Glaspaleis (1935)
- For more on the building and its architecture see Glaspaleis
As the business grew, Peter started looking for ways to expand even more and in 1927 commissioned architect Henri Dassen to design a temporary wooden annex at the market square. This was not implemented, but both Arnold and Peter had been buying land and houses between the shop and the market square. This included the so-called 'dirty corner' ('vuil hoekje') at the corner of Bongerd and Church Square, and the City had been complaining for five years that it needed to be cleaned up. When the surrounding fence blew over in a storm in 1932, exposing the dirty corner, the City gave Peter an ultimatum; build something or have it disowned. Thus, the decision to build was speeded up, resulting in the Glaspaleis ('Glass Palace' or 'Crystal Palace') in 1935, a very modern building, certainly for Heerlen at the time, built entirely out of steel and concrete, with a freestanding glass encasing.
Peter Schunck had visited several department stores throughout Europe to find inspiration. He was most inspired by the architecture of a department store in Nantes, France, 'Les Grands Magasins Decré' by Henri Sauvage (1932), and thus the building was built in Bauhaus-style by architect Frits Peutz. Work started on 14 May 1934 and the official opening as Modehuis Schunck ('Fashion house Schunck') took place on 31 May 1935, but it was soon nicknamed Glaspaleis, which is now the official name.
During the opening, which drew 2000 visitors, the personnel offered a buste of Arnold Schunck. (In 1949, for the 75 year anniversary, they would offer another buste, of Peter Schunck.) Peter Schunck stressed that this was not a warehouse, because Schunck would stick to its core business and not introduce new products (as was done later in the 1964 store, not too successfully).
The purpose of the hypermodern, functional building was to create an atmosphere of a market, with all goods (cloth, clothes, carpets and beds) exposed in the shop instead of back in the stock-room, a rather revolutionary idea at the time. As, before, the shopping windows of the old shop had been. Heerlen was still a rather provincial town at the time and when at one time some mannequins stood there unclothed that caused a bit of a scandal. This shopping-window idea was taken to the extreme in the new building. The result was a structure of stacked and covered 'hanging' markets, protected against the elements by the free standing glass encasing. The idea was to create a stacked market, like the market in front of it, but protected against the weather (at the time, traders at the market didn't even use covered stands - everything was just placed on the floor). For the arrangement of the displays, Alexander Ludwig, a famous window-dresser from Cologne, was hired.
Also controversial was the idea to undertake a project of this scale during the Great Depression, which was criticised by the then Minister of Finance Verschuur, saying that "Only a madman could put up a building like that during a depression. It is a foolhardy undertaking". In keeping with this line of thinking, the working week in the State Mines was reduced from six to four days. But Schunck's reasoning was the exact opposite. His reply was that this was exactly the right time for such an enterprise because the demand for employment was high, so labour was cheap. And it was a stimulus to the economy (a line of thinking that would one year later be promoted by John Maynard Keynes in a book that would make this a worldwide standard of economics for the decades to come). This expanded department store was the first incentive to Heerlen becoming the shopping centre for the southern half of the province of Limburg.
The Glaspaleis ('Glass Palace' or 'Crystal Palace') is named after its free-standing glass encasing on three sides (North, East and West), with natural ventilation thanks to the 50 cm gap between the floors and the glass, combined with the coordinated opening of certain windows. Not counting the two cellars, the building has eight floors, including a two-floor penthouse for the family with nine children (although only four ever actually lived there), with a roof terrace for the public. At the time it was (apart from the church tower) the tallest building in Heerlen (it was even called a 'skyscraper' in a 1949 newspaper article, even though it was 'only' 27 m high), and from the penthouse the Schunck family could see Aachen, 20 km away, burn at the end of World War II.
Because of its modernity it scared some people off, such as farmers, who were good customers (buying cloth in large batches to make their own clothes). So the old shop was kept open for them and their business went on as usual, with the shopkeeper fetching cloth 'from the back', except that now it often came not from the back but from the Glaspaleis.
A problem arose when Peter was buying the few houses at the planned location for the Glaspaleis at the 'Bongerd' (the market square). Department store chain V&D, who had opened a store right next to the site, to the West, five years earlier, bought one of the houses at the opposite (East) side of the location (Logister's umbrella shop) to hamper his efforts, but Peter solved this by simply building around it. V&D never made use of the house, which was located in between the old shop and the new Glaspaleis, leaving it to decay. It remained an eyesore until well after World War II. Schunck only managed to buy it in 1960, for the exorbitant price of 2,000,000 guilders. At that point, Schunck owned the entire block and was planning further expansion there.
Another longlasting dispute arose over the space between the Schunck-block and V&D, where both Schunck and the City wanted to make a passage, connecting the Emma square and Bongerd. The City had agreed to this after Schunck offered to pay for it. V&D had also taken it into account when it built its store and talks between Schunck and V&D were initially fruitful, but when Schunck built the Glaspaleis, V&D tried to hamper those efforts too, resulting in a longlasting court case over the ownership of the sewer and former canal under it (both the Bongerd and Emma square used to be waterways). Schunck finally won this in 1961. When shortly after that the houses to the south (including the old shop) were torn down, the Glaspaleis became completely free standing. For more on how the Glaspaleis fared after that, see Glaspaleis#Decay and renovation.
Ironically, when Schunck had finally achieved the goals of buying Logister's old shop and getting the passage, the City started a new project to the west, the Promenade and persuaded Schunck to expand there instead (see below).
In 1940, Peter Schunck set up a clothing factory in Heerlen at Geleenstraat 73 in a former mill (and consequently named 'De Molen') under the name Schunck's Kleding Industrie Limburg (SKIL). This factory focused on work clothes for the miners, but during the war also manufactured clothes for people in hiding and even had a Jewish manager, who lived in hiding in the attick.
When World War II came, Peter saw he had a potential problem, still having German citizenship, which was not unusual in this city so close to the German border. So he quickly naturalised himself and his son Pierre to Dutch citizenship. During the war Pierre Schunck was leader of the Valkenburg resistance (which he started). During the war bombs destroyed the glass windows three times, the last time at new year '44/'45, when the Glaspaleis served as headquarter for general Patton. It was later also used by the French resistance group the Maquis. The blemishes remained visible until years after the war. Each time the glass was replaced, but after the last bombing that lasted until 1949. After the war, the Glaspaleis was also used to sell 'relief clothing' at cost.
Read more about this topic: Schunck, Peter Schunck and The Glaspaleis (1905)