Just saw a history television program (VPRO Andere Tijden/Other Times) on the rise of the new type of elderly home in the Netherlands in the seventies of last century and remembered a reportage I wrote for our radical weekly newspaper (Amsterdams Weekblad) must have been 1972 on a sad old man who had been transported to the new pre-graveyard high rise structure, from the inner town to the outskirts of the city…. He was looking from his high rise coffin onto a high road serpentining to a grey horizon… Just checked the municipal archive for a photograph of that particular elderly home (Flevohuis) and found it. The picture illustrates the atmosphere perfectly… the Public Works photographer gave a visual clue by the black frame ribbon that goes with this historical document of Old age Apartheid in the Netherlands; the Welfare Home Lands for the elderly…. freeing young and productive families from the burden of having parents….
'TEHUISLAND FLEVO' (Elderly Home Country) at the border of the city, at the edge of a former cemetery. Fotoarchief van de Gemeentelijke Dienst Volkshuisvesting; eldery home Kramatweg, Indische Buurt (Indian neighbourhood pointing to the old Dutch East Indies) Amsterdam.
the limping messenger 
Yes, I remember the building and the old people in there who each made their own atmosphere inside their apartment. It was one of my first holiday-jobs when I was still very young. At lunch time most of these people went to the dining room at the end of the corridor. Some of them preferred to eat in their own space. They had a little square cabin which could be opened to put their meal inside as a helper but most of the people came to the dining room. I remember an old seaman who was a bit deaf. Inside his apartment it was always windy because he left the window open as much as possible. When he came to the dining room he always walked in the wrong direction. You describe it as a rise coffin, but as a student I was especially moved by the history of their lives which these people took with them inside the building. At each floor lived about 50 people, I think! I don’t know how many floors but count them, so you know many old people were inside this building and still are I suppose!
Amstelhof, looking at the Blauwbrug and Amstelriver: that’s where I wanted to end. But no, the Hermitage Museum took my place!!!.