Postcard Burgerweeshuis Amsterdam children's playground 1904 AHM 1972

Colour postcard published by the Amsterdams Historisch Museum in 1972, the image a colourised reproduction of an original postcard from 1904 showing the children's playground of the Burgerweeshuis on the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam. The caption on the image reads Amsterdam, Burger Weeshuis, Kinderspeelplaats. The reverse carries the reference AHM. A 12030 with the inscription edition and colour-correction Amsterdams Historisch Museum, copyright 1972, and the bilingual caption kinderspeelplaats van het burgerweeshuis, 1904 and the children's playground of the city orphanage, 1904. The card is in very good condition.

The children's playground referred to the inner courtyard reserved for the youngest residents of the institution, situated on the Begijnhof side against the eastern wing of the complex. The Burgerweeshuis on the Kalverstraat housed from 1580 onwards the orphans of Amsterdam's burghers in the former Saint Lucia Convent and remained in use as an orphanage until 1960; in 1975 the Amsterdams Historisch Museum took up residence in the complex, three years after this card was issued. The characteristic two-coloured orphans' uniforms, red on the left and black on the right after the city's coat of arms, are clearly visible on the boys in jacket and short trousers as well as on the girls in skirt with white apron and cap. Several boys also wear the closely shorn haircut common in the institution at the time, a hygienic measure of the period. In the foreground a few girls hold skipping ropes and a group of children sit on a seesaw; on the left stand two female supervisors or in-house mothers, recognisable by their black uniforms with white collars and caps. The photograph belongs to a series of postcards by which the orphanage itself, around 1904, presented the institution as a place of care.