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Plan for new fortifications at Nieuw-Amsterdam

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Plan for new fortifications at Nieuw-Amsterdam

Cederkreutz, Christiaan T. Frederik

Title Leupe: Project tot een versterking van 't Oude Secretarie in de Stad Nieuw Amsterdam, in Rio Berbice.

At roughly the same time that De Veije was designing a new fortification for Nieuw-Asterdam (see VEL1642, 1643A-B and 1645) it would appear that the land surveyor Christiaan Frederik Theodosius Cederkreutz was also drawing up a project plan for that purpose, that is to say, if P.A. Leupe’s dating of c. 1766 may be taken as correct.

What is at any rate known is that in 1766 Cederkreutz objected when Governor Johan Heijliger (1764-1767) asked him to come up with a number of architectural plans because as a land surveyor he did not feel qualified for such duties.

This probably related to the ground plan reproduced here for a rather conventionally designed fort on a virtually rectangular ground plan with four corner bastions.

The remains of the former governmental secretariat (A) would form the core of the complex which, after reconstruction, would probably again have to serve as a centre for the administration.

Cederkreutz maintained that the job would require no less than 1.6 million bricks, a quantity which, bearing in mind the production rate of the local brickworks, would have taken five years or longer to deliver.

A profile is shown at the lower right.

North is lower left.

Scale-bars of 15 Rhineland Rods of 180 feet = [approximately 1 : 255] / [profile] 60 feet of 5 Rhineland Rods = [approximately 1 : 105].

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Sources and literature

Heijer, H. den, Grote Atlas van de West-Indische Compagnie = Comprehensive Atlas of the Dutch West India Company, II, de nieuwe WIC 1674-1791 = the new WIC 1674-1791 (2012)