The short answer
Amsterdam has almost 3,000 houseboat moorings, the largest concentration in the Netherlands. People were already living on boats here in 1652, but houseboats became a fixed part of the city’s look in the 1950s, when there was a great shortage of housing. As a rule no new official moorings are added, so a place on the water is hard to get.
A shortage of houses
Living on the water in Amsterdam is old. A bylaw of the city government from 1652 shows that people were already living on boats then, because it tried to stop them: nobody was to live in barges or ships, or put stoves in them.
What made houseboats part of the picture was the 1950s. Amsterdam had a great housing shortage, and boats to live on became a fixed part of the cityscape.
Three kinds of boat
Not everything moored along a quay is the same thing. An ark is a concrete hull with a house of wood, brick or plastic built on it. A “schark” looks like an ark but stands on a metal hull, often a barge that has gone out of use. A houseship is a real ship, often a barge taken out of service, that has become a home, and some of them are still able to sail.
The metal ones need the most looking after. A schark has to go to the yard for maintenance once every five years.
An address on the water
A houseboat has an address of its own. In Amsterdam it is given a house number with a letter added, and the letter tells you it is a boat: the one moored opposite Prinsengracht 824 is number 824G. The Westerkerk lies between that same canal, the Prinsengracht, and the Keizersgracht.
What is scarce is the mooring. There are almost 3,000 in the city, and in the Netherlands the number of official moorings is, as a rule, not increased. So demand is high.
A market that floats
One row of boats is not for living on at all. The Bloemenmarkt, the flower market that moved here in 1862, stands on the water of the Singel canal, between the Muntplein and the Koningsplein. Its stalls were once growers’ boats; now they rest on concrete hulls.
The Munttoren stands on the Muntplein, so start there and walk along the stalls. Then look over the edge at what they are standing on.
Where to see it
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