In this data story, we examine the development of designations of national monuments in the national monument register since the first designation in 1965.
1. When were national monuments designated?
The graph below shows in which year national monuments were designated.
Most monuments were designated soon after the 1961 Monuments Act, with a second peak around 2000. In the nineteenth century, interest in historic buildings grew, leading to the creation of the National Commission for the Description of Monuments in 1903. This commission compiled a list of important historical buildings before 1850. The Monument Act of 1961 provided legal protection to monuments, and a register was created within five years. However, many monuments faced delays in the registration process. The second peak in designations resulted from the Monuments Inventory Project (MIP) and Monument Selection Project (MSP), which inventoried and assessed objects from 1850-1940. Since 2004, the designation of national monuments has been restricted to specific programs, with occasional exceptions.
Slider to show the designation of national monuments over time
2. What types of monuments have been designated over time?
For this question, we will look at the original functions of national monuments. National monuments have a main category and a subcategory. The pie chart below shows the different main categories of national monuments from the monument register.
The graph below shows the number of designated monuments of a given main category, relative to all monuments designated in that year.
Houses
After the war, damaged buildings, including monuments, led to a housing shortage. New houses were constructed to address the need, and as a result, old residential houses gained protected monument status.
Farms, Mills and Businesses
In the past, farms were the majority of designated monuments, comprising about 80% of the category "Farms, Mills and Businesses" in 1985. Mills made up approximately 16%, while other businesses accounted for less than 5%. However, the introduction of the MIP/MSP brought a shift in focus. These programs expanded their scope to include industrial heritage and other economic activities, reflecting the significant industrialization that occurred in the Netherlands between 1850 and 1940.
The graph below shows the number of national monuments designated per year for a particular main category.
Choose a main category from the drop-down menu and click 'run query'.
Civil engineering works & Administration buildings, court buildings and government buildings.
The influence of MIP/MSP is also reflected in the designations of civil engineering heritage. In the late 1990s, early 2000s, most monuments in this category were designated. Most administrative legal and government buildings were also designated during this period.
The pie chart below shows the proportion of national monuments of each subcategory covered by a given main category.
From the drop-down menu, choose a main category and a designation period and click 'run query' .
Greenery in the category Castles, manors and parks
From the late 1970s, there was renewed attention to greenery. The Historic Country Houses Protection Programme looked at the gardens and parks at country houses and castles to assess whether they needed to be additionally protected with the main building. Many different categories of historic green space were also valued and selected during the MIP/MSP. Thus, 744 gardens, parks and public gardens were designated between 1998 and 2008. Besides large green monuments, smaller monuments in the gardens and parks were also designated, such as garden statues and garden walls.
Military heritage
After the early years of the register of monuments, two more major peaks in military heritage can be seen. The first coincides with MIP/MSP. A third of the designated monuments in this programme are casemates (i.e. 36.5% of all designated defence works and military buildings between 1997 and 2002). From 2010, the influence of the New Dutch Waterline designation programme can be seen. This programme has several larger categories, such as 'fort, settlement and parts', 'casemates' and 'outbuildings' (respectively about 22%, 18% and 14% of the total designated monuments in this category).
3. Where have national monuments been designated over time?
3.1 At the provincial level
As seen in the first visualisation, two clear designation peaks can be seen: roughly 1965 to 1973 and 1997 to 2002. These periods with a higher number of designations correspond to the first designations after the 1961 Monuments Act and to the MIP/MSP designation programme. The table below shows the number of monuments designated in a province compared to the total number of monuments designated during this period.
Most monuments are in North Holland (over 1/5), followed by Zuid-Holland (14.3%). Flevoland has the fewest monuments (0.2%). During the first designation years, only 21 out of 35,712 monuments were designated in Flevoland.
In the first peak, North Holland had the highest concentration of designated monuments (over a quarter). The second peak showed a more balanced distribution, with North Brabant standing out as one-fifth of the national monuments designated during this period were in that province.
