Het Grote Huis – the egg auction

The house is of great cultural and architectural-historical value as it is a well-preserved – and, in Landsmeer, rare – example of distinguished 19th-century rural architecture. The building, now a listed monument, still contains an original period room with a marble fireplace.

Originally, beneath the house – known in Landsmeer as ‘Het Grote Huis’ – there were egg pits capable of storing one million eggs. Notable residents included S.S. Goede, nicknamed Meester de Wit, and Piet Goede – better known as Pietje Plastic or Piet van Lohman.

From 1900 onwards, this place was the centre of the Landsmeer egg trade. The biscuit and rusk industry in the Zaan region took a keen interest in the Landsmeer poultry farms; they were particularly interested in duck eggs. As cold stores did not yet exist, people sought ways to preserve the eggs so that they could be sold when the price was favourable.

Initially, they were dipped in linseed oil to seal them off from the outside world. This improved their shelf life, but it was a very laborious and time-consuming process. A better method was to immerse the eggs in lime water. The lime sealed the pores of the eggshell, so that the egg, provided it remained in the lime water, could be kept for a long time.

Whilst only three and a half million eggs were traded in 1879, twenty years later the figure had risen to eighteen million, and by 1908 more than thirty million eggs were being traded. In the years that followed, these figures grew ever larger, and an egg auction was even established.

Nowadays, hardly any trace remains of the vast industry that existed a century ago. There is just one egg-processing company left in Landsmeer: Adriaan Goede B.V. At this world-leading company – founded in 1895 – three million eggs are processed every day.