Villa Welgelegen

Cottage Welgelegen, the modern province of North Holland House, located on the Haarlemmerhout in Haarlem. It was declared a Rijksmonument.

Building

1769 acquired the Amsterdam banker Henry Hope his principal place Welgelegen near Haarlem. The buildings he demolished to make create an unusually large villa from 1786 to 1789. Cottage Welgelegen the only building in the Netherlands is in the pure neoclassical style. The name of the architect is known only from a single source: About 40 years after the creation of the estate appeared a book of the Ghent architect PJ Gotghebuer. According to him, the sketches were made ​​for the estate of Triquetti, the former Sardinian Consul in Amsterdam, while the architect Jean -Baptiste Dubois (1762-1851) took over design and construction supervision. The Dutch architect and Professor Engelbert Hendrik Ter Kuile, however, wrote the building in 1975 the architect Leendert Viervant to. Perhaps the architect of the Hôtel de Salm was inspired in Paris, which was built by order of Rijngraaf Van Salm.

Henry Hope used the premises mainly to exhibit his extensive art collection. The establishment still remembers this original function. Also located on the premises of some works from the collection.

1794 the family fled Hope from the troops of Napoleon to England.

1810, the property by decree of Napoleon was placed under the ownership of the French crown. After the French occupation in 1814 it came into the possession of the Netherlands, left the usufruct Princess Wilhelmina. After the death of King William I in 1828 decided to establish a museum of contemporary art in the premises. 1885 " Museum van levende Nederlandsche meesters " was closed, next to the estate for several other museums was used: from 1853 to 1864 a Geological Museum, from 1871 to 1923 a colonial museum, from 1877 to 1926, the Museum of Arts and Crafts and from 1913 to 1918 a photographic museum.

From 1881 an Arts and Crafts school was housed in the former coach house. 1942, the house was closed to the public and the provincial government moved from the Hanssstraat in Haarlem in the country house.