The Louwman Museum in the Hague, the national automobile museum of the Netherlands, recently opened a new home that’s in a parklike area of the city, amid villas and next door to the royal palace.
It comes as no surprise that the museum has the largest museum collection of Spykers. But Americans will note that the first car of what became a collection of more than 230 was a 1914 Dodge and that the museum includes a Chrysler Town and Country, a Cadillac that belonged to Elvis and a 1922 American LaFrance Aerial Type 31/6 hook and ladder fire truck.
Piet Louwman was an importer who specialized in bringing Dodges to Holland. He bought his first collectible car, that 1914 Dodge, in 1934. In later life, he grew obsessed with very early cars and traveled the world in search of them; the collection includes an 1887 De Dion Bouton & Trépardoux that the museum describes as the second-oldest car in the world. Louwman’s son Evert continued to build the collection and has presented it to the people of the Netherlands.
The new building was designed by Michael Graves & Associates. The principal in charge of the design, Gary Lapera — the Graves firm has designed more than 350 buildings? — said the neighborhood was a crucial consideration.
Mr. Lapera, the building’s designer and a principal and studio head for Michael Graves, said, “We were greatly influenced by the character of the historical and physical context, and endeavored to give this institution a presence with a unique sense of place.”
The Graves firm is noted for its adaptation and revival of historic forms. The three-story building includes 108,000 square feet of exhibition space. The museum takes the steep Dutch A frame roof as its key element, rendering it in brick in a woven pattern accented with stone details and surmounted by a slate roof. The steep roof, Mr. Lapera said, makes the building appear smaller, less institutional and more domestic, in a gesture to its neighbors.
The building’s central space, called the Great Hall, is? large and arched over with a wooden, coffered ceiling. Smaller rooms are attached to it, and the cars are divided by racing, luxury and other categories. The museum is in an equally stately park, with ranks of trees and tall hedges, designed by the landscape architects Lodewijk Baljon.
The Louwman collection was first displayed in the town of Leidschendam in 1968. It moved to a larger building in Raamsdonksveer in 1981 before the current facility was built. While its words are restricted to Dutch, its images of the cars include such delightful novelties as the Brooke Swan Car of 1910.
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