Old slaughterhouse Aachen
The old slaughterhouse Aachen was an urban building complex of the city of Aachen for the slaughter of cattle for meat production. It was built between 1890 and 1894 on a spacious area in the northern district of Aachen in the area of today's Metzgerstrasse and Liebigstrasse in the neo-renaissance style with a connection to the Aachen industrial railway and expanded and supplemented in the years 1904 to 1906 and 1927 to 1930. In 2002 the abattoir was closed. The buildings, which were worthy of preservation, were then gradually and extensively restored and converted into commercial, office and event rooms. They have been a listed building since 2013 .
history
In the late Middle Ages , the slaughter in Aachen was the responsibility of the individual butchers, who, according to the First Aachen Gaffelbrief , had formed their own guild from 1450 onwards. In the 16th century, slaughtering was centralized and in 1585 the first official slaughterhouse was set up in Kockerellstrasse at number 17, as well as the central meat hall , also called hall antiqua or alde hall , on the corner of Kockerellstrasse and Jakobstrasse . Despite the proximity to the central market square, the cattle trade took place at the then pig market, which was located on the edge of the inner city wall on the site of the Kupferhof, built by Johann Gerhard Schervier in 1780, on the corner of Templergraben and Eilfschornsteinstrasse. When the Prussian administration in Aachen began in 1815, the city council decided to build a new butcher's hall between Hühnermarkt and Büchel, which was opened in 1820 and which was consequently referred to as the nova or nuwe hall . In return, the hall antiqua was torn down and in its place in 1829 the Gasthaus Eijene Keizer Karl was built by Adam Franz Friedrich Leydel . Due to the increased need for slaughter, a new slaughterhouse was built between 1839 and 1841, which was already based on the classic order of slaughterhouse architecture, based on plans by Friedrich Joseph Ark on the south side of Lindenplatz.
Massive hygiene problems and numerous cases of cholera in the second half of the 19th century, however, led to plans to move the slaughterhouse outside of the old city walls. In addition, there was still free space in the up-and-coming industrial area between Jülicher Strasse and Grüner Weg in Aachen's northern district, as it also had a modern infrastructure thanks to the Aachen industrial railway and the Aachen Nord train station . In 1877, the incumbent Aachen city master builder Josef Stübben was commissioned with the initial planning, who, after consulting the then specialist for slaughterhouse construction, Georg Osthoff , decided on a model that was based on the new slaughterhouse in Hanover . Under Stübben, who left Aachen in 1881, the plans were just as little implemented as under his successor Johannes Richter . It was not until Joseph Laurent , who followed Richter in 1886, and the government building officer Carl Heuser concretized Richter's designs, and the construction of the new slaughterhouse facility could be implemented between 1890 and 1894 in the designated industrial area. At the same time, the nova hall on the Büchel was replaced by the new Büchelpalais and the slaughterhouse on Lindenplatz by the chapel and other additions to the newly established neighboring Franziskus-Kloster in Paulusstraße.
The original complex of the new slaughterhouse consisted of the directorate and administration building, the porter's house, the restaurant and farm building with the attached machine hall, the large cattle market stall , two large and small cattle slaughterhouses, a pig and horse slaughter hall as well as the Kuttlerei with the fertilizer house, a cold store and a technical hall with a water tower for its own energy supply. The administrative director, who had to be a trained and specially qualified veterinarian, was responsible for the entire process at the slaughterhouse .
The slaughterhouse facility was designed so that, in addition to the usual meat processing, the hides and hides could also be used jointly, for which separate rooms were available for drying and salting the hides. In addition, a “ disinfector ” purchased by the Hermann Rohrbeck company from Berlin ensured that the meat of sick animals could be sterilized under steam pressure and at a temperature of around 120 degrees in a cooking process lasting several hours .
The slaughterhouse was supplied with electrical light from the technical hall, which was generated, among other things, by two dynamo machines, which in turn were powered by two steam engines. Two combined Cornwall tubular steam boilers from the neighboring company Piedboeuf supplied the necessary steam and hot water for the slaughterhouses and the Linde company equipped the cold store with an ammonia compression cooling machine, among other things .
