Boerhaavelaan 6: A brief history of the building and the people who lived there
Fig. 1. Boerhaavelaan 6 from the garden. Photograph Willem Vogelsang, 2025.In April 2026, the Textile Research Centre (TRC) moved from its former address along the Hogewoerd in the centre of Leiden, into a new 'home'. It is an early-twentieth century urban villa just behind the main Leiden railway station (Fig. 1). The house, at Boerhaavelaan 6, was occupied by the same family for more than one hundred years.
The last resident, Mrs Hélène Maria Theodora Nauta-Barge, lived there for her entire life until she died in 2023, aged 99. Since then it has become the property of the national Stichting Monumentenbezit, which now rents it out to the TRC upon the recommendation of Leiden City Council, The house has a fascinating background and reflects the rich, and sometimes turbulent history of Leiden.
At the TRC we are very fortunate to work in this beautiful building, and we are also very pleased with the help of the Nauta-Barge family when learning about the history of the building and its occupants. We especially want to thank Mrs Jolande Calkoen, a daughter of the late Mrs Nauta-Barge, for her assistance and personal recollections.
Fig. 2. The house being expanded, 1926.Herman Boerhaave
The area where the house was built used to be part of the municipality of Oegstgeest until 1896, when it was added to Leiden. This explains the original name of the street, laid out in 1906, namely the Oegstgeesterlaan, which allegedly was given to the new street in recognition of the area's history.
The street received its current name in 1931, after a statue of Professor Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738), a famous 17th and 18th-century botanist, chemist, and physician at Leiden University, was placed at the beginning of the street, opposite the new academic hospital (which had opened in 1928).
Previously, the statue had stood at the entrance to the former academic hospital (opened in 1873), the same building which in 1937 opened its doors again as the Rijks Ethnografisch Museum, now known as the Wereldmuseum.
Fig. 3. Prof. Joannes Antonius James (Ton) Barge (1884-1952).Early occupants
The villa at Boerhaavelaan 6 was designed around 1909 by the architect Willem Fontein (1864-1949) for Mr. P.J. van Hoeken, a wealthy timber merchant. However, his wife apparently did not like the house and its location.
They moved out, and in 1920 the property was purchased by the young Professor Joannes Antonius James (Ton) Barge (Fig. 2; 1884-1952), who the previous year had been appointed as Professor in Anatomy and Embryology at Leiden University. He was born in Semarang, in the Dutch East Indies, as the son of a coffee merchant, but with an English ancestry.
Fig. 4. Thérèse Barge-Dreesmann in c. 1939, working on an embroidery frame still kept in the house and recently cleaned and waxed. She was the aunt of Cécile Dreesmann (1920-1994), a textile artist who published widely on the subject of embroidery.In the same year that he accepted his new position at Leiden University, he married Thérèse Antoinetta Maria (Trees) Dreesmann (Fig. 3; 1893-1991), daughter of Anton Dreesmann (1854-1934), the co-founder of the Vroom & Dreesmann chain of department stores (V&D).
Shortly after buying the property, Barge commissioned the architect Hendrik Jesse (1860-1943) to considerably expanded the house (Fig. 3). This work was completed in 1926.
The house
Jolande Calkoen, a granddaughter of Ton Barge and Trees Dreesmann, told us that before the war the interior of the house at Boerhaavelaan 6 was very classic, featuring many antiques and presenting a distinguished appearance (compare Figs. 5-6). The house was well-organised and spaciously laid out. At that time, the kitchen and utility room were the domain of the kitchen maid and chambermaid.
Until the 1950s, a central bell board indicated in which room a bell had been rung. In the post-war period however, things changed, the number of people living in the house increased and the kitchen increasingly became the centre of family life.
Fig. 5. Former state of the diining room of Boerhaavelaan 6, and beyond the partition the sitting room along the Boerhaavelaan. Photograph courtesy Barge/Nauta family archive.
Fig. 6. The ground floor study. The album that contains this photograph dates from 1948. Photograph courtesy Barge/Nauta family archive.
The housed still has a large garden, and at the back there is a garden pavilion (Figs. 7 and 8). This charming little, wooden construction originates from Amsterdam. It allegedly dates to the mid-19th century and it stood until 1903 on a bridge across the Singel, between de Leidsestraat and Heiligeweg (near the Raadhuisstraat and the Koningsplein).
The owners sold waffles under the canopy and slept in the tiny attic. When the bridge was widened, the pavilion was taken down and reconstructed at Anton Dreesmann's villa ('Looverhof') in Bussum, at the back of the garden. After the war it was moved to Leiden where it still stands.
Fig. 7. The garden pavilion, originally from a bridge across the Singel in Amsterdam, now in the garden of Boerhaave 6. Photograph: Willem Vogelsang 2025.
