What Disappears and What Remains (and Why) is a Mystery Royal...

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

This is another archive  post from the photographs I took  when the Haags Gemeentearchief (the Hague City Council Archive ) put up billboards around the city to celebrate their 125th anniversary a few years ago which showed old photographs depicting the locations where the billboards were.

This one was situated on the  corner of  the Stevinstraat  and the  Badhuisweg  and the caption reads: ““ Stevinstraat hoek Badhuisweg met rechts Huize Royal,  juni 1936”  which translates as (Stevinstraat corner Badhuisweg  with Royal House at right, June 1936).

The buildings on the left side of the photo are all still standing, the deco building is now the Hotel Corel, now desperately in need of a lick of paint and the brick building behind it is still neatly kept and in good trim.

Of Huize Royal however, there is no sign at all, instead there are some non-de-script (actually, I really mean ‘ugly’) apartment blocks in it’s place.

I tried to do some research on it but every link to “Huize Royal” these days appears to lead to an Old People’s Care Home of the same name. At first I thought the apartments that I could see might be the Care Home itself, but the care home is located on the Rusthoekstraat  a few streets away so it seems that the name was reincarnated but the building was not.

The other two striking differences are of course the massive increase in traffic, car parking and the road use and also the addition of trees. In fact the trees made taking the photos here really difficult,  the photos are at bits of odds and sods angles or there would have only been tree branch photos.

Let’s take a look at what can be seen from this corner today…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)