Rotterdam
the chief port and second city of Holland; on the Nieuwe Maas or Meuse, at its junction with the Rotte; about 14 miles from the North Sea, with which it is also directly connected by a ship canal (Nieuwe Waterweg) admitting the largest vessels and not interrupted by a single lock. The town is intersected by numerous canals, which permit large vessels to moor alongside the warehouses in the very center of the city. These canals, which are crossed by innumerable drawbridges and swing bridges, are in many cases lined with rows of trees; and the handsome quay on the river front, 14 miles long, is known as the Boompjes ("little trees"), from a row of elms planted in 1615 and now of great size. Many of the houses are quaint edifices, having their gables to the street, with overhanging upper stories. The principal buildings are the town hall, court houses, exchange, old East India House, Boymans' Museum, containing chiefly Dutch and modern paintings, and the government dockyards and arsenal, besides the numerous churches, of which the mos conspicuous is the Groote Kerk, or Church of St. Lawrence (15th century).
The Groote Markt has a statue of Erasmus, a native of the town; and there are fine parks and a large zoölogical garden. Rotterdam contains shipbuilding yards, sugar refineries, distilleries, tobacco factories, and large machine works; but its mainstay is commerce.
It not only carries on a very extensive and active trade with Great Britain, the Dutch East and West Indies, and other transoceanic countries, but, as the natural outlet for the entire basin of the Rhine and Meuse, it has developed an important commerce with Germany, Switzerland, and Central Europe. The Maas is crossed by a great railway bridge and another for carriages and foot-passengers. Rotterdam received town rights in 1340, and in 1573 it obtained a vote in the Estates of the Netherlands; but its modern prosperity ROTTI has been chiefly developed since 1830.
Pop. (1919) 506,067.