Between 1899 and 1903, a factory settlement was built outside the facility for the employees of the slaughterhouse according to plans by Hermann Thelen. Subsequently, between 1904 and 1906, the slaughterhouses were renovated and equipped, in which animal species were to be separated and slaughtered using modern technology. In addition, the halls now used for the slaughter of calves, cattle and pigs received a connecting wing on their respective east side, the so-called transport hall, on the outer long side of which another cold store was built, which was partially rented to the butchers in Aachen. Meat slaughtered elsewhere was only allowed to be stored in the cold store if the premises were not used by the Aachen companies. The expanded storage capacities in the cold rooms of the new transport hall had become necessary because the ministerial decree of November 18, 1897 ordered the storage of meat for a period of 21 days under public control. The lease for such rooms was around 25 gold marks per square meter of the cold room per day.
After the First World War and further increased requirements, the city administration planned to expand and modernize the entire facility again. The plans for this were presented by Wilhelm Kreis at the GeSoLei in Düsseldorf in 1926 and parts of them were implemented between 1927 and 1930 according to plans by the city planning officer Wilhelm Kirchbauer . The focus here was on the construction of a new meat market hall, an arch hall as a meat collection hall and an imposing rectangular tower building attached to it, which served as a staircase and clock tower . Furthermore, a market hall for large cattle was added, which was supplemented by another wholesale market hall in 1938, as well as the construction of a block for the show office. In addition, in 1935 the Aachener Bank opened its first branch on the premises of the Aachen slaughterhouse. During the Second World War , the Aachen slaughterhouse was badly damaged by bombs and had to be rebuilt afterwards, with the rebuilding of the meat market hall, the second cold store and the wholesale market hall being dispensed with.
In 1977 the slaughterhouse was privatized by a municipal resolution with the votes of the CDU and FDP and against the conviction of the SPD and was run by the "Vieh- und Fleischversorgung Aachen e. V. ”, a cooperative with 130 members. After the official closure of the railway line to Jülich and Rothe Erde at the beginning of the 1980s, there were increasing transport problems, and the slaughterhouse was gradually distributed to other locations in the Aachen city region and finally closed in 2002. After the lease ended in 2007, the city of Aachen was able to dispose of the approximately 37,000 m² property again and, after some long-term planning, began selling the individual properties.
Characteristic
The Aachen slaughterhouse facility corresponded to the "French slaughterhouse type", which has developed since the enforcement of the slaughterhouse compulsory in France between 1807 and 1810 and was separated at the cattle yard and slaughterhouse and the actual slaughterhouse was carried out in separately arranged halls and operating buildings. In contrast, with the "German arrangement", all individual functions were housed in a coherent building complex around a central courtyard and the spaces in between and roofed over. For the Aachen facility, this meant that the cattle were initially taken into the large cattle market halls via the industrial railway siding in the Liebigstrasse area, of which only the calf market hall remains today. From there it was led through a large open courtyard into the individual slaughterhouses, which were separated according to animal species from 1904 onwards. Only the horse slaughter hall had a separate location outside the inner courtyard and access from Feldstrasse. In the northeastern area of the courtyard were the triplet and the fertilizer house, and on the southeastern narrow side between the administration and management building on the one hand and the canteen building on the other, the official main entrance with a porter's house in an island location, on whose roof turret a small clock was mounted.
The cold stores and the technical hall with the water tower as well as the boiler house with chimney and coal store for the steam engines were connected to the edge of the inner courtyard in the northeast. The extensions erected between the world wars, on the other hand, were built on an open area closer to the city in the southeast of the slaughterhouse in the area of the intersection of Feldstrasse and Metzgerstrasse. In this way, the buyer of the slaughtered goods was spared access to the inner slaughter area and he was able to view and make his purchases from the city side in the corresponding wholesale market and meat collection halls. At the same time, a representative design was used in the supplementary buildings from 1930 with the meat collection hall / arch hall and the city-facing clock tower in a smaller form that was otherwise reserved for town halls or train stations.
