These days I have been chatting with some friends and former colleagues about the head-office of the AMRO-Bank (first: Amsterdamsche Bank) on the Rembrandtsplein. See also the former post. These chats were about the usage of the head-office.
When Amsterdamsche Bank merged with Rotterdamsche Bank, the two former head offices were both called main-bank (hoofdbank). So there was a hoofdbank Amsterdam and hoofdbank Rotterdam. The board of AMRO resided in the office at the Rembrandtsplein, until 1987 when they moved to the South-East part of Amsterdam. And from that moment on, the directors premises in the buildings remained unused. People sometimes were taken up with the special board-members elevator in the Parking, to the directors floor. And the reason that the floor wasn't used, was because it was considered inappropriate for personnel other than directors to re-use the former board-room floors/offices.
So then, in 1990 ABN and AMRO were merging to become ABN AMRO bank. But both of the two banks wished their headquarters to become the headoffice of the new merger bank ABN AMRO. But as they didn't give in, a compromise was found by re-using the former office floors of the AMRO-Bank at the Rembrandtsplein. And when in due time, the decision was made to build a fully new head office at the South-side of Amsterdam (Zuidas), the board could then agree to move the headoffice of ABN AMRO to the AMRO building in South-East Amsterdam (Bijlmer).
