Koenigsteiner Strasse (Frankfurt am Main)
| Koenigsteiner Strasse | |
|---|---|
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| In Frankfurt-Höchst | |
| Basic data | |
| place | Frankfurt am Main |
| District | Höchst , Unterliederbach |
| Created | Late 18th century |
| Connecting roads | Sodener Strasse (in Königstein ) |
| Cross streets | Bolongarostraße , Hostatostraße , Dalbergplatz |
| Buildings | former ship department store |
| Technical specifications | |
| Street length | 2 km (in Frankfurt) 8.5 km (in total) |
The Königsteiner road is a main road in the western suburban area of Frankfurt . The almost ten kilometer long road runs almost completely in a straight line from Frankfurt-Höchst to Königstein im Taunus and crosses Frankfurt-Unterliederbach , Sulzbach (Taunus) , Bad Soden am Taunus and the Bad Soden district of Neuenhain until it is at the foot of the Hardtberg on the city limits to Königstein changes direction and name.
As a pedestrian zone, the southernmost section of the street is the core of the “shopping town Höchst”, the most important sub-center in the west of Frankfurt. The section in Bad Soden also functions as a small shopping street in the center.
In Höchst, Königsteiner Strasse is also referred to as "Kö", in a (slightly ironic) allusion to the famous Düsseldorf Königsallee .
prehistory
The section in the Höchst city center, which is now designated as a pedestrian zone, is the oldest part of the street. It was created as the western boundary of the baroque Höchst Neustadt founded by Elector Emmerich Josef in 1768 , which apart from a few streets remained undeveloped. The new town was laid out in front of the eastern town gate ( Obertor or Frankfurter Tor ), today's Königsteiner Straße thus formed the transition between the old and new town.
The remaining part of the street was built as a road by the Nassau state in 1814-1820 . The previously Electoral Mainz area west of Frankfurt was the entire 18th century through by French covered troops with war and occupation, which the economic development of the region with severe disabilities. In particular Höchst am Main, where all traffic between Frankfurt and Mainz could be controlled, as well as the fortress Königstein on the trade route from Frankfurt to Cologne served as troop quarters again and again.
The region became Nassau in 1802. After the end of the wars of liberation and the French occupation (November 4, 1813), the new sovereigns began with administrative reforms and the renewal of the infrastructure. Höchst and Königstein became administrative seats of Nassau offices . The beginning of industrialization also required the overcoming of the economic, structural and traffic structures that were partly inherited from the Middle Ages. In 1816, the landside city wall in Höchst (the fortifications facing the Main have been preserved to this day) and two of the three city gates were demolished, and in 1818 the guilds were abolished.
The expansion of the road network should be seen in this context. Höchst, which previously lived mainly from east-west traffic between Frankfurt and Mainz (on the Main and the trade route through the city ), has become a regional transport hub through the creation of a modern south-north connection between Main and Taunus . The Electorate of Mainz had already negotiated with its neighbors in 1776–88 in order to divert the Cologne trunk road to Höchst, which had previously led via Rödelheim to Königstein.
The road to Königstein
The Chaussee was laid out in a completely straight line based on the French model. The hilly landscape of the Vordertaunus is actually unsuitable for such a route: there is a difference in altitude of around 250 meters between the start and end point; In fact, if you drive on it completely, you have to overcome further gradients because the town center of Bad Soden is located in a depression. Between Sulzbach and Soden, the road therefore leads steeply downhill at first, even though you are moving towards the Taunus, before it goes steeply uphill again between Soden and Neuenhain. A route that was adapted to the shape of the landscape would have avoided such large gradients, so Königsteiner Straße remained the only road in the Vordertaunus that runs in a straight line over such a long distance. The only exception was Elisabethenstrasse , a 25-kilometer straight Roman road from Mainz via the Hofheim fort to the city of Nida, which was abandoned around 260 (today: Frankfurt-Heddernheim ). However, Elisabethenstrasse ran parallel to the Main and had a significantly flatter elevation profile. The new Chaussee crossed the ancient Roman road at an almost right angle a little north of Unterliederbach (see map).
Use of the road was chargeable, along the way there were number of places where travelers the Chausseegeld had to pay.
In the summer of 1827 the Königsteiner Chaussee experienced a bizarre spectacle: the boat trip to Königstein . A small ship on the Main with numerous passengers, pulled by four horses, drove into the Taunus. The event was a carnival joke by the Frankfurt innkeeper Friedrich Christian Stoltze , landlord of the traditional Gasthof zum Rebstock in Frankfurt's old town and father of Friedrich Stoltze , who later became known as a journalist and dialect poet . He took part in the boat trip at the age of eleven and later processed it in his vernacular story The shipwreck of the paddle steamer Free City of Frankfurt in 1827 . In the 1820s, inland shipping was seen as the key to promoting young industries. The steamship company of the Rhine and Main , founded in Mainz in 1825 , had the paddle steamer Stadt Frankfurt built as the first steamship suitable for the Main; this may have served as the background for the idea.
Kurpark and shopping street
State investments in highways and waterways proved to be uneconomical just a few years later, as the new means of transport, the railroad, took over the most important transport services. In 1839, the Taunusbahn began operating on the more important east-west connection in Höchst , and from 1847 the Sodener Bahn , which branched off from the Taunusbahn in Höchst, offered an alternative to Königsteiner Chaussee. The former Frankfurt village of Soden developed into an internationally important health resort in the middle of the 19th century , certainly in connection with the rise of the two neighboring “ world health resorts ” Wiesbaden and Homburg .
