By Daan Brok
Yours truly and UCR section editor Gerjanne Hoek went on a quest through the academic buildings of UCR. We were accompanied by Onno van de Weg, Keeper of the Keys, Housemaster and Tour Guide extraordinaire.
In the Tabula Rasa Baby Print Edition, you were able to read how we visited the ceiling of the Burgerzaal, managed to find old miniatures behind the Maquettezaal and almost got lost in the maze that is the cellar complex underneath Franklin, Helm Square and Theodore. Now, we continue our adventure as we travel to Eleanor and Elliott, two buildings that perhaps look less exciting on the outside, but have a history almost as rich as the others.
We know, of course, that Franklin used to be the old City Hall with the official functions and rooms. But did you know that Eleanor used to be the place where all citizens would go, for instance, to get their passports renewed? Approximately where the wall with the doors to the classrooms is now, used to be a long line of desks. In days past, the building (known as ‘Burgerzaken’, Civil Affairs) was where citizens would go when they had question for the municipality or when they would need to get official documents renewed. Of course, the building has since been extensively remodeled and there are little traces from its previous function, but there is an interesting piece of history captured in Eleanor’s basement. The Eleanor we see today was built in the 1950s. However, long before that, before the World War II, there used to be a bank on the same spot. As happened to a lot of buildings in Middelburg, the building burnt to the ground after the bombing during the Second World War, and only one relic survived: the floor in the Eleanor cellar. If, instead of going up the stairs going up to the teacher’s offices, you go down those stairs, you will (after unlocking an old door) encounter some peculiar rooms with old tiles and a low ceiling. The story goes that when the bombing happened, the old bank manager fled with his family into this very basement, to the fireproof safe, to find refuge from the fires. Today, the basement serves a very different purpose: the safe is now where professors keep their archives: loads of files, paperwork and important course work are kept locked and secure here.
Having tested our latent claustrophobia enough for one day (we also went through some very narrow, modern corridors in the Eleanor basement to basically only find cables, spiders and dust), we decide to visit the Eleanor attic. It can only be described in the way a hopelessly romantic spinster would describe their ideal husband: dark, mysterious and huge. This is where old office furniture comes to die. This is where, apparently, no one thought of installing light switches in a logical place. This is where, after removing a big, old-fashioned metal beam, you open two huge doors and would find yourself looking three floors down on students smoking in front of the Eleanor entrance. There is an odd collection of items to be found: from old mattresses to big boxes of books, from the design-y chairs that used to be in the Eleanor ‘lobby’ to Christmas trees. After snooping around a bit, it is time to for us to wander beyond the realm of Onno: we decide to pay Elliott a visit.
As you may or may not know, Elliott used to be the local post office. Before all Dutch post offices closed a few years back, and even before then, when sorting the post used to happen locally, each post office required a lot of space. Built after the World War II, Elliott is a mixture of a monumental façade with a very practical collection of large spaces built behind it; efficiency in the post-collecting, sorting and delivering process was the most important function of the building alongside the public function of a post office in general. Approximately halfway through the study lounge and the mensa used to be a square ‘island’ where visitors would come to the post office desks and do their post office thing. Customers used to enter the island through sliding doors where you now find the blinded windows in the study lounge. If you look at the floor in certain areas and in the hallways, you can still see where the counters used to be: there is no linoleum, only concrete with some holes in it.
As Elliott was built on a student budget, there are more of these relics in the building. In the mensa, you will find a door next to the couches: this used to be a safe, which you can see from the massive walls where the safe door used to be. In a funny coincidence, this is again being used to keep Elliott’s treasures: amongst other things, you will find their collection of whisky glasses (that only come out on special occasions) and Elliott’s flag.
Again, to find some of the more interesting areas, we need to go downstairs. Everyone knows the Elliott basement as the bar, but there are areas surrounding it that you would normally never be able to visit. The most obvious one is the storage room, behind the door next to the wardrobe: you may sometimes see bartenders running in and out of it during a party. This is where Elliott keeps its stock of liquors, where PartyCo stores their decorations and where there’s a random mine cart filled with disco lights. On the door it states ‘Boutique’, as this used to be the room where post office workers would receive their uniforms.
As those familiar with the smokers’ lounge may have noticed, there is a door in the dark corner of the smokers-area that is always locked. This is for a good reason: it just opens to another, even darker corridor filled with huge old pipes that were used to heat the building in earlier days. The room is now used to store some furniture and is really not that interesting to be honest. If we move beyond the emergency doors in the smokers lounge, but before we go outside, we find two doors that are also always locked: what is behind there may just surprise you. There is another room, approximately as big as the whole bar, just there, unused, with only some old bar chairs and old bicycle stands gathering dust! If at any point PartyCo and Elliott decide the current basement bar is no longer sufficient for our party needs, they may just want to consider renting this space and having TWO bars! Unfortunately, at the moment, Elliott is not allowed to use it as it is not officially part of their rental contract and it has no fire safety measures in place. However, there is definitely potential…
Daan Brok, Class of 2016, is an International Law and Politics major from ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands.
