Elisabeth Hall

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Front of the Elisabethhalle

The Elisabethhalle is a municipal indoor swimming pool in Aachen , Elisabethstraße 10, not far from Aachen Cathedral . It was built from 1908 to 1911 in Art Nouveau style for a total of 900,000 marks and opened on July 17, 1911. The design came from the Aachen city architect Joseph Laurent . The Elisabethhalle is one of the few remaining swimming pools from the Art Nouveau era that are still in use today.

architecture

Aesculap fountain
Changing rooms in the great hall

In the entrance area there is an Aesculap fountain with the inscription: "The magical power of youth is not just a legend, the bathroom is magical for youth every day". Due to the contemporary gender segregation , the pool has two swimming pools. The small hall with a swimming pool measuring 17.5 mx 8 m (150 m²) was originally reserved for women. The eye-catcher is the fountain designed by Fritz Klimsch with the relief "Bathing women", which was manufactured in the Royal Porcelain Manufactory in Berlin . The large hall, which was originally reserved for men, is 27.5 m by 12.5 m (340 m²) and is decorated with a Neptune fountain, which was made after a model by the sculptor Carl Burger . In both halls, bathers have spacious individual changing rooms on two levels. The Elisabethhalle, originally designed as a thermal bath , also had a shower and bathtub, a Roman-Irish sweat bath and a dog bath.

history

From September 1911 to February 1912, the operation of the two swimming pools had to be stopped: the hot summer of the century in 1911 had caused an acute water shortage throughout Germany. After the First World War , only the two swimming pools and the shower and bath tub were put back into operation.

One of the baths in the Elisabethhalle

During the Second World War there was a public air raid shelter in the basement of the Elisabethhalle . After the war damage had been repaired, bathing was resumed in the large indoor swimming pool in 1945 and in the small indoor swimming pool in 1951. For a short time immediately after the war, due to the lack of fuel, warm water was supplied from the Kaiserquelle via a pipe through the Elisengarten . But the aggressiveness of the thermal water was underestimated. The damage caused had to be repaired with an extensive renovation from February 1975 to June 1976 for 2.5 million DM . The tub department was only used until the 1990s. The tubs and copper fittings have largely been preserved to this day.

At the world exhibition Expo 2000 in Hanover , the Elisabethhalle was part of a multimedia vision and was proposed as the future headquarters of a biotechnology company. This vision has not come true to this day, nor has the plan to convert the small swimming pool into a sports hall for cost reasons.

In 2004, a comprehensive renovation of the flat roof, the hall windows and the double-shell shotcrete vault construction took place in close coordination with the preservation authorities . In addition to the necessary fire protection measures and the improvement of thermal insulation , the repair of damaged parts of the building prevented further deterioration of the building fabric. The bath was reopened on November 15, 2004. In 2009, further funds were made available from the special monument protection program for the renovation of the Elisabethhalle. It is planned to spend a total of 2.5 million euros on this by 2014. The Elisabethhalle was closed from May to October 2011 due to construction work. The partially built-in elements of the original interior design, for example in the area of ​​the showers, were exposed again.

The Elisabethhalle is used today for school swimming, club sports and public swimming.

  • Front

  • Ticket booth

  • Hallway to the Great Hall

  • Large indoor swimming pool

  • Fountain of Neptune

  • Former drinking fountain in the Great Hall

  • Small swimming pool

  • Laundry drying system in the basement of the Elisabethhalle

  • Former air raid shelter in the basement of the Elisabethhalle

  • Certificate from 1926 about passed swimming test

literature

  • Joseph Laurent: The municipal swimming pools and bathing halls and the public baths in Aachen. In: The health care in Aachen. La Ruelle'sche Accidenzdruckerei , Aachen 1913, pp. 171-183 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Elisabethhalle  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Elisabethhalle Aachen on the Lebendiges Aachen website:

https://www.lebendiges-aachen.de/modules.php?name=Aachen&act=page&id=187

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Map of the Elisabethhalle (PDF; 439 kB) In: Objekt-Pool, Elisabeth-Schwimmhalle . City of Aachen, building management. Retrieved January 4, 2013.
  2. ↑ The 21st Century. Expo 2000 Hannover GmbH , archived from the original on September 27, 2007 ; accessed on January 6, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Martin Lambertz: Elisabethhalle energy certificate (PDF; 2.7 MB) In: Objekt-Pool, Elisabeth-Schwimmhalle . City of Aachen, building management. February 9, 2009. Retrieved January 4, 2013.
  4. ↑ Renovation of the Elisabethhalle 2005 (PDF; 647 kB) In: Objekt-Pool, Elisabeth-Schwimmhalle . City of Aachen, building management. Retrieved January 4, 2013.
  5. ↑ Neptune is where the construction workers lie at their feet . Aachen newspaper . May 3, 2010. Retrieved May 3, 2010.
  6. ↑ Go swimming again in (youth) style . Aachen newspaper . October 11, 2011. Retrieved October 11, 2011.
  7. ↑ Experience report of a bather . December 17, 2006. Retrieved December 9, 2007.

Coordinates: 50 ° 46 '24.1 "  N , 6 ° 5' 7.6"  E