The cast-iron supports in the first-built halls and the concrete arched trusses in the newer meat collection hall play a special role in the history of construction. The supports, which were mostly used in multi- storey buildings in the textile industry and in warehouse construction , are mainly rolled profiles assembled into columns and trusses with rather unusual height dimensions. A special feature are the elegantly shaped bracket girders for connecting columns and beams .
The arched hall created by Kirchbauer, with its mighty reinforced concrete arched trusses, is one of the few secular examples of this expansive hall architecture still preserved, based on the Munich wholesale market hall designed by Richard Schachner . Their architectural style is based on the avant-garde and influenced by the cubic forms of the Bauhaus architecture and was an expression of a new bourgeois self-confidence during the Weimar Republic .
Listed buildings
Administration and management building
Metzgerstrasse 61 (formerly 20, location ): The administration and management building as well as the former headquarters of the "Landwirtschaftliche Viehverwertungs-Genossenschaft eGmbH" and the "Veterinary Office of the City of Aachen" is a two-storey brick building over three to six axes with rounded, single-axis house corners to Metzgerstrasse and to Distribution area and attached mansard roof . The two central axes with the small side entrances on the long sides are emphasized by a truncated triangular gable and the corner axis by a round gable, on which in earlier years there were double-curved peaks. The main entrance is on the courtyard side in the central axis of the narrow side of the building.
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The storeys are emphasized by a continuous cornice as are the sills of the wooden windows with a continuous artificial stone connection . Arched windows were installed in the lower storey, while rectangular windows in arched niches were used on the upper storey, framed by sand-lime brick. The facades are provided with house stone elements and artistically forged wall anchors in the style of the neo-renaissance.
In the extension of the long side there was once, separated by the main entrance to the slaughterhouse with the porter's house, the restaurant and farm building described on an old postcard as a restoration , which mirrored the management building in style and shape. There is only a parking lot here today. From the formerly adjoining machine hall ( marked as sal (l) e des machines on the old postcard ) only remnants of the historic street facade have been preserved, to which a new canteen building was added.
Calf market hall
Liebigstrasse (no number, location ): The calf market hall is behind the management building with direct access to the railroad track. It was originally built as a large cattle market stall, in which the cattle delivered were sampled and weighed before being distributed to the individual slaughterhouses. This is a two-storey brick building with a flat gable roof , with the hayloft on the inside. The double-leaf doors in the basement, as well as twin- segment arched windows on the side walls and narrow openings for ventilation of the haylofts on the upper floor are embedded in the front sides. The segment-shaped curved gable structures on the two front sides are striking, which are emphasized by a massive console cornice in the eaves and the shell-shaped ornamentation has been preserved on the northwestern structure . The recessed wall fields on the side surfaces of the front sides are crowned by curved arched friezes .
The interior of the hall was originally divided into four aisles with three rows of cast-iron columns and fitted with a cap on continuous sheet metal girders . As part of the renovation work to become a discotheque, a large part of the interior structure and the west gable were significantly changed, but without affecting the overall effect of the building.
Calf, cattle and pig slaughterhouses
Metzgerstrasse 60-66 ( location ): Of the three slaughterhouses originally built in the same style on the southeast side of the distribution area, only the western calf slaughterhouse is still almost completely preserved, while the neighboring cattle and pig slaughterhouses only partially, which, however, are listed during the renovation work were integrated. These are eight-axis brick buildings raised on a sandstone base with a flat gable roof. In the individual axes, pairs of windows combined with blind arches are embedded and the wedge stones of the courtyard-side segment arches are provided with animal motifs. In earlier years, the central axes of both front sides were each adorned with a massive gable structure in which an inscription stone was embedded with the information about the function of the hall.
The interior of the halls is divided into three aisles by two rows of cast-iron supports, with the slightly raised central nave having a glass strip for ventilation and lighting. The roof structure consists of solid wall girders over the side aisles and parallel lattice girders with strut trusses over the central nave. The side walls are clad with yellow bricks, which are decorated with patterns of red bricks.
In the course of the rear extension of the transport hall in 1904, which connects all three halls with one another, the rear facades were dismantled. Due to its overall appearance, the complex was henceforth called the “three-finger hall”.
