A DUTCH door is a truly Dutch invention. That’s why the name is used all over the world. In the US, everyone knows what you mean when you talk about a Dutch door, often pronounced in plural, Dutch doors, because of the two door parts. They are popular. So much so that you can buy Dutch door journals, with pages that have a top half that you can flip independently of the bottom one. And the tailgate of many SUVs has a window that you flip open while the bottom can remain closed. That, too, is called a Dutch door.
They go back to the Golden Age – just check out paintings by Jan Steen, Pieter de Hooch, Emanuel de Witte or Samuel van Hoogstraten, and some works by Rembrandt. Dutch doors had practical reasons. You let the fresh air in, but kept the dust out. You kept pets and small children inside, but allowed the sunlight from outside. Homes were narrow, especially in the cities, and in Holland many more people lived in cities than was the case in other countries. Any opening that would let in light was welcome.
FOR THE same combination of reasons, the Dutch also invented the double-hung or sash window, made of two parts the bottom half of which you can push up. Houses were often set on unsteady soil (hence the building of much of Amsterdam on wooden piles), therefore the higher you raised them, like those Dutch canal houses, the more weight became a factor. Large windows helped, because a window is much lighter than bricks. And in order to limit the effect of opening large window frames, which would go at the expense of the space in your room, those Golden Agers invented the sash window.
Both inventions were brought across the Atlantic and introduced in America. There they caught on immediately, and for good. The application of Dutch doors in barns was welcomed in particular, because they kept livestock outside or inside, but also because immigrants who built a farm always started with the barn first. The house came last, and all the while the family lived with the animals inside the barn. Letting in fresh air and light through the open top door was a kind of survival requirement.
Wherever you go in the US today, you will find the Dutch doors and the double-hung windows. The door in particular is debated in all sorts of pretty-living magazines on a daily basis, you can buy them off the shelf in every Lowe’s or Home Depot, and Walmart sells them too. They are not inexpensive, what with all the extra hinges and locks, and the insulating material between the two halves, but that doesn’t faze millions of families. Dutch doors continue to sell like hotcakes.
Dutch doors in a 17th-century painting by Pieter de Hooch.
