Straight out from the , a wooden walkway once ran 372 metres into the North Sea. The opened on the sixth of May 1901, designed by the Belgian engineer E. Wyhofski together with the Hague architect B. van Liefland, and carried on a steel frame of 318 piles. Hotel guests reached it by a private bridge over the boulevard, walked out above the waves and settled into deck chairs at the far end, where a pavilion served coffee and a band played.
The war ended all of that. In the spring of 1942 became a Sperrgebiet. The pavilion was turned into a store, anti-aircraft guns went up on the deck, and the occupiers cut a section out of the walkway and replaced it with a suspension bridge.
On the twenty-sixth of March 1943 the wooden structure burned. What survived the fire was dismantled soon afterwards, out of fear that the wreck would serve the Allies as a landing place or as a marker visible from the sea.
Scheveningen then spent eighteen years without a pier. The present one opened in 1961.
Sources. Story: Haags Gemeentearchief, beeldbank en krantenbank; Scheveningen Toen en Nu, dossier Wandelhoofd en Pier; Haagse Geschiedkundige Vereniging. Namen van de ontwerpers en de maatvoering nog te verifieren in het archief.
