Design for planned government building in Nieuw-Amsterdam

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

This drawing is likely part of the plans designed by Abraham van der Hart for the Society of Berbice in the years 1779-1781. The depicted government building is indicated with number 1 on Van der Hart’s general plan for the new governmental complex on map VEL1662.42. The view of the facade is apparently an adjustment of the design which Jean-Guillaume d’Arnaud drew in 1773. 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. 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. All rooms are designated with letters but no index is given.

Due to the British conquest of Berbice in March 1781, only part of these and other plans for the complex could be sent to the Republic in November 1780. After Berbice had been returned to the Society in 1784, the first plans for a completely new main town at the confluence of the Berbice and Canje Rivers followed in the very next year and Van der Hart’s 1779-1781 project was abandoned altogether.