The bar chart below shows the number of monuments designated in a province. Each bar is a period and the different colours indicate the number of designated monuments by province. Spike 1 is the first peak in designations between 1965 and 1973. Spike 2 is the period between 1997 and 2002. (See also the spikes in the first graph.)
The map below shows the national monuments designated in a particular province. National monuments located in the municipalities with the 20 cities, in which most national monuments are designated, are not shown on this map.
From the drop-down menu, choose from a province, a designation period and a label, if any, and click 'run query'. Click on a point on the map to read more information about the national monument.
Designated monuments in provinces without the top 20
3.2 At the municipal level
The bar chart below shows the 20 municipalities with cities in which the most monuments have been designated. Each bar represents a period and the different colours indicate the number of designated monuments per municipality.
The map below shows the national monuments in one of the municipalities with the 20 cities with the most national monuments.
From the drop-down menu, choose from a municipality and a designation period and click 'run query'. Click on a point on the map to read more information about the national monument.
The Municipality of Amsterdam stands out with the highest number of monuments, comprising 12% of all designated national monuments. During the initial spike of the Monument Register, Amsterdam accounted for 17% of the designated monuments. In the second spike, the variation among the top 20 municipalities was less pronounced, with percentages ranging from 0.2% to 2.8% of all designated national monuments during that period.
Amsterdam witnessed a significant number of Rijksmonumenten designations in the first peak, but only one monument was designated until 1970. Rotterdam also had only one monument designated during this period. Before 1970, Nijmegen and Groningen had yet to initiate monument designations, while other major cities had made substantial progress.
4. Combination
The questions when, what and where are also good to combine on a map.
4.1 Listed churches on the map
See, for example, the map below of religious buildings designated between 1965 and 1975. The centre of gravity of designated religious monuments is in the western and northern parts of the country.
The map below shows the national monumental places of worship. The colours of the dots indicate the different religious denominations.
From the drop-down menu, choose the designation period and, if necessary, the province and denomination, and click 'run query'. Click on a point on the map for information on the building's original religious movement and denomination.
To zoom in even further, we have added the denominations of churches. The map above shows well that most Catholic monuments are designated in the south-eastern Netherlands. In particular, the map shows that most religious buildings are Protestant or Catholic. Monuments of other religions are harder to detect on the map.
4.2 What year of construction do monuments come from?
Unfortunately, we do not have all the data to answer this question. This is because in the register of monuments, the year of construction is not always entered. Before the MIP/MSP, this happened sporadically. The years of construction in the monument register are mainly of buildings designated from 1995 onwards. Because the MIP/MSP mainly focused on monuments manufactured between 1850-1940, this period is also the focus when we visualise the years.
Building years in the data
Building years
Conclusion
The conclusion of the text states that by utilizing the register of monuments as Linked Open Data, it becomes possible to visualize the contents of the monument file through visualizations. The shifts in the monument database are primarily identified by observing two peaks in designations: one after the implementation of the Monument Act in 1961 and the other following the MIP/MSP (preservation programs). The influence of designation programs in the 21st century is also evident in the development of the monument stock, affecting the year of construction and the type of national monument.
Visualizations offer insights into the geographical distribution of designated monuments during these peaks. A table overview provides more comprehensive information compared to a map, as plotting numerous monuments on a map can make the overview difficult to interpret. The table shows that during the first peak, more than a quarter of the designations occurred in North Holland, with Amsterdam being the main municipality for designations.
For a smaller selection of monuments, such as a specific year, location, or monument category, displaying them geographically adds value. It enables linking to the national monument in the monument database and using different colors on the map to represent various categories.
However, due to the lack of recorded years of construction for many monuments, it is challenging to create an accurate overview of the historical periods from which national monuments originate. Monuments without building years in the register data mostly pertain to the period before MIP/MSP. Even when linking the national monument register to Linked Open Data from the land registry and Wikidata, there are still too many missing construction years from the first peak to draw meaningful conclusions about the years of construction.
NB: no rights or obligations can be derived from this story or data
Marije Timmermans (main author)
Patrick Mout
Joop Vanderheiden
