ABSTRACT
While classicism seemed gradually to be fading out, the questions that had been raised in the 1840s were still waiting to be answered. Did contemporary architecture demand a contemporary style - that is to say, a design system that would be a match for classicism, or did it demand freedom, an absence of style? And anyway, what was style? Was it a representation of the spirit of the age, or of the nation? And, in terms of the classic-romantic antithesis, was not all architecture that was not classicist or neoclassicist automatically romantic? These questions were answered in various ways by three eminent professionals of
the time: W. N. Rose, the Rotterdam city architect (after 1858 state architect in The Hague), Josephus Albertus Alberdingk Thijm (1820-89), Amsterdam merchant and author, and Johannes Hermanus Lehman (1828-1910), architect, also of Amsterdam.
