Spatial distribution of housing rental value in Amsterdam 1647-1652

This dataset visualises the spatial distribution of the rental value in Amsterdam between 1647 and 1652. The source of rental value comes from the Verponding registration in Amsterdam. The verponding or the ‘Verpondings-quohieren van den 8sten penning’ was a tax in the Netherlands on the 8th penny of the rental value of immovable property that had to be paid annually. In Amsterdam, the citywide verponding registration started in 1647 and continued into the early 19th century. With the introduction of the cadastre system in 1810, the verponding came to an end.

The original tax registration is kept in the Amsterdam City Archives (Archief nr. 5044) and the four registration books transcribed in this dataset are Archief 5044, inventory  255, 273, 281, 284. The verponding was collected by districts (wijken). The tax collectors documented their collecting route by writing down the street or street-section names as they proceed. For each property, the collector wrote down the names of the owner and, if applicable, the renter (after ‘per’), and the estimated rental value of the property (in guilders). Next to the rental value was the tax charged (in guilders and stuivers). Below the owner/renter names and rental value were the records of tax payments by year.

This dataset digitises four registration books of the verponding between 1647 and 1652 in two ways. First, it transcribes the rental value of all real estate properties listed in the registrations. The names of the owners/renters are transcribed only selectively, focusing on the properties that exceeded an annual rental value of 300 guilders. These transcriptions can be found in Verponding1647-1652.csv. For a detailed introduction to the data, see Verponding1647-1652_data_introduction.txt.

Second, it geo-references the registrations based on the street names and the reconstruction of tax collectors’ travel routes in the verponding. The tax records are then plotted on the historical map of Amsterdam using the first cadaster of 1832 as a reference. Since the geo-reference is based on the street or street sections, the location of each record/house may not be the exact location but rather a close proximation of the possible locations based on the street names and the sequence of the records on the same street or street section. Therefore, this geo-referenced verponding can be used to visualise the rental value distribution in Amsterdam between 1647 and 1652. The preview below shows an extrapolation of rental values in Amsterdam. And for the geo-referenced GIS files, see Verponding_wijken.shp.

GIS specifications:

Coordination Reference System (CRS): Amersfoort/RD New (ESPG:28992)

Historical map tiles URL (From Amsterdam Time Machine)

NB: This verponding dataset is a provisional version. The georeferenced points and the name transcriptions might contain errors and need to be treated with caution.

Contributors

Historical and archival research: Weixuan Li, Bart Reuvekamp

Plotting of geo-referenced points: Bart Reuvekamp

Spatial analysis: Weixuan Li

Mapping software: QGIS

Acknowledgements: Virtual Interiors project, Daan de Groot