Fig. 8. Photograph taken in August 1939 in front of the garden pavilion in the garden of Looverhof, Anton Dreesmann's villa in Bussum. From left to right: Fred Barge, Thérèse Barge-Dreesmann, Ton Barge, Hélène Barge and Jim Barge. Photograph courtesy Barge/Nauta family archive.
Life at Boerhaavelaan 6
Prof. Ton Barge, according to his granddaughter Jolande, was an amiable and remarkable man. With four of his university friends, he founded a walking club, ‘de Beentjes’, which met each week. Actually, the name and function of the club still live on in a monthly meeting 'Op pad met de Beentjes'. Ton was successful in his field and also socially active at university, the Catholic church, and in politics. He was a member of de Eerste Kamer (Senate) between 1937 and 1940, and again from 1945 to 1949. He also advised on the municipal museum De Lakenhal, the Leiden Theatre, and the Leiden Gymnasium (Grammar School).
Fig. 9. "De Beentjes." A group of Leiden professors that met for a walk every Wednesday afternoon at 15.30 under the clock of the (new) Academic Hospital. From left to right: Prof.Eduard Meijers (1880-1954), Prof. Jan van der Hoeve (1878-1952), Prof. Johan Huizinga (1872-1945), Prof. Gerrit Jan Heering (1879-1955), and Ton Barge. Photograph courtesy Barge/Nauta family archive.
He served as the Rector Magnificus (Chancellor) of Leiden University (1937-1938) and as a member of Parliament. The couple had four children: Suus, Jim (born 1922), Hélène (Hélènetje, born 1924), and Fred (born 1927).
Fig. 10. Drawing made by Professor Johan Huizinga for his friend, Tom Barge, at that time the Chancellor of Leiden University, on the occasion of the Dies Natalis dinner on 8 February 1938. It illustrates the various roles and functions of Prof. Barge, including his campaign to replace Boerhaave's statue and to rename the Oegstgeesterlaan to Boerhaavelaan. Photograph courtesy Barge/Nauta family archive.
He was an outspoken opponent of the racial theories of the German Nazis who occupied The Netherlands in 1940-1945. He did not hide his views, and he spoke out openly during a lecture on 26 November 1940. A plaque to the right of the front door of Boerhaave 6 (Fig. 11) commemorates his speech.
Fig. 11. The plaque attached next to the front door, commemorating Prof. Barte's protest speech, 26 November 1940. Photograph Willem Vogelsang 2026.After the war, comparable plaques were placed elsewhere in Leiden to mark two comparable lectures read at the same day, namely by Prof. Rudolph Cleveringa (1894-1980), who lived nearby, at Rijnsburgerweg 29, and by Prof. Lambertus van Holk (1893-1982; Plantage 26).
All three were subsequently arrested by the German authorities. Prof. Barge was arrested on 4 May 1942 and held hostage in Sint Michelsgestel, Noord-Brabant, until December 1942. but he and the two other Leiden professors survived the war.
Prof. Barge's house along the Boerhaavelaan was confiscated by the German authorities and from early 1943 until late 1944 served as the Ortskommandantur of the German Wehrmacht in Leiden They also confiscated the house next door (Boerhaavelaan 4). The rooms in Boerhaavelaan 6 were numbered (the numbers survive).
The cellar sometimes served as a prison. It was only after 45 years that Pieter R. from Leiden came to tell about his experiences during the war as a 16-year old. He had been imprisoned in the cellar.
For all those years he did not dare to walk down the street and look at the house. Afterwards, Pieter would occasionally visit the family for a coffee at the coffee table in the kitchen.
But the new German residents perhaps had no idea of the link that the house and the Barge family had with Dutch resistance. Barge's house still has a small hiding room on the second floor. Several people could be accommodated there behind the bed, where the young Hélène would pretend to have diphtheria.
Fig. 12. Winston Churchill received an honorary doctorate at Leiden University in May 1946. He is sitting in the Pieterskerk, in one of the embroidered chairs from Boerhaavelaan 6. Photograph courtesy Barge/Nauta family archive.
After the war
After the Second World War, in 1949, Hélène married Jan Nauta (1922-2013), who trained as a heart surgeon in Leiden and subsequently became co-founder of the medical faculty and the Thorax Centre in Rotterdam. During the Second World War, Jan had been active in the resistance. He was betrayed and ended up in a German concentration camp. Hélène also held her own during the waar. She once brought an Allied pilot to safety on her bicycle after an emergency landing near Leimuiden, close to Leiden.
Jan and Hélène met after the war when the NBBS (the travel agency for students) was re-established in Leiden and they were both working there. Hélène and Jan had five children, including Jolande.
