Amsterdam is world famous for its historic buildings and its canals. The down-town area of Amsterdam has been placed on the Unesco World Heritage list since August 2010.
Our beautiful canal building dates back to 1590. If it could talk, it could share many stories about its owners, renters and residents. Through archive research we discovered many of those beautiful stories and will share some on this page.
The canal alongside our building dates back to the end of the 15th century. It stood at the border of Amsterdam. Houses on the other side of the canal were built first, on the side of Hotel Nes were mostly fields. The first houses on our side were built of wood - in case of imminent danger, they could be torn down to fight the enemy.
The foundation of our building probably dates from 1590.
In 1697 the Russian tsaar Peter the Great visited Amsterdam. The mayor organised a banquet for him that ended with a fireworks show on the water in front of our building.
Source of the picture: Our canal during winter, painting by Jacob Cats - 1783
Before 1880 our building consisted of two seperate buildings that were owned by norary Jacobus Mulder.
Mulder commissioned architect Isaac Gosschalk to make a plan for the two buildings to become one. The work was finished in 1880, that's why you'll see 1880 in the top of our facade.
Source of the picture: postcard from the collection of Hotel Nes, sent before 1905
Samuel Glasoog, aka Sam Kingsley, was a boxer who was well known in the first two decades of the 20th century. He lived in our building from January 1930 until his death in July 1933.
Samuel and his wife ran hotel 'Kingsley', which was very close to our building; at number 121.
The last years of his life Samuel was blind, possibly due to an injury sustained in his boxing career. His name was Glasoog which translates to "glass eye"...
Source: Magazine De Revue der Sporten, September 8th, 1924
During the Second World War part of our building was rented to Heinrich Deckstein, a German man, and his Jewish Dutch wife Betje Schaap. They ran a pension starting in 1934, and rented rooms to Jewish people who worked on the Waterloo Square market.
On the ground floor was the office of Arie de Vries, a realtor from The Hague. When De Vries was summoned to report for work in Germany he refused and went into hiding with his three year old daughter in the attic of our building.
"The man who swindled Goering" - master forger Han van Meegeren purchased our building in 1944 from Arie de Vries. After the death of Van Meegeren in 1947, his heirs sold the building back to De Vries.
In 1952 Gosling Dijkstra rented the building and started hotel Bego. The name was a combination of the first names of his wife and himself; Berta and Gosling.
In december 1957 the hotel was sold and it became hotel 'Warner'.
In 1964 the Beatles came to the Netherlands and stayed in the Doelen Hotel which is still located across the street from our hotel. When the press found out they booked all the canalside rooms in hotel Warner so they could take the best pictures of the Beatles from their windows.
In 1985, Elias Shaya and his mother Hanina Shaby purchased the building from Mr. Warner and rebuilt and remodeled it and designed the current layout. Hotel Nes opened its doors in April 1988 and is currently run by the sons of Elias and Esther Shaya.