Schmidt, Freek. “Sociability and Privacy: The Eighteenth-Century Extended Homes of the Amsterdam Elite.” In Private Life and Privacy in the Early Modern Low Countries, edited by Michaël Green and Ineke Huysman, 247–72. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2023.

Over the four centuries of its existence, Amsterdam's famous canal ring—a Unesco World Heritage area since 2010 - has changed substantially in appearance.' Created in two phases following council decisions in 1610 and 1660, the district was largely built with rows of houses along the canals, interrupted by streets or other canals. A unique document records in detail the streetscapes of approximately 250 years ago: issued in twenty-four prints in 1768-1771, the Grachtenboek is a collection of all the street façades along the two most fashionable and luxurious canals, the Herengracht and Keizersgracht. By this time, the canals' seventeenth-century streetscapes had been largely replaced by eighteenth-century ones. We can distinguish a wide variety of façades dating from the first 160 years of the district's existence (Figure 9.1). Early seventeenth-century stepped gables, some still with cross-frame windows and shutters, alternate with slightly later top gables, early eighteenth-century neck and bell gables and their ornaments, and more recent façades with horizontal raised cornices. The majority of façades with modern sash windows and heightened horizontal cornices date from the 1720s or later. This makeover of the seventeenth-century canal ring was accompanied by large-scale renovations and expansions behind the new façades. While the main structures were preserved, extra floors were added, and new houses were built in the gardens behind the original houses, with connecting aisles for new staircases and small skylit courtyards.