District government Düsseldorf (building)

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District government building
Frontal view

The district government building at Cecilienallee 1–2 in Düsseldorf - Pempelfort was built in the neo-baroque style between 1907 and 1911 according to plans by Traugott von Saltzwedel and inaugurated on October 19, 1911. Established at the time as the representative seat of the Royal Prussian Government in Düsseldorf , the building is now the headquarters of the Düsseldorf District Government, a state middle authority of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia .

Preliminary work

For the representative building that became necessary for the Düsseldorf government, a construction site of around 22,500 m² was excavated on Cecilienallee near the banks of the Rhine. Machine halls for the industrial, commercial and art exhibition of 1902 were located at this point. In order to ensure that the compact structure stood securely, the civil engineers chose a foundation on reinforced concrete piles because the previous situation on alluvial land and with concrete foundations did not seem safe enough. The 1172 piles produced externally on the construction site reached down to the previously determined load-bearing depth of around 11 m. The work was carried out by Ed. Züblin & Co , they lasted 69 days and cost around 30,000  marks .

description

Presidential castle
Presidential palace garden side (2020)

A four-story building rises above a high sandstone plinth. It is a castle-like building complex, consisting of six wings and three inner courtyards. The palace on the side is the former residence of the district president and is directly connected to the building. The latter is called the Presidential Palace and is used for receptions.

Lantern with a Prussian eagle

The main facade is 115 meters long and shows a central and two corner risers . The central projection shows six half- columns in the Roman- Ionic style in colossal order . The pillars support an attic , over which a mansard roof rises, crowned by a copper lantern with a Prussian eagle , which sits enthroned on a globe with wings spread out to fly . The octagonal base of the lantern shows a copper clock face on the front . The facade is divided into nine axes by pilasters to the left and right of the central projectile. A dome-shaped roof was placed on the corner projections . The inscription on the gable reads "Built under Wilhelm II. 1907–1911". The building is decorated with rich architectural decorations, which were made by the Düsseldorf sculptor Josef Körschgen .

In accordance with the representative character of the exterior, the interior of the building was also furnished to a high quality and refined. The wall paintings in the plenary meeting room were designed by Adolf Münzer , a painter from the Munich School who was appointed professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1908 . Heinrich Hermanns designed the office of the district president , the dining room of the district president Max Clarenbach , both painters of the Düsseldorf school .

Main staircase in the stairwell

The multi-storey staircase of the main building is conceptually a replica of the Escalier des Ambassadeurs , a baroque staircase of the Palace of Versailles , on which Louis XIV received foreign envoys at the head of his court .

Urban planning

The construction of the government building was embedded in a large-scale development of the Düsseldorf bank of the Rhine and the districts of Pempelfort and Golzheim . In 1906, the Kaiser Wilhelm Park was created on the opposite side of Cecilienallee , today's Rheinpark Golzheim . Next to the district government building , the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court was built in 1910, also in Wilhelmine neo-Baroque style. The Kleverstraße was allowed north of that branch off to the east, a boulevard-like access road through the Golzheimer cemetery to lead and into newly planned class residential district of the Düsseldorf North. The generous planning heralds a large city that shortly before the First World War was still on the verge of growing into a city of over a million within a few decades.

literature

Web links

Commons : Cecilienallee 1–2  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Chronicle of the City Archives of the State Capital Düsseldorf: 1911 , accessed on the duesseldorf.de portal on August 5, 2013
  2. ^ E. Voss, site manager: Foundation of the new government building in Düsseldorf. Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung, September 11, 1909, accessed on September 14, 2019 .
  3. ^ Village stories: Small Presidential Palace , video from center.tv Düsseldorf
  4. ↑ The new building of the royal. Government in Düsseldorf , in the Rhine and Düssel (No. 33), of August 12, 1911
  5. ↑ Article Escalier des Ambassadeurs in the French language Wikipedia

Coordinates: 51 ° 14 ′ 16.8 ″  N , 6 ° 46 ′ 22.8 ″  E