Qualla: H. J. Lovink Pumping Station

H. J. Lovink Pumping Station: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Apdency, CC0. Above the front door of the H. J. Lovink Pumping Station, a row of terracotta tiles tells the central story of Dutch land: a farmer on one side, a fisherman on the other, both reaching across a dyke to shake hands. The piece is called Land en Water - "Land and Water" - and the artist, J. M. Roosenburg, was the son of the architect who designed the building. Her tableau is not just decoration. It is a thesis statement, glazed white on brown, mounted above the entrance to a building whose entire reason for existing is to keep one of these two figures from drowning the other. When Lovink Station first ran its pumps in September 1956, the fisherman was still winning.

Image: Apdency | CC0

H. J. Lovink Pumping Station: The Civil Servant

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wauteurz, CC BY-SA 4.0. Hermanus Johannes Lovink - born in Terborg in Gelderland in 1866, died in The Hague in 1938 - was not an engineer like Hendrik Wortman. He was an agriculturalist and an administrator, and the institutions he led shaped the modern Dutch countryside. In 1891 he became deputy direct...

Image: Wauteurz | CC BY-SA 4.0

H. J. Lovink Pumping Station: Modernism on the Veluwemeer

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A. J. van der Wal, CC BY-SA 4.0. Construction began in 1954 to a design by Dirk Roosenburg, who also designed the Wortman station up the dyke and whose architectural lineage runs forward into Dutch modernism's most influential firms. The building is composed of three rectangular blocks: a long horizontal engine ...

Image: A. J. van der Wal | CC BY-SA 4.0

H. J. Lovink Pumping Station: Pumping the Polder

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mezelf14, CC BY-SA 3.0. The engines were installed by March 1956, and the Lovink began full operations in September of that year. Together with the Colijn station at Ketelhaven and the H. Wortman station in Lelystad, the Lovink helped drain East Flevoland, officially declared dry on 27 June 1957. Its tw...

Image: Mezelf14 | CC BY-SA 3.0

H. J. Lovink Pumping Station: First Monument of the New Land

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Flevoland_seen_from_the_plane.jpg: Marieke Kuijjer derivative work: Teofilo (talk), CC BY-SA 2.0. On 13 December 2010, the Lovink Station was declared a rijksmonument - a Dutch national monument. The Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed cited four reasons: the station's historical importance to the reclamation of the Flevopolder, its architectural value as a clear example o...

Image: Flevoland_seen_from_the_plane.jpg: Marieke Kuijjer derivative work: Teofilo (talk) | CC BY-SA 2.0