ABSTRACT
On 15 May 1908, eight-year-old Leo Marcus laid the first stone for a new butcher’s shop and slaughterhouse on the Oude Vismarkt in the centre of Zwolle. What then arose was a building in seventeenth-century Dutch style, featuring a stepped gable, cross-windows with small panes, shutters and a big awning. A stone in the facade made clear what went on inside: ‘Yn it Fryscke slachthuws (In the Frisian slaughterhouse). Anyone knowing no better would think this was one of the original old city-centre buildings, but nothing could be further from the truth. The prestige project was the work of the brothers Abraham and Izaac Marcus. They had taken over the kosher butcher’s from their mother and it had been in the family since 1785. Together they developed it into a modern, successful business. The old-style building gave it a serious aura, while the inscription in stone, written in Frisian, recalled their birthplace of Dokkum in the province of Friesland.