Horse slaughterhouse
Feldstrasse 5 ( location ): The horse slaughterhouse is the smallest of the slaughterhouses, a six to two-axis rectangular brick block with a stepped front gable and an almost flat gable roof and was the first building to be erected outside the distribution point along Feldstrasse. The building is divided into two sections, with the front area with the large segment arched windows functioning as the actual slaughter wing and the rear area with the smaller window segments serving as a stable for up to twelve horses with a hayloft above. Here, too, the wedge stones of the segmented arched windows with their horse head motifs on the front narrow side indicate the earlier use of the hall.
Kuttlerei with manure house
Metzgerstraße 69 ( location ): Somewhat on the edge of the distribution point, the tripod and the fertilizer house stand perpendicular to each other, two smaller single-storey brick buildings erected on a quarry-stone base, which are connected to one another by an originally open arcade . The tri-axed narrow side of the Kuttlerei is oriented towards the inner courtyard, the elevated central axis of which is equipped with a lunette window that is now walled up , behind which the ventilation attachment is attached to the ridge of the flat gable roof. With the exception of the connection point to the fertilizer house, the façades have segmented arched window and door openings. Similar to the slaughterhouses, the internal construction consists of cast columns with curved consoles and solid wall girders.
The rectangular fertilizer house with its flat and strongly cantilevered gable roof, built on purlins, runs parallel to the street with its long side and is equipped on the eaves side with four smaller twin windows in segment-arched wall fields.
In the manure house, the entrails of the cattle were first emptied and then their contents were removed in lockable vehicles. The cleaned entrails were then taken to the trip factory, where they were scalded together with calves' heads and other organs in large vats that were located in the central part of the building and were heated with steam from the boiler house.
Water tower
At power supply tower 3 ( location ): The water tower was once part of the technology and boiler house and is a four-storey, rectangular brick building on a solid stone base with two axes on the narrow sides and three on the long sides. Its cantilevered tent roof is emphasized by means of purlin heads and sloping support pillars. The floors are structured with ashlar cornices and contain the technical room for power generation in the basement, the tanks for ammonia cooling on the first floor, the machinist's apartment above and two water tanks with a capacity of 200 m³ for cold and 25 m³ for warm water on the fourth floor. The lower three storeys in the front facade are combined with a continuous segmental arch-like blind arch, above which a round arch frieze with stepped brick consoles runs.
After the shutdown, only the water tower and the chimney behind the tower belonging to the boiler house have been preserved and restored, all other additions were replaced by modern office buildings.
Traffic hall
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Old slaughterhouse (no number, location ): The transport hall, together with the second cold store, was one of the first extensions from 1904. Its inner long side connected the three slaughterhouses with one another at their front sides. Its outer long side was connected to the new cold store, which had not been rebuilt after the Second World War. The elongated, two-storey-looking hall has an area of 70 x 15 meters and is 12 meters high and served as a protected loading ramp for the meat between the operating rooms and the transporters driving through the hall. The hall roof is made of corrugated iron, which is stretched over 14 sickle beams and in the course of which a lantern-like elevation with ventilation slots is placed as the roof ridge .
The two formerly identical narrow sides with their large arched openings, which are bordered by a large masonry arch that follows the course of the roof trusses and widens in a triangular manner towards the floor, are striking. In the lower course of the wall arches, five wedge stones made of natural stone are set evenly apart . Both the arches of the wall are emphasized by the two corner towers with their round-arched attachments and the round-arched central gable with its vertical plaster strips.
In the north facade, the arched opening is divided by two natural stone pillars with triangular attachments, which support the upper arched part of the gable made of a steel and glass construction. The southern facade, on the other hand, was designed in a modern way as part of the renovation work and equipped in the lower area with four entrance doors and above with a three-part arched window.
Show office
Metzgerstrasse 65 ( location ): The office building for the city of Aachen's show office was built in the course of the last expansion measures between 1927 and 1930 based on plans by Kirchbauer. This is a simple, rectangular two-story, three-axis brick building with the long side parallel to the street. In the unadorned facades, only the lintels are highlighted by vertically installed bricks. The side facades are provided with only a few narrow window openings, whereas transverse rectangular lattice windows are built into the axes . The three-leaf, almost square door in the central axis with its glazing adapts stylistically to this rung pattern.
