Magna Plaza

Amsterdam soon had a nickname for this building: Perenburg, after the pears on its towers. The pears were meant to take in the telephone lines, and were never needed.

This was the Main Post Office. It was built between 1895 and 1899 to replace the Royal Post Office of 1854, which was pulled down in 1897. When that older post office was new, the street in front of it was still a canal.

The architect was Cornelis Peters, the government’s own architect. He mixed Gothic and Renaissance forms so freely that Dutch has a word for the result: postkantorengotiek, post-office Gothic. The heritage register calls this building his most monumental work.

Now look at the tops of the towers. Each one swells out like a pear under an open spire. They were designed to receive the telephone lines, and they were out of date before they were used, because the lines were laid underground instead. The nickname came quickly: Perenburg, after the pears.

For all its size, the public only ever saw the ground floor. Everything above was for the staff. In 1987 the postal service announced that it was leaving, and a year later the building was sold to a Swedish developer for 7.5 million guilders.

Turning it into shops began in 1991 and ran into trouble: the foundations had to be replaced, which nobody had planned for. It opened in 1992. The outside was only cleaned and repaired. Inside, the central hall was kept, with its arcaded galleries on two floors under a glass roof. The name Magna Plaza is a nod to the developer, Lars-Erik Magnusson.