Out of the Ring: Brug 78, the Windmill It Was Named For, and the Name It Lost in 2016
With Brug 78 the sequence leaves the canal ring behind. Where 76 and 77 sit on the Amstel at the edge of the seventeenth-century city, 78 is out east, connecting the Funenkade to the Zeeburgerpad in what was for centuries Amsterdam’s industrial waterfront.
It is a bigger, plainer, more workmanlike structure than anything we have looked at recently, and it is the first bridge in this series built of concrete. It also carries a small piece of the naming story that has run through so many of these posts: it had a name, and in 2016 the city took it away.
Location: A Junction of Four Waterways
Above the deck, the bridge is straightforward: a road link from the Funenkade to the Zeeburgerpad. Below it, things are considerably busier. The underpass connects the Lozingskanaal, the Nieuwe Vaart and the Oostenburgergracht for shipping.
The Zeeburgerpad is the strip of land that separates the Nieuwe Vaart from the Lozingskanaal along its entire length, two parallel waterways with a narrow path between them, a piece of nineteenth-century water management that reads oddly on a map until you realise one was for navigation and the other for drainage.
The clearance beneath is 11.80 metres. Set that against the 2.04 metres under the Leliesluis in the canal ring and the difference in purpose is stark: this is a bridge built for masted vessels and freight, not for the flat-bottomed barges of the inner city.
Structural Evolution: From Iron and Planking to Concrete
The first bridge here, around 1882, was an iron beam bridge with wooden planking, a typical industrial crossing of its period, cheap to build and expected to be replaced.
By the 1960s it had deteriorated badly enough to need replacing, and the structure standing today dates from 1968. It was designed by Cornelis Johannes Henke of Amsterdam’s Public Works Department. Construction began in 1967 and took roughly a year, slow for a bridge of this size, and the reason given was the difficulty of getting access to the site.
It is a fixed concrete bridge, thirteen metres wide, built on concrete pile foundations and foundation plates. That specification is worth reading carefully: in a city built on peat and sand, everything of any weight stands on piles, and a bridge is no exception. The seventeenth-century crossings of the canal ring rest on timber piles driven into the same ground; this one rests on concrete ones.
The Name It Lost: Gooiersbrug, Until April 2016
The bridge was known unofficially as the Gooiersbrug. That designation ended in April 2016.
Readers who have followed this series will recognise the date. It is the same municipal exercise that stripped Bridge 67 of the name Kleine Brouwerssluis and removed 88 unofficial bridge names across the city, on the grounds that they were unsubstantiated or risked confusion with existing places. Bridge 67 was later given a new official name, the Angenietje Swarthofbrug, in December 2021. Bridge 78, so far, has not.
The lost name had an obvious source, and it is still standing. De Gooyer, the windmill, is a rijksmonument visible from the bridge, the tallest wooden mill in the Netherlands, and one of the last survivors of the ring of mills that once stood on Amsterdam’s eastern defences. The municipal monument at Zeeburgerdijk 21–23 is also in view.
There is something slightly absurd about a bridge losing a name for being unofficial when the thing it was named after is a protected national monument a short walk away and visible from the deck. But the rule was applied consistently, and consistency was rather the point.
Technical Specifications
- Bridge number: 78
- Name: None (unofficially Gooiersbrug until April 2016)
- Type: Fixed concrete bridge
- Connects: Funenkade with Zeeburgerpad
- Waterways beneath: Lozingskanaal, Nieuwe Vaart, Oostenburgergracht
- Width: 13 m
- Navigation clearance: 11.80 m
- Foundations: Concrete piles and foundation plates
- Earlier structure: Iron beam bridge with wooden planking, c. 1882
- Current structure: 1968, built 1967–68
- Designer: Cornelis Johannes Henke, Publieke Werken Amsterdam
- Coordinates: 52° 22′ 0″ N, 4° 55′ 37″ E
- In view: Molen De Gooyer (rijksmonument); Zeeburgerdijk 21–23 (municipal monument)
Sources Consulted
- In-text image: The Lozingskanaal looking toward De Gooyer, 1896 by Jacob Olie, 1896, via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- Featured image: Brug 78, Funenkade to Zeeburgerpad over the Nieuwe Vaart by Alf van Beem, 2017, via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- Brug 78, Nederlandstalige Wikipedia
- Lijst van bruggen in Amsterdam, Nederlandstalige Wikipedia
- Gemeente Amsterdam, bridge naming decisions of 2016
- Molen De Gooyer, Rijksmonumentenregister
- Bruggen van Amsterdam