De Kuip - History

History

Leen van Zandvliet, Feyenoord's president in the 1930s, came up with the idea of building an entirely new stadium, unlike any other on the continent, with two free hanging tiers and no obstacles blocking the view. The great examples at that time were Highbury, where the West and East stands had been recently built as a double deck, and Yankee Stadium in New York City. Johannes Brinkman and Leendert van der Vlugt, the famous designers of the van Nelle factories in Rotterdam were asked to design a stadium out of glass, concrete and steel, cheap materials at that time. They came up with a design that is modern even in this era. In fact, "de Kuip" acted as an example for many of the greatest stadia we know today, e.g. Camp Nou. The stadium was co-financed by the billionaire Daniël George van Beuningen, who made his fortune in World War I, exporting coal from Germany to England through neutral Netherlands. In World War II, the stadium nearly got torn down, because the German occupiers needed the materials. Fortunately it didn't come to that. After the war the stadium got extra seats (1949) and stadium lights (1958). On 29 October 1991 De Kuip was named as being one of Rotterdam's monuments. In 1994 the stadium was extensively renovated to its present form. It became an all seater and the roof was extended to cover all the seats. An extra building was constructed for commercial use by Feyenoord, it also houses a restaurant and a museum, The Home of History. The stadium has hosted concerts since 1978. The first ones were Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton. Since 1996, the stadium hasn't hosted many concerts, because of the competition of the Amsterdam ArenA. As of January 2007, the stadium can be found in 3D format on Google Earth.