Photo: CJ Wouda HUA
Erik Tigelaar has spent years researching street names in Utrecht. This resulted in the Utrecht street names book, published last year. A short article about one of the streets from the Utrecht street names book regularly appears on Utrecht.nieuws.nl. This time the ABC street.
The ABC Street was constructed in or shortly before 1392. This is evident from a deed dated February 13, 1392 in which the goldsmith Johan Die Gruter declares that he has received a long lease from the chapter of Oudmunster ‘a homestead as shown in the Nywestrate, stretching from ford to after aen der Oudellen, above that Jacob van Scalwijc is closest…and below that street that is now ghemaect there’. On the back of this deed it was later noted: Leyenborch on the corner of the ABC straet’.
This makes it certain that this deed concerns the current Lange Nieuwstraat and ABC Street.
The street was probably later named Grutersstege after this Johan die Gruter or his descendants. A deed from 1471 mentions a house ‘in die Grutersstege’. It is likely that this refers to the current ABC Street, because it was referred to several times as Gruytersstraet in the sixteenth century. The street first appeared under its current name in the 1580s. In the neighboring speech book she is mentioned in 1481 as ‘die AB straet’ and in the castle master’s account for 1485/86 she appears as ‘die ABC straet’. The street has carried this name ever since.
The origin of this name is still unknown. The street may owe its name to a house called ‘the ABC’. At least in the seventeenth century, this was not an unusual house name.
Also read:
Street names: Smakkelaarsveld
Street names: Hanengeschrei
The Broeder Alarmstraat
