Most old houses keep their history in a few lines of a monument register. This one has more, because one of the people who lived in it was my ancestor. In 1686 Reynier van der Sluijs, a Dordrecht groat-miller, bought a corner house on the Voorstraat. In 1696 his bankruptcy cost him the house, and around 1701 he took his family to Pennsylvania, where nearly every American Vanderslice descends from him. Following the house through the records to prove which one it was turned up everyone else who lived there too, and their story is gathered here, apart from his. The present owners are not named on this page: it ends where the public records end.
At a glance
- Address
- Voorstraat 267, 3311 EP Dordrecht, the Netherlands, on the harbour side of the street, on the corner of the alley called the Donkere Steiger
- Older numbers
- 209 from 1884 to January 1957; C 14 (ward C, house 14) before that; in the 1600s, no number at all, only "the corner of the St. Jans or Bolle alley"
- Land register
- Dordrecht, section H, parcel 1108, the same plot number since 1832; 87 m² in 1897
- Monument
- National monument (rijksmonument) no. 13797
- The building
- Yellow-plastered front of the early 1800s; back wall on the harbour of the 1600s–1700s; a high hipped roof with dormers
- Next door
- No. 265, the tiny house of 1632 built over the alley, the narrowest house in Dordrecht
- Owners traced
- From 1686 to 1957 in deeds, tax lists, land registers, newspapers and permits (see the table)
In het kort (Nederlands)
Voorstraat 267 in Dordrecht (rijksmonument 13797, kadastraal sectie H 1108) staat aan de havenzijde op de hoek van de Donkere Steiger, naast het smalste huis van Dordrecht. Van 1884 tot 1957 was het Voorstraat 209, daarvóór wijk C nummer 14. Deze pagina volgt het huis van de koop door de grutter Reynier van der Sluijs in 1686 tot in de twintigste eeuw: alle eigenaren en bewoners, de oorspronkelijke akten, de veilingadvertentie van 1897, de bouwtekeningen van 1923 en 1938 en oude foto's uit het Regionaal Archief Dordrecht. Aanvullingen en correcties zijn welkom via de contactpagina.
Where it stands
The Voorstraat, "Front Street", is Dordrecht's oldest main street, running along the old dike beside the city harbour. The houses on its north side are long and narrow, with the street at the front and the water at the back, so that goods could come in by boat. Every deed for this house, from 1686 to 1786, describes it the same way: a house and lot strekkende voor van de straat tot achter aan de haven, running from the street at the front to the harbour at the back. The stretch of harbour behind it was called the Wijnhaven until about 1960 and is now part of the Voorstraatshaven, and the Wijnbrug, the wine bridge, crosses it a few doors away.
Down one side of the house runs a narrow covered alley to the water, the Donkere Steiger ("dark landing"). In the 1600s it was the Sint Janssteiger or Bollensteiger; the name Donkere Steiger first appears in this house's deeds in 1752. It is the one alley in Dordrecht that was built over: the tiny house bridging it, one window wide, went up in 1632 and is known as the narrowest house in the city. It is now No. 265, and it was already half a century old when Reynier moved in next door.
The back of the house, on the quay, has an address of its own today, Grote Appelsteiger 22, which is why both appear in the monument register.
How do we know this is the house Reynier owned?
The corner is certain: every deed from 1686 to 1786 puts the house on that alley, and the alley is the Donkere Steiger. Two lines of evidence then point to this side of it. The first is a 1693 lantern-tax roll, which walks the street door by door: Seger Blankert, butcher — Reijnier van der Sluijs, grutter — juffrouw van Klaveren, and on toward the Wijnbrug. Counting back from the bridge, the widow Van Claveren's house is today's 263, and Reynier's is the first house on the far side of the alley, No. 267. The count works because the national monument register independently records No. 261 as two houses since joined. The second is the chain of owners below, which follows the corner house from Reynier to house C 14 and keeps it apart from the house on the other corner, C 15, which had its own owners throughout.
From 1786 on, every step is proven by documents that name the plot itself: the 1786 deed names the tinsmith next door at C 13, the 1832 land register puts C 14 on parcel H 1108 with the same tinsmith beside it, the 1884 renumbering turns C 14 into 209, the 1897 sale notice describes "No. 209, cadastral section H No. 1108, on the corner of the Donkere Steiger", and the 1957 renumbering turns 209 into 267. What keeps the earliest link short of proof is that two joins in the eighteenth-century chain, in 1745 and 1786, rest partly on family names rather than on a deed that says so. If the 1693 count were out by one, the answer would be No. 269 next door. Call it very likely.
