Esders Department Store
The department store Esders was a 1908-built department store in Dresden , which was considered time of its construction as one of the most modern and most beautiful department stores in the city. It stood on the corner plot of Prager Strasse 2 / Waisenhausstrasse , opposite the Residenz department store , and was destroyed in February 1945. The new "Esders Department Store" has been located here since 1998.
History until 1945
In 1894, the retail salesman Heinrich Esders opened a clothing store on the ground floor and first floor of Prager Strasse 2, in which Deutsche Bank also had a branch at the time. The four-storey building itself was one of the first to be erected on the connecting road from the old town to the Bohemian railway station , which was laid out between 1851 and 1853 . It first appeared in the address book of the city of Dresden in 1854.
In 1908 a completely new building with a distinctive exterior was built. The construction was carried out according to plans by the Dresden architect Alexander Tandler and was remarkable in two ways:
- On the one hand, the department store was the first building in Dresden in which the material of the modern reinforced concrete construction was also shown on the facades. These were made of facing concrete, the ornamental decoration was preformed using plaster or wood models inserted into the formwork and then reworked as stonemasons after the formwork was removed . In this way, facades were created that saved time and money, but with their ornamental decoration did not need to shy away from comparison with conventional natural stone facades.
- On the other hand, the business operations of the Esders department store were not discontinued during the construction period. This was made possible by the fact that the new building was erected in two construction phases despite its manageable size, whereby the old building could remain in use until the first construction phase was completed and (provisionally) put into operation.
Despite the spatially cramped construction site, which was also restricted by the continued business operations, the new building was completed in the short time from June 9th to December 12th, 1908. On average, one floor was created in five working days. In order to achieve this, the construction work was to a large extent rationalized. B. Reinforced concrete structure and brick masonry run completely independently.
Another advantage of the facing concrete facade became apparent in 1911 when a fire broke out on the second floor of the department store. Afterwards, the facade was only soiled by soot, while some sandstone parts of the courtyard facade were irreparably damaged by the fire and had to be replaced at a relatively high cost.
History after 1945
Like the entire area, the Esders department store was devastated by the air raids in February 1945 . However, the reinforced concrete construction of the building prevented complete destruction, and after the rubble clearance was completed, the ruin remained as one of the few building fragments between the Ringstrasse and the main train station .
The ruins were only demolished in the course of the redesign of Prager Straße in the 1960s, with the area itself remaining fallow. It was not until 1997/1998 that the new “Esders department store” was built here, in which the Foot Locker company established its first Dresden branch as the main tenant.
literature
- New department store for the Heinrich Esders company in Dresden. In: Deutsche Bauzeitung , supplement information on cement, concrete and reinforced concrete construction , 6th year 1909, No. 12 ( online as PDF; 1.7 MB), pp. 49–51.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Wilhelm Petry (arrangement): Concrete stone and artistic treatment of concrete. Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1913, p. 208 and p. 211.
Coordinates: 51 ° 2 ′ 48 ″ N , 13 ° 44 ′ 12 ″ E