Exhibition street

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The exhibition street in the direction of Praterstern

The exhibition street in Vienna is an avenue in the 2nd district of Vienna and runs from the traffic junction Praterstern eastwards to the intersection with the Vorgartenstraße at Elderschplatz . Its most prominent neighbors are the amusement park, popularly known as the Wurstelprater , and the Vienna Exhibition Center . The name of the street comes from the world exhibition held here in 1873 .

history

In the historical bird's eye view of the World Exhibition Grounds in 1873, the exhibition street runs to the right of the grounds, from the Praterstern to the Danube, in the direction from 11 a.m. to 5 a.m.
On the plan by Carl Graf Vasquez , around 1830, the street labeled KK Obere Prater runs from the Praterstern towards 2 o'clock and passes the Fireworks Square to the north of it
Police inspection Exhibition Street 44
The entrance to the Messe Wien on the Messeplatz, seen from the exhibition street
The subway station Messe-Prater on the Messeplatz, behind it the building at Expositionstrasse 53

After Joseph II opened the Vienna Prater to the general public in 1766, entertainment establishments and restaurants began to expand in what is now the Praterstern, a part of the area that will later become the exhibition street.

The street was laid out in the Imperial and Royal Upper Prater (as it was called in the Vasquez city ​​plan around 1830) as a connection between the then city and the Jägerzeile (today Praterstraße) to an area in the floodplains of the unregulated Danube , on the Johann Georg Stuwer from 1774 Spectacular fireworks showed. The square allocated to him by Maria Theresa's court in 1773 was soon called the Fireworks Meadow, the route leading there to the Fireworks Alley .

This name was retained until the street (the area was incorporated into Vienna in 1850 and now part of the Leopoldstadt district ) was given the official name Exhibition Street on December 18, 1872, in view of the neighboring World Exhibition in 1873 . Most of the traffic to and from the World's Fair was on the road.

Urban development was possible on the exhibition street when the Viennese regulation of the Danube from 1870–1875 had eliminated the previously constant threat of flooding. From the 1880s onwards, a new residential area was built on the north side of the street, in which Stuwerstraße, so named in 1898, was laid out parallel to Exhibition Street. Today the Grätzl between Expositionstraße and Lassallestraße is called the Stuwerviertel .

The Vienna Giant Ferris Wheel was opened south of the street in 1897 near the Praterstern , and is still one of the city's landmarks today. The Wurstelprater experienced its most successful years in the two decades before 1914, before the start of the First World War. In the area of ​​today's Venediger Au park , the amusement park extended back then (and until 1945) to the area north of the exhibition street. After the destruction that the area suffered in the Battle of Vienna in 1945 , the Wurstelprater facilities were only rebuilt on the southern side of the street.

buildings

On the north side of the street, east of the Venediger Au, there are six blocks of houses with front gardens, mostly with rental apartments.

The Wurstelprater is located on the south side of the street, followed by sports fields and access to the exhibition center (Messeplatz).

Nos. 3, 5 and 7 are late historic apartment buildings, No. 3 has a raised central bay window with a helmet crown, and No. 7 neo-Gothic elements.

The next blocks on the uneven side up to No. 39 also consist of such late-historic apartment buildings, but the facades were all simplified later.

No. 44 : Police Inspectorate. Since the world exhibition in 1873 a base of the kk security guard , the uniformed police, has been housed here, since 1874 under the name kk Polizei-Bezirks-Kommissariat Prater. The commissariat, to which the entire Prater area was assigned to the southern tip of the 2nd district, still existed in the early 1950s and was closed as a commissariat before 1963. The base now serves as a police station at Expositionstrasse .

No. 51 dates from 1904, but the facade was later simplified. It was built by Hans Schimitzek , who also had his studio there. The crowning of the ridge-like helmet is striking.

There are two created in the postwar period houses works of art: at # 49. A mosaic Calafatti and no. 53 a Sgriffito with Prater motifs and two lintels family of Franz Barwig d. J. .

traffic

On May 1, 1873, branching off from Lassallestrasse near Venediger Au, a section of the (private) horse tramway was opened in the exhibition street. (The 1873 World's Fair began here on the same day.) Ten years later, this route was linked to other horse-drawn tram routes on the Praterstern and led to the rotunda on Nordportalstrasse . In the summer of 1898, the line, now through Perspektivstrasse to the rotunda, was operated electrically from May 7th to October 30th. Then horse tram operation followed again until the construction and operating company for urban trams in Vienna definitely switched the route through the exhibition street to electrical operation on November 23, 1901.

Tram line A at Elderschplatz, 1977

The tram lines A (until 1913 A R ) and A K ran through the exhibition street from 1907 to 1981 . Both circled the old town on Ringstrasse and Franz-Josefs-Kai (line A first over the ring, line Ak first over the quay) and then led over the Aspernbrücke and through Praterstrasse to Praterstern and into exhibition street. Both lines had their terminus on Elderschplatz at the eastern end of the exhibition street. Until 1966, the trains on lines A and A K departed from the terminus of lines B and B K at Reichsbrücke or in the 22nd district and had their terminus, driving out of town, on exhibition street. With the two B-lines it was the other way round; therefore they drove on the exhibition street into town until 1966.

This was followed by trains with the line signals 1 (Ring – Kai – Stadlauer Brücke , until 1986) and 21 (Praterstern – Stadlauer Brücke, until 2008).

At the beginning of May 2008, the U2 subway line was extended into Exhibition Street, under which it serves the Messe-Prater station. Line 21 was closed on May 9, 2008, and the tram tracks were subsequently removed.

gallery

  • The beginning of the street at the Praterstern

  • The Wurstelprater (left) and the Venediger Au (right)

  • At Wohlmutstrasse

  • At the Messeplatz, on the left is the Messe-Prater underground station

  • The end of the street at Vorgartenstrasse

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Schimitzek. In: Architects Lexicon Vienna 1770–1945. Published by the Architekturzentrum Wien . Vienna 2007.
  2. ^ Walter Krobot, Josef Otto Slezak, Hans Sternhart: Tram in Vienna - the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow , Verlag Josef Otto Slezak, Vienna 1972, ISBN 3-900134-00-6 , p. 299 ff.
  3. ^ Helmut Portele: Collection "Wiener Tramwaymuseum". Vehicle maintenance, documentation and operating museum, self-published Wiener Tramwaymuseum, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-200-01562-3 , p. 956 f.

literature

Web links

Commons : Exhibition Street  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 48 ° 13 ′ 4.1 ″  N , 16 ° 24 ′ 5.3 ″  E