Meat collection hall with clock tower
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Metzgerstraße 10 ( location ): Of the other buildings by Kichbauer, there is also the former meat collection hall, also known as the arch hall, and the clock tower that serves as a staircase, whereby the wholesale market hall, which no longer exists, was identical to the meat collection hall and was built parallel to it. Just like the aforementioned transport hall, the meat collection hall was also used to load the goods onto the vehicles.
The hall with the dimensions 65 x 18 meters and a height of 11 meters consists of brick outer walls on which the cement shell roof rests on nine reinforced concrete arched girders. The prominent end faces are presented to the hall and protrude beyond it so that the curves of the arch hall cannot be read in its facade. The large portal frames made of artificial stone, which are divided halfway up by horizontal lintel beams, above which vertical, slender, rectangular window openings are let into the facade, are dominant in the front ends. Equally striking and characteristic is the surface ornament with bulging cornices and headbands , which merges with the clock tower attached to the facade facing Feldstrasse.
The four-and-a-half-storey, brick-built, rectangular clock tower, which was the last building to be built in 1930 and under the same aspects as the arch hall, is characterized by a continuous ribbon of windows in the stairwell area, slot-like horizontal windows on the floors and three large clocks in the elevated tower corner area that open the small clock replaced the porter's house. The window and large double doors on the ground floor are framed with artificial stone and the entrance area is also provided with a horizontal roof.
The division inside the tower and the oversized staircase suggest that additional extensions such as a three-story office wing were planned. The outside area of the meat collection hall and the clock tower is bordered like a courtyard facing Metzgerstrasse and Feldstrasse with a brick wall, which is divided by pillars protruding beyond the wall . Wall and pillars are covered with artificial stone slabs.
Todays use
After completion of the restoration and renovation work on the listed buildings of the former slaughterhouse and the modern expansion, extension and new construction measures for commercial, office and event rooms tailored to the new users, several companies, mainly from the service industry, have settled in the properties.
Among other things, an office community from communication technology began its work in the management building in 2009, and the P3 engineering company has set up its headquarters in the former water tower since 2013 , and has had the arched hall without the clock tower for its measurement vehicles and as a conference center built since 2015. The calves covered market, which was acquired by the large-capacity nightclub Starfish were transformed into event spaces, and, among other things, the girls flea market and in the calf slaughter room Comiciade be held. A car workshop for classy racing cars has moved into the old pig slaughterhouse and the former cattle slaughterhouse, like most of the traffic hall, serves as space for various office communities, including a supraregional event manager. A carpenter's workshop, a window workshop, a restorer and other handicraft businesses have set up shop in the old Kuttlerei with the fertilizer house and in the horse slaughterhouse as well as in the show office.
The arch hall and clock tower were in the focus of RWTH Aachen from an early stage and were an independent project of the teaching and research area of monument preservation and building research at the university. Finally, the P3 Ingenieursgesellschaft took over the hall and had it prepared for its own purposes for around 4 million euros, before the Chair of Production Metrology and Quality Management of the Machine Tool Laboratory (WZL) also moved there in 2016 . The clock tower continues to serve as a staircase and offers small-scale usable areas for office communities.
In a broader sense, the Das-Da-Theater behind the water tower is also part of the Aachen slaughterhouse area, as well as several new commercial and office buildings that have recently been or are being built on areas of formerly destroyed buildings or on fallow land. The basis for this is a study of the “location and market analysis of the commercial areas Aachen-Nord” by the architecture office Kadawittfeldarchitektur in cooperation with the WZL, which focuses on the long-term planning for the structural change in the entire commercial area as well as the redesign of the infrastructure there over the funding period of the project Social city .
Web links
- Walter Buschmann: Aachen slaughterhouse. In: Rhenish industrial culture. Retrieved March 27, 2019 .
- Gabriele Harzheim: The old slaughterhouse in Aachen. In: Industrial Museum Maas-Rhein. Retrieved March 27, 2019 .
