Aachen eye hospital
The Aachener Augenheilanstalt , also an ophthalmic hospital in the Rhineland, was a hospital built in the years 1887/88 according to a design by the architect Eduard Linse in Aachen , Stephanstraße 16-20, which is now used as a youth home. The historic building is a listed building .
history
The foundation stone of the new provincial ophthalmic institute for the administrative district of Aachen was laid at the end of April 1887. Before that, the ophthalmic institute had been opened in 1879 in Aachen's Sandkaulsteinweg No. 3 with 26 beds. The conditions there and the increased medical need finally brought about a reorientation on the initiative of the chief ophthalmologist Louis Alexander (1838–1897). Then the Aachen architect Eduard lens created the design for a new building according to modern and with a capacity for 66 beds and also had the overhead line held in the execution while A. Henrisch as foreman was working on site. The new building was financed with an amount of 60,000 gold marks from the Aachen Association for the Promotion of Labor . At the end of October 1888, the ophthalmic hospital was officially opened.
During the First World War , the house served as an emergency hospital. After the number of occupants subsequently declined due to competition from other eye clinics, the Provinzial-Augenheilanstalt was initially taken over by the city of Aachen in 1924 and finally incorporated into the city's Elisabeth Hospital in Goethestrasse in 1935 under the direction of Peter Geller.
Today the building in Stephanstrasse houses the Open Door (OT) facility - Carl Sonnenschein , youth home for the parish of St. Jakob in the city of Aachen. The rooms are also used for celebrations of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen .
description
The architect's design idea was a temple complex as a secular building to present the ophthalmology . The function of the building could be read from the inscription AUGENHEILANSTALT, which is no longer present .
Lens had adjusted the house to the straight line of the street . The building object included a 900 m² landscape architecture with garden art in the form of a circular path, green areas and tree planting. In contrast to the rather simple building design, the landscape architecture was designed in a picturesque Rococo manner. Because of the shortness of the property, the ten meter long front garden was not built. The hospital rooms faced northeast to protect the eye patients from extreme sunlight. Benches were placed in the three meter wide corridor in front of the hospital rooms on the upper floors. The examination and treatment rooms as well as the administration were on the ground floor, the operating rooms at the top of the building.
The floors of the three-storey building have a height of 4.65 m on the ground floor and in the utility area, 4.55 m on the first floor for male patients and the second floor for female patients. On the third floor, next to the operating theaters, were the dry storage and attic rooms. The building has a basement with a basement. Of the seven axes, three are designed in the shape of a risalit with a cant and a central entrance. The depth from the risalit to the back is about 50 cm. A narrow tympanum field over a row of brackets, corner and ridge acroteries crown the risalit. The utility area had a separate entrance on the first left axis.
The first and second storey have bricks and contemporary Greppin clinker brick as exposed brickwork, the facing brick . The yellow and red color of the bricks enabled a band-like pattern on the facade. Linse used this ornamental design especially on the ground floor, which ends with an elongated hexagon frieze on the first floor. The third floor is made of red Kyllburg sandstone without facing, as are the cornices, window and door frames. The third floor is designed with twin windows and a central column with a Hellenistic partial channel . At the edge of the roof it ends with a row of brackets. The second floor has straight lintel cuboids, the first arched windows . At the rear, the risalit is lower. The back of the first floor each had a loggia , the second had an open terrace .
The main staircase was made of refractory iron and granite steps. The arched hallways were with terrazzo - mosaic decorated. Oak straps parquet covered the floors. Gray-green glue or oil paint was found in the sick rooms and in the examination rooms. The assistant doctor's living room, the senior doctor's private room and the board of trustees meeting room were wallpapered. The electric bell system and speaking pipes were used for communication within the house.
The central heating and ventilation system with a license-free small low-pressure steam boiler came from the company Bechem & Post in Hagen . It had to be stoked and topped up with coke once a day . To the heating system were on the premises Radiators made of cast iron . There was also a disinfection device from the Cologne company Arnoldi & Wiedemann in the basement . The patients' rooms, which were lit with gas light, were fitted with roller blinds that ran in galvanized iron frames to dampen the light . The drinking water was supplied via a municipal water pipe. The washing water was taken from a rain cistern .
List of monuments
In 1977 the Rhineland State Conservator made an entry in the list of monuments :
- “Former Eye Clinic Now Youth Welfare Office, Stephanstrasse 16-20
- 1878 to E. Lens;
- 3-storey brick building in 7 axes, with a 3-axis gabled central projection, late classicist decorative shapes. "
Rear
cross-section
Basement
ground floor
First and second floor
Garden architecture
literature
- Eduard Linse: The new ophthalmic institute for the Aachen administrative region. Honnefeller, Aachen 1888.
- Helmut Adolf Gottfried Erbstößer: The history of ophthalmology in Aachen , Diss.med., RWTH Aachen, 1969
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ List of monuments Aachen (PDF; 129 kB)
- ↑ Notices from the Berlin State Library ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Holger A. Dux : Aachen from A to Z. Aschendorff, Münster, 2003: Augenheilanstalt, Aachen Association for the Promotion of Labor.
- ↑ State Conservator Rhineland: List of Monuments. 1.1 Aachen city center with Frankenberg quarter. With the participation of Hans Königs, arr. v. Volker Osteneck. Rheinland Verlag Cologne, 1977, p. 22.
Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 13.8 " N , 6 ° 4 ′ 44.8" E