Repairing the Bodies, Restoring the Souls: Kerdijk, The First Model Holiday Camp in The Netherlands (1907)

Abstract

Existing literature on the first four decades of children’s holiday camps in the Netherlands (1880–1920) emphasizes that organizations had a dual goal with the care in the buildings; they focused on improving the physical health of children as well as child rearing. This article shows that the architecture of a holiday camp from the early years also focused on both goals. Both strengthening health and imparting upbringing played a role in the design of holiday camps of the Centraal genootschap voor Kinderherstellings- en vakantiekolonies that took a coordinating role for this new form of care for children. The Society divided the children into relatively small groups and implemented a group-system in the activities during the day. Both the social and medical goals were also implemented into the design of the building by architects. The first building in which this was given explicit effect was the Kerdijk holiday camp, which opened in 1907 in Egmond aan Zee. In this article, the author will analyze for the first time from an architectural-historical perspective holiday camp Kerdijk from the underlying ideas about the dual purpose of upbringing and health care. This purpose characterized the main organization for children’s holiday houses of the Central Society in the Netherlands between 1907–1920. From around 1920, the situation changed and the emphasis of life in the camps would increasingly be on health improvement.