument protection in abeyance for two years, and during that period, instead of using the protective zoning plans as the measure against which applications for demolition or construction permits are judged, the town will use its own development proposal (which presupposes demolition of monuments) as the standard by which specific projects are judged to be good or bad for the city. Article 37 states that: "(1) In protected urban and village landscapes it is forbidden to demolish a building either wholly or partially without or not in conformity with a written permit from mayor and aldermen (demolition permit). (2) No demolition permit is required for demolition in consequence of an order from mayor and aldermen." [bold face mine, JDB]

Article 37, section 2, means that when the Mayor and Aldermen acquire property, then order its demolition, - monument or not, - the destruction has been carried out in full compliance with the monument protection laws of The Netherlands.

While it is true that the National Monument Service has the right to protest such a decision in court, it did not choose to do so regarding the Vrouwekerk ruin. (When the court ruled on objections raised by others, its decision was that the demolition decision had been reached properly and according to legally established procedures.) The fact that the National Monument Service did not actually advise in favor of complete destruction speaks well of that service, but it remains irrelevant to the process by which a legal demolition decision was reached by the town government. Article 37, section 2, of the Monument Law of 1988 renders the entire monument protection service irrelevant when confronting town governments. The purpose of the service, according to the Monument Law of 1988, is to maintain a list of registered monuments that have not yet been destroyed by clever politicians like those of Leiden, using public money to finance development projects to benefit big businesses while destroying the historical national patrimony. All the mayor and aldermen have to do to achieve their goals is follow an established sequence of procedures allowing citizens to register objections, then vote in favor of demolition regardless.

The Netherlands has a proud history of monument preservation. That history took a turn for the worse when Leiden officials discovered how to manipulate the Monument Law of 1988 in such a way as to remove all protection from monuments impeding commercial development.

Appendix:

[extract from the Objection submitted by the Leiden Antiquarian Society (Vereniging Oud Leiden), Mr. Cees Waal, chairman; translation JDB]

Procedural Objections

The inner city of Leiden belongs among the most important protected urban landscapes of The Netherlands. Potentially the inner city of Leiden is even to be considered part of the world heritage. To guarantee the values of a protected urban landscape, the law requires the establishment of a zoning plan or plans for the protected urban landscape. As is also mentioned in the Plan - Urban Renewal Structure-Plan [hereafter referred to as the Plan], the zoning plans for the Pieters [kerk] neighborhood and The Camp neighborhood are the ones of importance. In these zoning plans the values of the protected urban landscape are integrated. Improperly the Plan does not mention that as of 25 April 2000 a new two-year long preparation-decision for the area in question has gone into force, by which the protective effect for the values of the protected urban landscape is in fact divested of power for this area.

This is even more problematic, now that according to city council resolution nr. 00. 0029 BOWO, by using the Law of Spatial Organization [Ruimtelijke Ordening, i.e. urban planning], the Mayor and Aldermen are going to use the Urban Renewal Structure Plan as the "spatial basis" for asssessing the "building plans considered desirable within the Aalmarkt area." Thus this (Plan -) Urban Renewal Structure Plan goes into effect instead of the zoning plans of the Pieters[kerk] neighborhood and The Camp neighborhood in the evaluation of building plans. The concrete plans will therefore not, or at least not necessarily, be evaluated in respect to the urban renewal plan still to be established, or the revised zoning plans. It is misleading to suggest that the urban renewal plan is determinative for the evaluation of building plans, while passing over in silence the backdoor and crawl route by which building permits can be granted.

The Plan gives lip-service to the historic and cultural values within the plan area, but it is precisely here that research results are omitted. Various commentators and advisors pressed for further urban and cultural-historical research in the stage of the preliminary plan. In the commentary on remarks from the National Monuments Service (p. 64), it is fully admitted that more research on the issue must be carried out. Nonetheless, the Mayor and Aldermen want to use the Plan in question (which thus cannot be based on the desired urban and cultural-historical research) as the evaluation framework for building plans in the heart of the protected urban landscape.

In our reaction to the preliminary plan, we wrote, "It is symptomatic for the insufficient attention given to the monumental and cultural historical aspects, that both spatial-functional research and cultural-historical research are absent (pp. 37 & 38). It can be feared, that these reports can no longer seriously influence the formation of the plan, now that a plan has to be presented to view in great haste (before 12 May 2000). That spatial-functional research and architectrual and building-historical research is not seriously involved in the development of plans in the heart of one of the most important protected urban landscapes of The Netherlands we consider to be such a major fault, that already here the procedure must be started over." Our fear appears to have become the truth. We maintain our opinion that the procedure must be started over. Already for the reasons given above, the Urban Renewal Structure Plan can and may not be applied as the spatial basis for building plans.

What is remarkable is that incidental citations (pp. 11, 12) are given from architectural and building-historical research. Apparently the Mayor and Aldermen have access to research results, but prefer not to make them public. For that the Mayor and Aldermen are waiting until after the terminus for submitting objections to the Plan has passed. This terminus passes on 6 June 2000; on 7 June the research results will be presented. A more cynical treatment of the cultural historic and monumental aspect of the protected urban landscape is beyond our imagination.

[end of excerpt, which is the beginning of a 10-page detailed commentary on the Plan]