Elfrath
Elfrath is a settlement founded in the 1960s in the Krefeld - Traar district . It lies between Traar, Verberg , Gartenstadt , Uerdingen .
Naming
The name comes from the "Elfrathshof" , which existed in the direct vicinity of Haus Rath and the Honschaft Rath belonging to the Uerdingen office . Haus Rath is the oldest secular building in Krefeld, the 800-year-old yew tree located there is the oldest tree in the Krefeld city area.
In 1901 Wilhelm Hilden was named as the owner of the Elfrathshof.
Until after the Second World War, Elfrath was nothing more than a hallway name . The current district only developed in the 1960s when a new high-rise estate was built. In the district, however, the much older Bruchhöfe settlement is also integrated, which only consists of single-family houses.
Emergence
The lack of living space after the Second World War also made itself felt in Krefeld. In 1965 around 4,600 apartments could have been built immediately in an area that was already developed. However, due to the lack of willingness to build on the part of the respective property owners, an alternative was sought for a property on the city limits. The choice fell on a largely undeveloped piece of land between Bruchhöfe, An der Elfrather Mühle, and the north and east bypasses (today: Bundesstraße 509 and Bundesautobahn 57 ). 550–700 residential units were planned in a family-friendly environment with a school and many playgrounds on an area of around 13 hectares. The three historical buildings Rath, Elfrather Mühle and Traar were to be preserved.
Under considerable time pressure, the first concepts were drawn up and finally the development plan was determined so that construction could start in the same year. In 1965, the city of Krefeld was entitled to not inconsiderable funds from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for social housing , which threatened to deteriorate.
Four developers were commissioned to prepare offers. The GEHAG (charitable homes-AG) won the tender and implemented the project through alone. In 1966 the construction of a total of 868 residential units began. However, the municipal housing office was responsible for the occupancy of the apartments.
With this concept, as in many other places, the growing demands for modern but affordable living were followed. Two eight-story rows of houses and four eight-story single houses were planned. All other houses were built with a maximum of four floors. The inner and outer walls of all houses were made of sand-lime brick and faced with light-colored clinker .
The furnishing of the apartments was exceptional from the start: Most of the apartments have at least one balcony and when they were first moved in there was even a fitted kitchen. The size of the apartments varies between apartment and four-room apartment with 95 m². Sound and thermal insulation corresponded to the state of the art, although, for example, the windows initially consisted of single-glazed wooden frame windows, which were completely replaced by modern heat-insulating glazing in the 1980s . In the course of this modernization, the bedrooms of the apartments in the immediate vicinity of the east bypass, which has meanwhile been expanded to form a motorway, the north bypass and the route of the newly built tram were equipped with additional soundproof windows. For the supply of heat for water and heating, an ecologically and economically modern centralized oil-fired thermal power station was built, which supplies the entire system. Since 1987 the thermal power station has been fed by district heating from the nearby waste incineration plant . The bathroom and toilet are spatially separated; in the bathrooms of the larger apartments, a bathtub and a parking space for a washing machine are standard. A separate telephone connection was provided for each apartment and prepared using empty conduits. However, this only became possible from the summer of 1968 when the German Federal Post Office finally provided the long-awaited connection to the public telephone network. Until then, only emergency telephones were available. The television program was also fed into its own network via a central antenna system (today: cable television ). Two caretakers were permanently employed.
During the planning, in addition to the complete development , extensive infrastructure had to be provided: medical practices (general practitioners, dentists, pediatricians), supermarket, laundromat, inn, fast food, hairdressing salon, bank branch, petrol station (no longer exist today), weekly market, and an elementary school (today: elementary school) were built at the same time as the housing construction. In the immediate vicinity of each house there was originally a children's playground with a sandpit and climbing frames. Of the former large number of these playgrounds, only one remains today. Under part of the facility there is an underground car park with 170 parking spaces and a washing area for cars. All in all, a large distance between the individual apartment blocks with lots of green spaces ensures peace and a pleasant living environment. What the planning did not include, however, was a new church building and the traffic connection to the city center.
The entire system was built between 1967 and 1974. In the end, however, only the first phase of a much more extensive plan was implemented. Many of the infrastructure facilities planned for further expansion have therefore not been implemented for the time being. The center of Elfrath was originally supposed to be in the area of today's cemetery.
The total cost in 1966 was around DM 42 million . GEHAG set up its own fund for financing.
