History of the Rijswijkseweg and its tramways
We go back to the fifties, we were living then on the Rijswijkseweg, in a block of houses built in the twenties, in a flat on the second floor in The Hague, near the municipal border The Hague-Rijswijk.
The Rijswijkseweg
was a real shopping-street, but a street where there was industry as well.
There was the factory of the Laurens firm, who produced cigarettes (Caballeros)
and the paper processing firm of ESVEHA, who made envelopes, agendas,
etc. All this took place in the district of Laakkwartier.
The district also had a catholic complex, consisting of a church, situated on the Wenckebachstreet, a convent and naturally an elementary school where nuns propagated education. This spiritual center was not on the Rijswijkseweg, but just behind it. The district of the Laakkwartier originated in the beginnings of the 20th. century.
In 1901
the municipality of The Hague annexed 217 ha. of Rijswijk's territory
between the Laakkade and the Broeksloot, the present-day Spoorwijk and
Laakkwartier. Also during those years the Laakhaven (harbour)complex was
dug and constructed.
The Laak is, what many don't know, a small river and the Broeksloot, as
the name means, a ditch. Not so, that was originally a small river, too.
The Rijswijkseplein
anno 1950
The Rijswijkseweg got it's name between the square of the same name and the Laak in 1877. Then it was written Rijswijkscheweg. Untill the 7th. of May 1844 this part of the territory belonged to the municipality of Rijswijk.
Try to
imagine that at the end of the 19th. century, seen from the Laak, coming
from The Hage, the real countryside began and one saw in the distance
over the farmlands Rijswijk's church-spires rise among the trees.
The
Laakbrug anno 1959, halfway the Rijswijkseweg
The Rijswijkseweg
was, in the time when the Kortland family lived there, one of the country's
busiest roads. It was a wide road giving entry to the center of town with
at the other end, the for many well-known Rijswijkseplein.
Along the road ran electrically-driven trams. The lines 1-1 and 1-3 of
the Haagsche Tramweg Maatschappij (the Hague tram company) yet nobody
called the lines this way but spoke of the "Delftenaar" and
the "Voorburgenaar". They ran from the center (Turfmarkt) to
Delft and from the 16th. of March 1934 to Voorburg.
The horsetram on the Huygensplein in 1867
On the
1st. of July 1924 the first electrical tram, formerly a steam-tram, ran
to Delft.
Before that, believe it or not, a horse-tram ran from 1866 till 1887 to
Delft. The latter had a tram depot on the Rijswijkseweg near the subsequently
(1888) built railway viaduct.
Later this turned into a steam-tram depot, when steam traction was replaced
by electrical, they became the horse stables of the firm of van Gend en
Loos.
The horse-trams and subsequently the steam-trams departed from the Huygenspark, along the Rijswijkseweg, the Haagweg, running step by step along a, then quite narrow, Hoornbrug, along the Rijn-Schiekanaal, just called the Vliet by everyone, via the Delftweg to Delft.
1905
Looking from the railroadcrossing
on the Rijswijkseweg towards the Laakbrug
Crossing
Haagweg with the Herenstraat and Geestbrugweg ca.1900
The whole of the tram-line was mostly one-way, later when electrical trams ran, the section was executed entirely two-way.
The electrical trams running along our street were big four-shaft motor-carriages with trailers, these trailers we called at home, from Rotterdam's custom, "bijwagens".
In
1911 a steamtram on its way from Den Haag via Rijswijk to Delft over the
Hoornbrug
Tram
with open carriage (summercarriages)
The
'Voorburgenaar'
On warm summer days this tram ran with two trailers, a so-called convoy, for the many travellers who wanted to spend a day on the beach of Scheveningen. They had to change in the centre of town to the 8 of 9 lines, which ran with open trailers, called the open tram.
The line to Voorburg was also ran with heavy equipment. These motor-carriages came on duty after World War II. They had been bought from De Limburgsche Tramwegmaatschappij, which had decided to replace her intercomunal line by bus-traction.
The fare,
in the fifties, was of fl 0,25 for a single journey which entitled a change
and fl 0,13 for a children's fare.
Nothing
new under the sun, even in the 50-s the Rijswijkseplein was reconstructed!