What is old, and what is newer
From the street, No. 267 looks like a modest nineteenth-century shop-house, and its front is exactly that. The national monument register describes it in three lines: "PAND met geelgepleisterde lijstgevel (XIX A). Aan de Wijnhaven gevel (XVII–XVIII) onder rechte lijst. Hoog schilddak met dakvensters." In English: a house with a yellow-plastered front under a straight cornice, from the first part of the nineteenth century; on the Wijnhaven, a wall of the seventeenth to eighteenth century, also under a straight cornice; and a high hipped roof with dormer windows. The register calls it a building "of simple but harmonious architecture and of historic value".
So the front Reynier knew has gone. In his day it was probably a brick gable front facing the street, like the stepped and bell-shaped gables that survive elsewhere on the Voorstraat, and the house behind it was probably already old when he bought it. The harbour side is the oldest part that can still be seen, and inside, under the high roof, heavy old timbers survive.
Room by room in 1897
The best description of the house before the twentieth century comes from a newspaper. In May 1897 the house was put up for public auction by a notary from 's-Gravendeel, and the advertisement in De Tijd lists every room. It is also the clearest single proof of where the house is: the notice puts the corner of the Donkere Steiger, the number 209 and parcel H 1108 in one sentence.
"A sound, strong, well-kept shop-house and lot, especially well placed for trade, at Dordrecht on the Voorstraat (harbour side), on the corner of the Donkere Steiger, numbered 209, cadastral section H no. 1108, 87 square metres in size." It was to be sold on two Wednesday evenings, May 26 and June 2, 1897, at the Nederlandsch Koffiehuis Zahn. The house contained:
- Downstairs: a spacious shop, with at the back a souterrain (a half-sunken basement room), a storeroom, and a door out onto the alley.
- Upstairs: a large papered front room with an alkoof (an alcove for a bed), a fireplace and a cupboard; a papered back room with a plastered ceiling, its own alcove, two large cupboards and a fireplace; and in the passage, a privy and a kitchen.
- Above that: an attic with two papered rooms, a fireplace and cupboards, and over them a loft (vliering) under the roof.
- "The whole house is fitted with gas and water."
The house was let to C. W. H. Eijgenraam and used by the firm of Zwijsen & Co., until April 30, 1900 with an option for two more years, at 800 guilders a year. The half-sunken room at the back, opening toward the alley and the harbour, is the kind of space where a shopkeeper on this street kept stock that came in by boat.
Building plans, 1902 to 1938
Dordrecht's building-permit files survive in the Regionaal Archief, and three of them concern this house under its old number 209. A permit of October 20, 1902 (application no. 621) was for rebuilding the house; only its small site sketch has been scanned, with the plot marked in red beside the alley. The next two came with full drawings.
A third file, from 1979 (dossier 4499d), has been scanned too, but for copyright reasons it can only be viewed on the computers in the archive's study room.
The recent renovation
The most recent major work is on public record only as notices in the municipal gazette. In March 2018 an application was made for a building and monument permit "for remodelling the house" (het verbouwen van het pand), and it was granted on May 15, 2018 (case Z-18-332625). The renovation photograph above was very probably taken during that work. In February 2022 a further permit was granted for solar panels on the roof. The drawings for these permits are not published online; under Dutch rules they can be seen only by appointment at the Omgevingsdienst Zuid-Holland Zuid.
Owners and occupants, year by year
Put the deeds, tax books, land registers, newspapers and permits end to end, and the house can be followed for almost three centuries. Before 1811 the record is mostly of owners, from the deeds; after that, more often of occupants, the shopkeepers and families who lived there.
