Rotterdam, Feijenoord, Ridderkerk

Feijenoord once began as a soggy, remote island in the Maas, wedged between river branches and creeks such as the Zwanengat. In the 17th and 18th century it had a grim character. There stood a plague house where plague patients were kept in quarantine. Before that it even served as a gallows field outside the city gates of Rotterdam. The location made it extremely suitable for all matters the city preferred to keep at a distance. But precisely that isolated location later turned out to be the perfect spot for a new kind of activity: the rise of steam shipping.

In 1825 the visionary engineer Gerhard Roentgen came with an ambitious plan. He established a shipyard on the abandoned site for the Nederlandsche Stoomboot Maatschappij. And so the ‘Etablissement Fijenoord’ was born, located in the former plague house. At first it was intended for the repair of steamships, but the yard quickly grew into an innovative machine factory where steam boilers, ship engines and even complete ships were built. The name Fijenoord became synonymous with technical progress and Rotterdam developed as an important harbour and industrial city.

During the 19th and early 20th century thousands of people worked at the yard. Whole generations grew up around the rhythm of the dock, the sound of rivet hammers, steam whistles and the launch of proud ships. With the scaling up and the merger into Wilton-Fijenoord in 1929, the centre of production shifted to Schiedam. The yard activities on the island slowly declined, until the closure in the 1970s. What remained was an industrial landscape full of character, recognisable by factory halls, railway tracks and harbour quays.

Today Feijenoord is a lively urban neighbourhood with a tough past. Between modern houses, creative workplaces and the water, traces of the shipbuilding can still be discovered. Old sheds have been transformed into studios and businesses, and in some places you still see the original bricks of the factories. Anyone cycling here is literally pedalling through the history of Rotterdam: from quarantine area to breeding ground of steam technology, and from dock to dynamic residential district.

Photo: Shipyard Fijenoord in 1955 ©National Archives