Jacob Roman: an innovative designer?

Abstract

We know less about the architect Jacob Roman (1640-1716) than his reputation would suggest. From 1681 he was Leiden’s city architect and subsequently, from 1689 to 1702, architect to Stadholder-King William III. Partly as a result of these official posts, it is difficult to form an accurate picture of his output. In his commissions for close friends of Willem III he collaborated with Daniël Marot and Steven Vennecool. He moved in the highest social circles, was well informed about recent architectural developments and had access to the Bibliotheca Thysiana in Leiden, which housed all relevant contemporary architectural treatises. He was able to consult these works even before 1689, when he followed Willem III to England, where he studied the work of Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren at first hand. After his return to the Netherlands, his architecture took on a more austere classical form. This is evident from the new facade for the town hall of Deventer from 1694, the specifications for which are referenced for the first time in this article. Roman is also important because of his role in the design of fountains and the introduction in the Netherlands of sliding windows and a new kind of roof construction in which an all-round hipped roof was combined with the possibility of realizing a large formal space below it. He had already employed this in 1681 for Hofje Meermansburg in Leiden, and in 1694 he used it again for the town hall in Deventer. It involves the use of a kings post in the roof construction, whereby a braced middle post eliminates the need for a central support in the room below. It turns out that rather than discovering this Italian-inspired solution during his time in England, where such roof constructions were then being used, Roman had already read about it back in Leiden, courtesy of the treatises available in Bibliotheca Thysiana.