| Year | Owner or occupant | How we know |
|---|---|---|
| The house without a number | ||
| before 1686 | Catharina Bor, widow of Willem Pieters Schaep | named as the late owner in the 1686 sale |
| 1686 | Reynier van der Sluijs, groat-miller, and his wife Anna Spruijt | purchase, November 20, 1686, 2,000 guilders |
| 1693 | Reynier van der Sluijs, at home | lantern-tax roll, 2 guilders 2 stuivers |
| 1696 | Damas Hooglander, groat-miller | bankruptcy sale, March 17, 1696, 1,650 |
| 1697 | Abraham Hordijck, plumber | resale, 1,650 |
| 1745 | Pieter Evenwel, mason | Abraham Hordijk, through his son, sells the house "on the corner of the Bollestijger", 1,700 |
| 1752 | Hendrik de Visser, master mason | sale "on the corner of the Donkere Stijger", 1,800 |
| 1765 | Hendrik de Visser | still the owner: a claim against the corner house |
| 1786 | Johannes de Haan, bread baker | Metje and Hendrik Visser sell "on the corner of the so-called Donkere Stijger", next to the tinsmith at C 13, 2,600 |
| House C 14 | ||
| 1822–24 | Joseph Keller; then Jan Baptist van der Maaden, fish-seller | sales |
| 1832 | J. B. van der Maaden | first national land register: C 14 = parcel H 1108 |
| 1840–79 | Cornelis Dominicus Pennock, dealer in glass and earthenware | directories and tax lists |
| Voorstraat 209 | ||
| 1884 | B. Wirtz (ground floor); C. D. Pennock (upper floor) | renumbering register: C 14 becomes 209 |
| 1897 | let to C. W. H. Eijgenraam, trading as Zwijsen & Co., upholsterers and dealers in carpets, sailcloth and curtains | auction notice, May 1897; the firm's sign is in the photographs |
| 1902 | owner unnamed in the scanned file | building permit no. 621, October 20, 1902 |
| 1907 | the family of A. J. Hoegen | a birth announced from Voorstraat 209 |
| 1913–16 | Simon de Wit, grocer (Zwijsen & Co. had moved to Voorstraat 142–144 by 1913) | job advertisements giving Voorstraat 209 |
| 1923 | D. Stad, living at the house | building permit, dossier 4499a |
| 1927 | De Blauwe Pui, radio and electrical shop | advertisement, Voorwaarts, October 27, 1927 |
| 1934–36 | De Blauwe Pui of L. Sons, "formerly D. Stad": radio, electrical goods, hardware, tools and bicycle parts | photograph, Regionaal Archief Dordrecht 552_323807 |
| 1935 | L. Sons and his wife Rebecca, born Stad | a daughter's birth announced from Voorstraat 209 |
| 1938 | D. Stad, owner (now living on the Burgemeester de Raadtsingel) | shopfront permit, dossier 4499b |
| 1941 | N.V. Dordtsche Engroshandel; Het Lampenpaleis | forced liquidation ordered December 15, 1941; advertisements 1941–43 (below) |
| 1950 | the firm of D. Stad, Voorstraat 209 | post-war restitution settlement, Staatscourant, April 3, 1950 |
| Voorstraat 267 | ||
| 1957 | G. B. Smits, head of a household of three | renumbering list: 209 becomes 267 |
| 1979 | building permit file | dossier 4499d (study room only) |
| 2018 | renovation permit granted | municipal gazette, May 2018 |
The other corner of the alley, house C 15, later 207 and now 263, had its own separate owners throughout: the De Haan bakery, whose back door also opened onto the alley. Two joins in the eighteenth-century part of the table still rest partly on names. The first is that the Abraham Hordijk who sold in 1745 was the plumber who bought in 1697; the deed shows the seller was Abraham himself, and the baptisms of his children make it very likely he was the same man. The second is that the Metje and Hendrik Visser who sold in 1786 were Hendrik de Visser's children; the deed does not say so.
The Stad family and De Blauwe Pui, 1923–1950
For the last decades the house was No. 209, it belonged to a Jewish family. D. Stad was living in it in 1923, when he had the ground floor rebuilt as a shop, and he still owned it in 1938. The photo bank names him as David Stad. The shop, De Blauwe Pui ("the blue shopfront"), sold radios, electrical goods, hardware, tools and bicycle parts, and by the mid-1930s it was run by his son-in-law Louis Sons, who had married Rebecca Stad. In February 1935 the couple announced the birth of a daughter from Voorstraat 209 in the Nieuw Israëlietisch Weekblad. The family also had a lamp shop, Het Lampenpaleis, across the street.
The German occupation began in May 1940. On December 15, 1941, by order of the Reichskommissar, the head of the German civil administration of the occupied Netherlands, the company registered at the house, N.V. Dordtsche Engroshandel, Voorstraat 209, was put into liquidation, with D. Stad named as liquidator. Forced liquidations like this were part of the systematic removal of Jewish owners from Dutch business. By then the address was being advertised as Het Lampenpaleis; who ran the shop during the rest of the war is not yet known.