Fig. 13. Hallway of Boerhaavelaan 6. The chair in front has a plaque at the back commemorating Winston Churchill who sat in this chair on 10 May 1946 when he received an honorary doctorate from Leiden University. Photograph courtesy Barge/Nauta family archive.
After the war, the house was returned to the family, and Prof. Barge also returned to Leiden. Fascinating is the film *Zes Jaren* (see Youtube) released in 1946 as a tribute to student resistance in Leiden against the German occupation. The name of Hélène Barge appears in the credits.
In the same film, it so happens, we also see a chair (or one of the two identical chairs), placed inside the house, which was used by Winston Churchill on 10 May 1946 when he received an honorary doctorate in Leiden (Figs. 12 and 13). This chair was borrowed from among the furniture of Boerhaave 6. Two identical chairs, with beautiful embroidery, still form part of the house's furniture.
Fig. 14. Small party other liberation and after the house had been returned to the family. From left to right: Thérèse Barge-Dreesmann, Major Manley, Hélène Barge, Colonel Evans Vaughn, town mayor?, Fred and Jim Barge (both standing), Ton Barge, Cliff Kennedy. Photograph courtesy Barge/Nauta family archive.
The Nauta-Barges
After the war and due to a housing shortage, the house became very crowded. Besides the parents—Ton and Trees—there was the still unmarried Fred and the families of Jim and Hélène. The fourth child, Suus, soon moved out. Ton Barge died in 1952, and his widow, Thérèse, moved out in 1956. She was a spirited woman who had always been active as a volunteer helping the poor and the blind. After her husband's death she left for Tanzania for a year, where she worked as a nurse, often under challenging conditions. For her children she wrote down some of her memories of her childhood and later life.
Fig. 15. Jan Nauta (1922-2013) and Hélène Nauta-Barge (1924-2023). Mrs Nauta-Barge lived at Boerhaavelaan 6 her entire life. Photograph courtesy Barge/Nauta family archive.The rooms in the house acquired ever-different purposes and occupants. For instance, the large en-suite room on the first floor was split into two bedrooms. On the ground floor, the en-suite space has always been divided into a sitting room at the front and a dining room with a conservatory at the rear. The sitting room was used for receptions and festivities, such as Sinterklaas evenings.
Fig. 16. The staircase of Boerhaavelaan 6, 2025. Courtesy Monumentenbezit.In the dining room stood an imposing cabinet with Chinese porcelain. Before the war, dinners were held there with white tablecloths, lots of silver, and table service. Later, space was created for table tennis and a TV corner. After Barge's death in 1952, his study at the back of the ground floor first became a family room for the Nautas and later the study for Jan Nauta.
The room next to the front door served for a time as a bedroom for grandmother Thérèse, featuring a life-sized painting of the Virgin Mary with Child. Later it became a ‘playroom’, sewing room, junk room, and medical library. This space was eventually used for many years by Jan Nauta, by then a grandfather and retired, as a workspace for the family archive that he kept at the very top of the house.
Fig. 17. The ground floor rooms at Boerhaavelaan 6, looking through the sitting room to the dining room. Photograph courtesy Monumentenbezit.Hélène always gave a lot of attention to the back garden, with its flower borders all around the large lawn. There was the garden pavilion, but also two gas lanterns that were removed from along the Rapenburg canal in the centre of Leiden. The sunken central section of the garden was once an ideal ice rink for the children (alhough not so very good for the grass).
In later years, Hélène would feed the seagulls in the garden. She really liked them, and they liked her. Eventually, all those seagulls would nest on the roof. The resulting disturbance (and filth) in the adjoining street was full-page news in the NRC, but although the journalist lived across the street, he never found out why the gulls were so much attracted to the area.
Jolande Calkoen, Hélène's daughter, adds:
Ultimately, the house was intensively inhabited by the Nautas for over 70 years, ever since they got married in 1949.
Because of the many memories—including, for example, ice skating in the garden, romantic dinners in the garden pavilion, and the many Sinterklaas evenings—saying goodbye was not easy for the four ‘children’ and twelve grandchildren of the Nautas. They searched for a long time for a dedicated new owner with an eye for the historical character of the property. The combination of Stichting Monumentenbezit and the TRC fully met that wish.
Fig. 18. The first main public event of the TRC at Boerhaavelaan 6 on 26 March 2026: The presentation of The Atlas of World Embroidery, written by the TRC director Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, to the Leiden Mayor, Peter Heijkoop.
The move to Boerhaavelaan 6 is nearly finished, just a few more weeks and all the rebuilding, painting, furnishing, packing and putting away of boxes will be over! A great relief to all.