Königsteiner Strasse became the central axis of the Soden spa. While the actual town center was just west of the Chaussee, important new facilities such as the train station , spa gardens and spa facilities were built on the eastern side of the street . Classicist villas of wealthy citizens were built on both sides of the street.
Königsteiner Strasse also gained in importance in Höchst, where it was initially called Große Taunusstrasse . The first Höchst train station was located at the intersection of the Taunusbahn and Königsteiner Strasse and thus became the focal point of urban development. At the end of the century, business shifted from the main street (today: Bolongarostraße ) in the old town to the new town, and especially to the lower Koenigsteiner Straße. Even after the station was relocated to its current location (1880), the crossing of Königsteiner Strasse with the railway, which was now laid out on a dam, continued to develop dynamically, here, where two other important inner-city streets met Dalbergstrasse and Kaiserstrasse (today: Hostatostrasse ) , the Imperial Post Office was built in 1886. The soon-to-be-called Dalbergplatz became the center of the rapidly growing industrial city of Höchst.
The most important company in the Höchst furniture industry, the "Möbelfabrik Gebrüder Franz and Matthias Halm", moved to Königsteiner Strasse 61 in 1884. Vogelsche Fabrik produced furniture for the home in No. 41 and achieved a production volume with 80 employees using woodworking machines In 1903 a new factory building became necessary. Wasgaustraße , which joins Königsteiner Straße at right angles from the old town center of Unterliederbach, developed into the main shopping street of the rapidly growing workers' residential area, which in 1917 became a district of Höchst am Main.
The section of Königsteiner Strasse north of the railway - or Grosse Taunusstrasse, as it was called at the time - led in the second half of the 19th century through a purely industrial area that was only slowly built on with residential buildings after the turn of the century. In place of the late classicist commercial building structure, which was characterized by street-facing residential buildings with courtyard-facing production buildings, there were bourgeois residential and commercial buildings with three or four storeys. Königsteiner Straße was expanded into a small Wilhelminian style boulevard with rows of trees on both sides.
The Schiff department store opened on August 30, 1929 at the corner of Kleine Taunusstrasse (today Emmerich-Josef-Strasse ) as the highlight of the development into a metropolitan shopping street . The Schiff family were long-established Höchst Jews and had been running a department store on lower Koenigsteiner Strasse for a long time. The previous building was demolished in 1928 to make way for the new building , which was characterized by the strict forms of early modernism . The Schiff family emigrated to the USA during National Socialism, but lost their property through the so-called " Aryanization ". The Höchst department store later became part of the Hertie concern, which had emerged from the expropriation of the Tietz family .
Suburbanization
From around 1960 the suburbanization led to massive construction activity in the Vordertaunus. Bad Soden, Neuenhain and Königstein became coveted residential areas for the Frankfurt upper class, population numbers and built-up areas grew strongly. The municipality of Sulzbach developed into a suburban industrial location. The Main-Taunus-Zentrum , which is located directly on the city limits of Frankfurt and opened in 1964, was the first and for a long time also the largest shopping center in Germany and became increasingly competitive for the Höchst city center three kilometers south.
The trend was supported by the generous expansion of the road network. Already in the 20 years of running this part of the former was Elisabeth road to highway Frankfurt-Wiesbaden been removed, the intersection with King Street Steiner as a large roundabout with petrol station designed. This was followed by further expansion to federal motorway 66 , and the roundabout was replaced by a motorway junction, as Königsteiner Straße also formed part of the now motorway-like Federal Road 8 for around one kilometer . The Main-Taunus-Zentrum was located directly at the intersection of these two city highways, followed later by a drive-in cinema and a large hotel belonging to the Holiday Inn group.
Königsteiner Strasse today
The growth of the Vortaunus region, which continues to this day, has resulted in Königsteiner Straße being built on almost its entire length. Between Unterliederbach and Sulzbach, the eastern side of the street borders for around 1200 meters, opposite the shopping center, to an undeveloped open space; from the intersection with Sulzbacher Bahnstraße, the western side of the street does just about another kilometer. The last kilometer of the road, above the Neuenhain settlement Sophienruhe , leads through a forest area.
While the Main-Taunus-Zentrum, which relies on the affluent, automobile audience of the Vordertaunus, is working very successfully and has been expanded several times, most recently in 2011, the Höchst city center as a retail location fell into a serious crisis during the 1990s. Even the conversion of the lower Königsteiner Strasse into a pedestrian zone (1990) and its urban redesign a few years later could not stop the trend. The closure of the Hertie department store, previously Schiff, on December 15, 2001, became a symbol of the crisis. The area has been redesigned since 2004 to stabilize the location. After the renovation of the railway underpass, which had already been completed, Dalbergplatz was upgraded as the “entrance gate to the city center” and was redesigned into a roundabout by 2007. An improved parking guidance system and free parking should also lure motorized customers back to Königsteiner Straße. The local retailers' association IHH took part in the discussion with its own concepts to calm the situation. The vacant Hertie department store was sold to an investor in December 2006 and then demolished. In 2010, a two-story shopping center was opened in its place.
swell
- ↑ Stadtvermessungsamt Frankfurt am Main (ed.): Portal GeoInfo Frankfurt , city map
- ↑ Map24.de
- ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau, August 11, 2010: Blossom in the West. Retrieved October 18, 2010 .
Web links
- Königsteiner Straße at par.frankfurt.de , the former website of the City of Frankfurt am Main
Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 6 ″ N , 8 ° 32 ′ 54 ″ E