Rebecca Sons-Stad was born in Rotterdam on June 2, 1911. In May 1942 she was living with her husband and their children across the street, at Voorstraat 186, now No. 232. She was murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau on June 4, 1944, two days after her thirty-third birthday. A Stolperstein, a small brass memorial stone, is set in the pavement in front of Voorstraat 232. She is remembered on the Joods Monument, the Dutch national memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Her husband Louis survived the war.
After the war, the Netherlands set up a legal process of rechtsherstel, restitution, to undo the forced sales and liquidations of the occupation. In April 1950 the Staatscourant listed the firm of D. Stad, Voorstraat 209, Dordrecht, "on account of the sale of the said firm", among the cases settled by agreement under that process. By January 1957, when the house was renumbered 267, it was the home of G. B. Smits and his household.
The deeds, 1686 to 1786
Every sale of the house from 1686 to 1786 is in the registers of property transfers kept by the Dordrecht city court, and all of them have now been read in the original, in the clerks' own hands. Each describes the house by its corner and its neighbours, since houses had no numbers until around 1800. The readings below are working transcriptions of difficult handwriting.
The deeds also show what the house was worth. Reynier paid 2,000 guilders in 1686, roughly seven years' wages for a skilled tradesman; it fell to 1,650 in the forced sale of 1696, and by 1786 it fetched 2,600. The story of how he came to lose it is told on his own page.
The house in photographs
The Regionaal Archief Dordrecht's photo bank holds several views of the house as No. 209, most of them taken because of its famous neighbour, the narrow house over the alley. In each one, No. 209 stands immediately to the left of the alley as you face it from the street.
The present owners shared other old photographs of the house when I visited in 2026. One, of the harbour drained in winter, is below; another, a mounted print of the corner made for the Vereeniging tot Instandhouding van Oude Gebouwen te Dordrecht, the city's society for the preservation of old buildings, is a copy of the photo bank's 552_316532 from about 1900, with the same "Co. 209" sign.
The harbour side
The half of the house hardest to picture from the street is the half the deeds keep describing: the back, on the water, the seventeenth- to eighteenth-century wall of the monument register. The archive's harbour views show it across a century.
Today the best view is from the Wijnbrug.
Today
C 14 → 209 → 267: how the address changed
The house has had three numbers, and each change is documented. Dordrecht first numbered its houses by ward around 1800, and this one was C 14. The oldest official documents that point at the plot itself, rather than describing it by its neighbours, come from the first national land register of 1832, whose surveyors drew every plot in the city to scale.
In 1884 the city renumbered by street, and C 14 became Voorstraat 209.
The last change came when Dordrecht renumbered the whole city a second time. The council decided in 1953 to drop its system of black numbers for ground floors and red ones for upper floors, the only one of its kind in the Netherlands, and to number every door straight through. The work covered more than sixteen thousand buildings, and the last old plates came down in January 1958. The Voorstraat was done in the winter of 1956–57.
That closes the chain: the corner house of 1686 is house C 14 in 1786 and 1832, No. 209 from 1884, and 267 since January 1957. The national land registry still records it as parcel H 1108, the plot number the surveyors gave it in 1832.
Visiting
No. 267 is a private house, so please view it from the street. The Donkere Steiger is the dark passage under No. 265; you can walk through it to the quay at the back of the houses, and the Wijnbrug gives the best view of the harbour side. Across the street, in front of No. 232, is the Stolperstein for Rebecca Sons-Stad. The house is stop 1 of the Reynier van der Sluijs walk, which takes in the site of his family's mill, the street where his parents lived, the Grote Kerk where he married, and the Regionaal Archief, a two-minute walk away, where almost every record on this page is kept.
Voorstraat 267 in Google Maps ↗
What we know, and what's still open
- Every number the house has had, and the documents for each change: C 14, 209 (1884), 267 (1957), parcel H 1108 throughout.
- Every sale from 1686 to 1786, read in the original registers.
- A room-by-room description in 1897, and floor plans of 1923 and 1938.
- Its shops and families from the 1830s to the 1950s.
- What the front looked like before the 1800s, and when the present front went up.
- How old the roof timbers are. A tree-ring date (dendrochronology) on one beam would settle whether the roof was already there in Reynier's day.
- Owners between 1786 and 1822, and between the 1950 settlement and 1957.
- Who ran the shop from 1941 to 1945.
- The drawings in the 1902 and 1979 permit files.
If you know more about the house, its shops or the families who lived there, I would be glad to hear from you through the contact page.