- Katja Laska and Belinda Petri: The old slaughterhouse: puzzle pieces. In: Klenke's city magazine. June 28, 2018, accessed March 27, 2019 .
- Marc Wietheger: Jump in time - clock tower and arch hall at the old slaughterhouse in Aachen. In: RWTH Aachen Monument Preservation Project. Retrieved March 27, 2019 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ 17. Addendum to the list of monuments in the area of the city of Aachen . Public announcement of the city of Aachen. March 19, 2013 ( aachen.de [PDF; 45 kB ; accessed on March 27, 2019]).
- ↑ Christian Quix : Historical-topographical description of the city of Aachen and its surroundings . DuMont-Schauberg, Aachen 1829, p. 108/109 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
- ^ Eduard Philipp Arnold : Residential buildings and public secular buildings in Aachen and the surrounding area . In: Albert Huyskens (Hrsg.): Aachener Heimatgeschichte . 1924, Chapter IV. Building history and art history ( aachener-geschichtsverein.de [DOC; 39 kB ]).
- ↑ Address Book entry Carl HEUSER. In: Historic Address Books. Retrieved March 27, 2019 .
- ^ Franziskuskloster Lindenplatz - history. In: Schervier Altenhilfe website. Retrieved March 27, 2019 .
- ^ Oscar Schwarz: Construction, establishment and operation of public slaughterhouses . Julius Springer, Berlin 1898, p. 245-246 ( digitized ).
- ^ Oscar Schwarz: Construction, establishment and operation of public slaughterhouses . Julius Springer, Berlin 1898, p. 385 ( digitized ).
- ^ Oscar Schwarz: Construction, establishment and operation of public slaughterhouses . Julius Springer, Berlin 1898, p. 183 ( digitized ).
- ^ Oscar Schwarz: Construction, establishment and operation of public slaughterhouses . Julius Springer, Berlin 1898, p. 231–232 ( digitized ).
- ↑ Katja Laska and Belinda Petri: The old slaughterhouse: puzzle pieces. In: Klenke's city magazine. June 28, 2018, accessed March 27, 2019 .
- ^ City of Aachen, Department 23, Real Estate Management (Ed.): New Potentials . Real estate report 2012. 2012, 3.1 Schlachthof, p. 16 ( aachen.de [PDF; 2.3 MB ; accessed on March 27, 2019]).
- ↑ Helmut Lackner: A bloody business - On the history of communal cattle and slaughterhouses . In: Walter Schuster, Maximilian Schimböck and Anneliese Schweige (eds.): Historical yearbook of the city of Linz 2003/2004 . Trauner Druck, Linz, p. 814 ( online (PDF) in the forum OoeGeschichte.at [accessed on March 27, 2019]).
- ↑ Leo Schmidt: Death in the cultural monument - the slaughter and cattle yard of the city of Karlsruhe. In: Journal der Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg p. 6. Retrieved on March 27, 2019 .
- ↑ Reinforced concrete halls from the 1920s in Aachen. Retrieved March 27, 2019 .
- ^ Walter Buschmann: Aachen slaughterhouse. In: Rhenish industrial culture. Retrieved March 27, 2019 .
- ↑ Old slaughterhouse: the arch hall becomes a light-filled office tower. In: Aachener Nachrichten. March 6, 2015, accessed March 27, 2019 .
- ↑ The market hall is supposed to revive the old slaughterhouse. In: Aachener Nachrichten. July 21, 2016, accessed March 27, 2019 .
- ^ Marc Wietheger: Jump in time - clock tower and arch hall at the old slaughterhouse in Aachen. In: RWTH Aachen Monument Preservation Project. Retrieved March 27, 2019 .
- ↑ Jan-André Meyer: Arched hall of the old slaughterhouse. Architectural firm Jan André Meyer, accessed on March 27, 2019 .
- ↑ New location in the arch hall officially opened. In: Press release from RWTH Aachen. September 23, 2016, accessed March 27, 2019 .
- ↑ Location and market analysis of the Aachen-Nord industrial area. (PDF) In: Final report by Kadawittfeldarchitektur. August 2016, accessed March 27, 2019 .
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