Middelburg Town Hall: A Late Gothic Municipal Complex in the Netherlands
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Netherlands
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Duchy of Burgundy, Habsburg
- Site type
- Civic
- Remains
- Town Hall
On this page11 sections
History
Middelburg Town Hall is a late Gothic municipal complex in Middelburg, Netherlands, built in the Brabantine Gothic tradition between 1452 and 1520 during the city’s prosperous fifteenth century. Its buildings included the town hall, the Vleeshal, a historic meat hall, and the Lakenhal, a cloth hall associated with the textile trade.
Medieval foundations and construction
A town hall probably stood on the Lange Delft in the thirteenth century. Fire destroyed that building in 1426, and it was rebuilt on the same site. In 1451, Middelburg’s burgomasters discussed constructing a new town hall. The first stone of the present complex on the Markt was laid on 21 April 1452.
Several generations of the Keldermans family supervised the work. This prominent architectural family from Mechelen supplied architects, builders, and stoneworkers for major late-medieval projects in the Low Countries. Andries I Keldermans was associated with the Middelburg project by 1453, and his brothers Matthijs I and Jan III joined him the next year. The first phase ended in 1460, when the writing room received iron windows and an iron door to protect the city’s important privileges.
A second phase began in 1506. Anthonis I Keldermans designed the tower, which was built from 1512 to 1516. Its timber and slate roof was completed in 1521. Rombout II Keldermans completed the top gables facing the Lange Noordstraat and the Markt in 1512 and 1513, and also worked on the framing of the Vleeshal. The construction campaign concluded with the purchase of land west of the town hall in 1523 for the alley known as De Helm.
The rapid rebuilding and expansion may have been connected with Middelburg’s fifteenth-century prosperity after the Peace of Copenhagen. The tower was intended to rise higher than the structure ultimately built, and its present form was established through alterations made between 1560 and 1562. A sea-knight weathervane was added at that time.
Later alterations and civic use
The entrance was moved to the right in 1613. A side wing on the Noordstraat followed in 1670, and Zeeland’s government architect Coenraad Kayser extended it between 1780 and 1784. Kayser gave the wing a Neoclassical facade with sharply cut ashlar work and four Ionic pilasters on the lower storey of its central projection. The wing was destroyed in 1940 and was not rebuilt.
Middelburg Town Hall served as the seat of municipal government for centuries. Before the Second World War, it also housed the city’s antiquities museum. Its objects and most of the city archive were destroyed in the fire of 1940. During the restoration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, directed by Pierre Cuypers between 1881 and 1918, the original facade statues were replaced and a carved seven-section balustrade was added to the roof. The front facade was completed in 1912, followed by work on the Gothic Noordstraat facade between 1912 and 1918.
On 17 May 1940, wartime hostilities and bombing caused a major fire that destroyed Middelburg’s city centre. The town hall’s exterior walls survived in blackened condition, while the interior and city archive were lost. Reconstruction began soon afterward. H. van Heeswijk and M. J. J. van Beveren supervised the work, restoring the Gothic facades and inserting a new interior structure in an adapted style. Queen Juliana formally returned the building to use on 18 August 1950.
The municipality continued to use the town hall until 2004, when its government and staff moved to a new office beside the Kanaal door Walcheren. Queen Beatrix opened the Roosevelt Academy in the building on 31 August 2004. Since 2013, the institution has been known as University College Roosevelt, a Dutch university college offering undergraduate education. The town hall is also used for weddings. It has been protected as a Rijksmonument, a monument of national importance under Dutch law, since 20 May 1966, under monument number 29284.
Remains
Middelburg Town Hall stands on the Markt as a connected late Gothic complex of stone facades, large Gothic windows, smaller turrets, gables, and a principal tower. The historic arrangement brought together civic administration, the meat trade, and the cloth trade. Red-and-white shutters are joined by yellow shutters, whose colors recall Middelburg’s former city flag, divided into horizontal yellow, white, and red bands until the municipality adopted a red flag with a gold castle in 1974.
Facades, tower, and halls
Principal tower
The principal tower contains a clock and a carillon, a musical instrument of tuned bells operated by a keyboard and mechanical system. Middelburg residents call it Malle Betje because its clock traditionally ran behind the clock of the Lange Jan, the bell tower of Middelburg Abbey. Built between 1512 and 1516, the tower received its timber-and-slate roof in 1521. Its lower-than-planned height and sea-knight weathervane, added during the 1560 to 1562 alterations, remain defining elements of the building.
Gables and Vleeshal
The top gable on the Lange Noordstraat side was completed in 1512, followed by the gable facing the Markt in 1513. The former Vleeshal has its own entrance and retains a large wooden sundial designed by Jan de Munck. Installed in the top gable in 1729, the sundial was removed during the 1881 to 1918 restoration and returned to its original position in 1995.
An eagle house stood in front of the Vleeshal entrance until its demolition in 1858. Built in the sixteenth century, it housed one or more eagles as a reference to Middelburg’s coat of arms. Since the late twentieth century, the former Vleeshal has been used as the Vleeshal exhibition venue for visual art, administered by the Foundation for Visual Art Middelburg.
Interior rooms and reconstruction
Courts and civic chambers
The reception hall occupies the former high court, which handled serious criminal cases. The wedding hall is located in the former ordinary court, where lesser offences were heard. The council chamber served municipal council meetings until 2004, while the mayor-and-aldermen’s room was used by the municipal executive. Furniture in both rooms dates from the building’s period as the municipal town hall.
Burgerzaal and historic halls
Above the Vleeshal, the Burgerzaal is used for official receptions. It formerly served as the Lakenhal, the complex’s cloth hall. The town hall’s interior was rebuilt and refurnished after the 1940 fire, creating a new internal structure intended to harmonize with the surviving historic exterior.
Facade sculpture
The facade originally carried 25 stone statues of the counts and countesses who ruled or held territorial lordship in Zeeland. The Mechelen stonemason Michiel Ywijnszoon supplied them in 1516. Their sequence begins with Dirk V and ends with Emperor Charles V, whose territories included the Low Countries. Philip II, Charles’s successor there, was not represented even though a pedestal had been prepared for him. The omission is probably connected with his conflict with the Netherlands and his deposition in 1581.
The original statues were brightly painted, especially in red and blue, and their crowns were partly gilded. All were removed and replaced during the restoration directed by Pierre Cuypers. Fragments of the medieval statues are preserved in the Vleeshal, while many other remnants were damaged or discarded during the replacement.
A sculpture of Queen Wilhelmina and Princess Juliana was unveiled in the Vleeshal’s top gable on 30 April 1910. Pierre Cuypers designed the composition, and his assistant Hein Maessen executed it. Its arrangement resembles a Madonna with Child. Middelburg’s municipal authorities criticized that resemblance, while Cuypers explained the princess’s upright position as a way of making her clearly visible to the public.
