The story
As you walk along this wide stretch of pavement, take a moment to look at the sky above the apartment blocks. Even on a typical grey Amsterdam afternoon, there is a particular kind of rhythm to this street, a sense of space that was carefully planned decades ago. You are walking through a piece of history called the Jan Tooropstraat, a name that carries the weight of a man who saw the world in a way few others did.
Jan Toorop was not your typical Dutch painter. Born in 1858 on the island of Java, in what was then the Dutch East Indies, he brought a completely different visual language to the Netherlands when he arrived as a young boy. If you could see his work right now, you would notice long, flowing lines and slender, mystical figures that seem to vibrate with energy. He was a shapeshifter of art. He mastered the tiny dots of pointillism and the dark shadows of symbolism, but he is perhaps most famous for helping birth the Art Nouveau movement here. In fact, his poster for a salad oil company was so influential that for a long time, the Dutch didn't call Art Nouveau by its French name; they called it the salad oil style.
This street was named in his honor during the mid-twentieth century, as Amsterdam began to breathe outward. After the Second World War, the city needed to expand, and the Western Garden Cities were born. The planners wanted these new neighborhoods to feel open and green, a far cry from the cramped quarters of the old center. They decided to name the streets in this area after the great Dutch artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By placing Toorop’s name here, the city was anchoring this modern landscape in a legacy of creativity and international influence.
Today, Jan Tooropstraat serves as a vital artery in Amsterdam West. It is a long, straight path that connects the bustling Jan Evertsenstraat to the north down toward the waters and green spaces of the Rembrandtpark and the Sloterplas. As you move along, you will see the large complex of the OLVG West hospital, a landmark of care that has stood here in various forms for decades. The street is a mix of the functional and the lived-in, where school children cycle past professionals and residents of the sturdy apartment blocks that define this post-war architecture.
Before you reach your next turn, look closely at any wrought iron railings or decorative patterns on the older brick buildings you pass. Jan Toorop loved the curve of a vine and the flow of long hair. See if you can spot a single curved line in the architecture around you that breaks the straight geometry of the street, and imagine the painter’s hand tracing it.