Amsterdam's history goes back to the thirteenth century. The town developed where the River Amstel flowed out into the IJ, at that time still a bay in the Zuiderzee ( previously part of the North sea, but during the present century cut off from it and renamed IJsselmeer).Around 1270 a barrier or dam was built in the Amstel, and this has given its name not only to the town itself but also to its central square, the Dam. The original settlement consisted of two streets parallel with the river, the Warmoesstraat and the Nieuwendijk of today. It was surrounded by simple defences, with the two moats, Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal ( now a street )
and Oudezijds. Amsterdam flourished on fishing and the Baltic trade, and became an important ports. I the Middle Ages the town was extended, acquiring new streets and moats parallel with the Amstel, which gave medieval Amsterdam its long, thin appearance ( figure 15.1).
Political and economic factors combined during the first half of the seventeenth century to transform Amsterdam into the leading European trading city, a development which had begun towards the end of the previous century. The self-confident participated of merchants, who enjoyed the greatest wealth of anyone in Europe outside the royal dynasties, considered their town to be cramped, inconvenient and lacking in the required dignity. Thus they decided in 1609 to embark on an unusually impressive urban extension scheme. On the western and southern sides of the old spool-shaped core a girdle was added consisting of three new canals-Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht-and the blocks between them. Outside this girdle to the west a new area-the Jordan-was created. Its rectilinear street network was oriented diagonally in relation to the three new main canals. The whole project was realized within the space of two decades; by the beginning of the 1620s the canals appear to have been built and the blocks marked out. A rapid increase in the population, which rose from 50,000 in 1610 to 200,000 in 1650, favoured the realization of the project.
It was intended that the physical and social structure of the Jodaan area and that of the blocks along the canals should be clearly differentiated. The town had acquired the land between the great canals, and was therefore able to distribute property there without having to consider any previous ownership boundaries. The new plots were sold on strict conditions regarding the design of the houses to be built there. In the Jordaan the town did not acquire the land in this way, and the street network was laid out according to existing ditches and ownership boundaries. Consequently the changes there were less dramatic, and by and large people could build as they liked. This is were crafts were to be concentrated, particular those that caused unpleasant odours or polluted the water. The result was a kind of social zoning: the merchants occupied impressive sites along the new concentric canals, while craftsmen and their like were relegated to more peripheral location.