Westergasfabriek and Westerpark

Park · West (Westerpark)Amsterdam,Netherlands

An Amsterdam park laid over a poisoned gasworks, its lawns the clean metre of soil sealing what could not be dug out.

Westergasfabriek is a park laid over poison, and every lawn on it is part of the cover. The works made Amsterdam's gas out of coal for eighty years, and coal gas leaves tar and cyanide behind, so by the time production stopped in 1967 the soil was badly contaminated. Between 2000 and 2003 the worst was lifted out — tar pits, cyanide-soaked earth, asbestos — and the rest was sealed in place under a clean layer of soil, 60 to 100 centimetres deep. That layer is the park. You are walking on it the whole time you are here. Kathryn Gustafson laid the lawns, the pond and the open field on top of it, the brick sheds became a cinema, studios and bars, and the round gas holder became a hall for festivals. An engineering firm measures the sealing layer every year, because what is under it was left there. A British firm built the works in 1885 to light the streets; Amsterdam took it over in 1898 and ran it until natural gas from Groningen made coal gas pointless. The site then stood behind fences as a store yard for twenty-five years.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Check what is booked before you visit — The gas holder and larger halls are hired out for festivals and fairs, so they are often shut, or open only to ticket holders.
This is two parks joined together — The older Westerpark of 1890, east of the water, is lawns and paths; the industrial half with the brick sheds is what most people mean.
Shoot the gas holder from Klonneplein — the square is wide enough to fit the whole sixty-metre drum into one frame, which no other angle on the site allows.
Keep going past the last hall — beyond the buildings the ground opens into reed beds and a long pond, and that end is quiet parkland rather than an events ground.

Things to do

1
Walk the gas holder all the way round
Follow the brick wall of the drum at ground level until you come back to where you started. That is about 190 metres of unbroken curve. Look at the base course as you go: the low ring of masonry there carried the water seal that kept a hundred thousand cubic metres of gas airtight.
2
Stand on the clean soil in the open field
Walk out onto the wide flat ground west of the halls and notice how even it is. You are standing on the clean soil laid down in the early 2000s over contamination that was left in place. Its thickness is measured and reported every year, to make sure the covering still seals what is underneath.