Entrance building at Worms train station (1853)
The station building at Worms station was the first station building to go into operation in 1853 , completely rebuilt in 1871 and demolished in 1904.
Geographical location
The first train station in Worms was in the area that is now occupied by Worms Hauptbahnhof . The first station building was further east than the current one from 1904, for example in the area of tracks 1 and 2, because the current station building of Worms main station was built east of the existing facility so that the latter can continue to be used during the construction period and then space for to gain additional track systems.
history
The choice of the construction site for the first train station was highly controversial between the Hessian Ludwig Railway (HLB) and the city of Worms. While parts of the citizenry would have liked to see the train station at the building line at that time, the western medieval city wall or east of the wall, at the Rhine port, the HLB existed for financial and technical reasons on a site about 800 m to the west. The Hessische Ludwigsbahn prevailed with its favored location at the old cemetery , today's Albert-Schulte-Park .
On August 24, 1853, the last section of the railway from Mainz to Worms was opened and three months later, on November 15, the connection to Ludwigshafen am Rhein in the Palatinate followed . The station building was therefore erected in less than a year. The architect of the building - as well as the other structures along the route - was Ignaz Opfermann .
Just a few years after the start of operations in 1853, the station facility and the reception building in Worms proved to be too small. The expected traffic volume had been estimated far too low. In 1871, only 18 years after opening, the Worms train station was given a new, larger reception building. For this purpose, the first building from 1853 was rebuilt and disappeared beyond recognition in the new building, now in the neo-renaissance style. This second station building was in turn replaced in 1904 by the station building that still stands today, and the station building from 1871 was demolished, including the first station building still preserved in it.
building
After the short construction period, this first station building at Worms station was essentially in place when the line was inaugurated on August 24, 1853.
swell
Because archival documents on the Hessian Ludwig Railway are hardly available, little information is available about what the structure looked like. In addition to information from a report on the opening that appeared in the Wormser Zeitung , three images of the building have been preserved:
- The depiction on a painting by the painter Nicolaus Berkhout , dated September 1853, shows the station on the day of the inauguration or a few days after.
- a photo from 1868 showing the reception building in festive decoration for the reception of King Wilhelm I of Prussia and
- a photo taken before 1871 of a group of HLB railroaders posing in front of the station building.
outer appearance
The station building consisted of a gable, three-axis, two-storey central building, which is framed on both sides by a single-storey, eaves-standing, also three-axis wing. The gable of the central building is accentuated on both sides by a window opening, a round window on the platform side and a square window on the street side. The building width is two window axes. Ignaz Opfermann opted for rectangular windows here. In Berkhout's painting, the reception building is the color of red sandstone . The Ludwigsbahn preferred to build its station buildings from this material. Whether the picture by Berkhout shows the final state of development is doubtful: on the one hand, the reception building was not yet finished at the time he painted it; on the other hand, the photos of the reception building, which are around 15 years younger, show light-colored plastering. The clock tower is not yet in the picture of Berkhout, but in the photo from 1868 you can see that rides on the roof ridge of the central building.
A standardization in shape and floor plans was characteristic of the building construction of the HLB. To this day, reception buildings are still preserved that are very similar to the first in Worms and are also preserved due to the not so stormy traffic development elsewhere, such as the reception building of Osthofen train station , even if this - in contrast to the first Worms reception building - has arched windows.
inside rooms
The Wormser Zeitung names the corridor and the waiting rooms. Together with the surviving pictorial representations, it can be assumed that a corridor ran in the middle of the building from the street-side entrance to a platform-side entrance and that there were at least two waiting rooms on the ground floor. In analogy to the room layouts of other contemporary reception buildings, there was probably a common waiting room for first and second class travelers and a second for third class travelers.
literature
in alphabetical order by authors / editors
- Reinhard Dietrich : A railway is opened . In: Der Wormsgau 33/2017 (2018), pp. 111–126.
- Reinhard Dietrich and Ferdinand Werner : A new picture of the old train station . In: Der Wormsgau 33/2017 (2018), pp. 105–110.
- Rolf Höhmann: The buildings of the Hessian Ludwig Railway and the problems with their investigation and documentation . In: Railway and Monument Preservation. First symposium. Booklets of the German National Committee of ICOMOS. Munich, undated (1990?).
- Silvia Speckert: Ignaz Opfermann (1799–1866): Selected examples of his construction work in the vicinity of the city of Mainz = housework to obtain the academic degree of a Magister [!] Artium. Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz 1989. Typed. Volume 1: Text, Volume 2: Tables. Mainz City Archives: 1991/25 No. 11
- Ferdinand Werner : The train station and its consequences. From Karmelitergasse to Kaiser-Wilhelm Strasse - civil building in Worms 1850-1914 . In: Der Wormsgau 33/2017 (2018), pp. 127–192.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Werner / Rinker-Olbrisch: Der Bahnhof , pp. 132-134
- ^ Dietrich: A railway is opened , p. 115ff.
- ^ Dietrich: A railway is opened , p. 120ff.
- ↑ Speckert, pp. 70ff.
- ↑ Wormser Zeitung No. 136 of August 27, 1853, p. 1f.
- ↑ Höhmann, p. 78
- ↑ Wormser Zeitung No. 136 of August 27, 1853, p. 1f.
- ↑ cf. on this: Dietrich / Werner: Ein neue Bild , p. 108
- ↑ Speckert, p. 71
- ↑ Höhmann, p. 77
- ↑ Wormser Zeitung No. 136 of August 27, 1853, p. 1f.