These two buildings are named "fanther and son"
Throughout the year Amsterdam is one of Europe's foremost architecture and design city, not only because of 17-th century rings of canals. Amsterdam is where modern architecture developed organically between facades of historical buildings. Since it is not a very big city, all sites of interest are within acceptable distance, this is why Amsterdam is so popular with lovers of architecture.
The old centre was formed by rings of canals with unique mostly 17th century residences of wealthy merchants, financiers, craftsmen, doctors, lawyers, politicians and artists. Because of lack of space, these houses were mostly narrow, not more than 30ft wide (9 meters). They are are characterized by big narrow windows, decorative gable tops, very narrow stairs inside and pulley outside to transport larger objects to upper floors. Very often the residences served also as businesses. Merchant’s houses had their storage in attics and cellars. Sometimes the lift was installed in the middle of the house plan, to transport the goods between floors. The office of the merchant was usually on the ground floor. Like in Venice the canals were the main way of transporting the goods.
The interesting fact is that all houses and buildings were so nerrow built due to lack of the space so the staircases were so steep that they couldn't fit the dimentions of the furniture or goods moved in and out. In this cases the origianl old Amsterdam houses have a spetial gilder on the "ginger" facade of the building closer to the roof. This gilder surved the held a rope by which the furniture wre lifted up and down the building! Now these gilders are left to be a historical attraction on the houses facing the ring canals of Amsterdam
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