Hofjes: a communal garden behind the gate
Behind a narrow gate in Haarlem or Leiden lies a garden surrounded by small houses. That garden is not an extra. It is the hof itself.
The word hofje comes from hof: garden or courtyard. The form of housing grew out of charity. Small houses around an inner courtyard, founded through a will, often for poor older women of a particular faith. Hendrick de Keyser describes the garden as architecture: pump, lantern, sundial, benches. Laundry belonged on a separate bleaching ground, not in the ornamental garden. Privies and a peat shed stood around the same courtyard. Regents managed the money. The women who lived there shared the green space.
Haarlem still has dozens of hofjes. The Hofje van Bakenes, dating from 1395, is regarded as the oldest surviving one in the Netherlands. Leiden preserves a series dating from the late Middle Ages; the Sint Anna Aalmoeshuis retained its chapel. Before the seventeenth century, the houses stood in a row or U-shape; afterwards, the square arrangement around the garden became the norm. Windows faced inward. The street side remained closed. Some hofjes were rebuilt elsewhere after demolition, such as Codde and Van Beresteyn in Haarlem: the old houses near Stationsplein disappeared in the 1960s, and in 1969 a new combined hofje with a shared garden opened beside the Nieuwe Bavo.
What looks like a quiet oasis was social care built in stone. The communal garden turned separate rooms into a household. Access varies from one hofje to another; current opening arrangements are determined by the manager, not by any permanent right of access for walkers.
See whether the windows open only onto the garden: if so, the hofje is enclosed within a city block.