Jan Springer

During his sixteen-year presidency, he transformed A et A from a friendly social gathering of Amsterdam architects into a national organization with a noticeable influence on the development of architecture and design.

In 1888 Springer was commissioned by the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce to design a new stock exchange for Adolph Willem Krasnapolsky (see Beurs van Berlage).

At the same time, he was getting less and less satisfaction from his practice, as no matter how gifted he was as a designer, he was inept as a businessman and was therefore unable to establish himself as an independent architect, let alone manage an architectural firm.

He also designed various festival sets, such as those of the 1884 celebration in the Maison Stroucken on the occasion of the 70th birthday of King Willem III and the so-called "Fancy Fair" in 1887 at the Paleis voor Volksvlijt.

Having passed in late May 1915, on 1 June he was buried in the presence of A et A chairman Paul de Jongh and his former friends Henri Evers, JA van Voorthuysen, K. Sluyterman, Jonas Ingenohl and E. Stark in the Oud Eik and Duinen cemetery in The Hague.

Jan Springer , portrait by Theo Molkenboer (pencil on paper, 1907)
Jan Springer, Alternative plan for the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce, 1888.
Springer's champagne kiosk at the Fancy Fair, Amsterdam, 1887.