Index belonging with the design for the projected new Government House in Nieuw-Amsterdam

Title Leupe: Plans, platte gronden, opstanden voor gebouwen voor de nieuwe stad, het gouvernement enz.

The design that Jean-Guillaume d’Arnaud produced in 1773 or slightly earlier for the new government building was not immediately accepted by the directors in Amsterdam. The original drawings have not survived but those of an adapted version of 1773 commissioned by the directors in the Republic do still exist. This is the relevant index of this alternative version. Given the form of a square with, situated around the spacious inner courtyard, the various departmental offices and the residences for the governor and other senior officials, the index uses two fonts to distinguish the upper an lower section of the building. The index gives no indication whatsoever of the maker but in view of the correspondence between the handwriting on the accompanying view on VEL1662.6 and the dated and signed plan on VEL1662.41, it could well be Abraham van der Hart (1747-1820).

The most important amendment in relation to d’Arnaud’s original plan was the raising of the building’s front elevation to two floors, designed to give the building as a whole a more representative appearance. It was on the basis of this plan that in 1776 or 1777 a cautious beginning was made on the rebuilding of the government house as illustrated on the map by the land surveyor J.H. Hagen on VEL1657. Evidently at that time there were no more plans to build a new fort at Nieuw-Amsterdam, which meant that as in the past the defence of the colony relied predominantly on the temporary fortifications that had been constructed in 1764 and upon the equally inadequate Fort Sint Andries on the mouth of the river’s. The construction of the new administration building never got much further than the laying of the foundations for the main wing on the front side. When, in 1779, Van der Hart was requested by the Society to act as advisor for the further execution and to submit new plans to that end, he was expected to proceed in such a way that it would be possible to continue building on these minimal existing walls.