The shell of the first 224 apartments at Elfrather Mühle was already finished in 1967 and could be moved into in August. The sewer work for the entire system had also already been completed.
school
The " Elementary School an Haus Rath" is located in Elfrath (formerly: "Municipal Community Elementary School Elfrath" ). The school was built as an elementary school at the same time as the residential building in Elfrath . The building was made from prefabricated components.
At the end of the 1970s, a multifunctional sports and gymnasium with field markings for handball , volleyball , basketball , tennis and badminton was built on part of the schoolyard . The hall is not intended for sports events with an audience.
Later changes
In the early 1980s, the former gas station on the corner of “Neukirchener Straße” and “An der Elfrather Mühle” was demolished to make way for a new multi-storey building with retail space on the ground floor. There is now a pharmacy, now closed (initially a flower shop), a bakery (closed) and a post office (closed and converted into a residential unit).
In the 1980s, Bruchhöfe was expanded with further single-family and terraced houses to include the Neuhofsweg and Kesenhofweg areas. A daycare center was also set up here.
The ownership structure of the high-rise complex changed for the first time when it was bought by the Rheinisch-Westfälische-Immobilien-Anlagegesellschaft (RWI) in 1985. As early as 1989, the company ICM took over the real estate, which it sold in 1992 to Wohnstätte Krefeld AG, which from 1993 converted individual units into condominiums and preferably sold them to existing tenants.
The Rather sports community RSG Verberg / Gartenstadt has had a sports field in the southwest of Elfrath since the 1980s. At the same time, a tennis facility was built right next to the sports field.
A little later another settlement with single-family and terraced houses was added in the area of "Alte Rather Straße".
church
With the expansion on "Alte Rather Straße" an ecumenical community center was built, the first permanent church building in Elfrath. Until then, Christian meetings and devotions of both denominations took place on Neuhofsweg in a provisional facility of the Roman Catholic parish " St. Pius X " from Gartenstadt.
Evangelical parish
Elfrath belongs to the evangelical parish Krefeld-Nord with the Thomaskirche in the Traar district and the Lukaskirche in the Gartenstadt district.
Roman Catholic parish
Elfrath belongs to the Roman Catholic parish of St. Pius X with the church of the same name in the Gartenstadt district.
House Rath
At the beginning of the 1990s, Haus Rath and the associated courtyard were renovated and converted into an exclusive residential park with condominiums.
Elfrath Mill
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The Elfrath Mill in Traar belonged to the " Elfrathshof ", which is the namesake for today's Elfrath district.
Elfrather See
The local recreation area Elfrather See with regatta course and bathing lake is in the immediate vicinity, but it is already part of the Uerdingen urban area.
graveyard
The Elfrath cemetery was laid out on a former orchard in the northeast .
Sanctuary of Elfrath
On the border to Gartenstadt and Verberg, a temple complex from Roman times was excavated and partially reconstructed by the archaeologist Christoph Reichmann during the construction of the sports field in 1988 . Finds, mainly in the form of individual shards, can be viewed in the Burg Linn Museum Center .
Transport links
By 1982 the tram line 042 of Krefelder Verkehrsbetriebe AG (KREVAG, today SWK Mobil ) ended in Gartenstadt with a turning loop. In the course of the expansion of the Nordtangente (B 509) to a four-lane motorway feeder, the traffic light crossing "An der Elfrather Mühle" / "Nordtangente" was replaced by a tram underpass and the tram was extended to Rather Straße, where it has its final stop. The street "An der Elfrather Mühle" was interrupted and replaced over a length of 330 meters by a double-track ramp, which is only flanked by a pedestrian and cycle path. This path is no longer passable for road traffic. On April 3, 1982 the new tram line was officially opened. As a result of the interruption, Elfrath became a large cul-de-sac in terms of traffic , surrounded by the federal motorway 57 (formerly the east bypass) and the federal road 509 (the north bypass). Until the 1990s, there was still a dead piece of bike / footpath along the demolished road "An der Elfrather Mühle", which ended shortly before the motorway slip road, which was soundproofed by an earth wall. In 1994 this piece was made accessible again by bridging the tram ramp. Since then, the path has led along the noise protection wall to the “Nordtangente” / “Werner-Voss-Straße” intersection.
The 058 bus goes through Elfrath.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Digital collection of the university library of the University of Düsseldorf - large state address book or commercial and commercial address books for the individual states and provinces of the German Empire - Rhine Province, Volume 1: District Cologne and District Düsseldorf , Verlag Berenberg, Hanover, 1901 - p. 936
Coordinates: 51 ° 22 ′ N , 6 ° 37 ′ E