North-South drive
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The north-south route is a 3.3 km long main road that runs through Cologne on the left bank of the Rhine in a north-south direction through the districts of Altstadt-Nord and Altstadt-Süd .
History of origin
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Cologne's then Lord Mayor Konrad Adenauer brought the Hamburg city planner Fritz Schumacher to Cologne in May 1920 as the “technical mayor”. In a general development plan in 1923, Schumacher provided for urban development to create a "traffic system" by bypassing historical buildings with a traffic-friendly, only 18-meter-wide north-south connection - albeit with a different course than today. His general plan was published in his book "Cologne - Development Issues in a Groszstadt" (1923). On August 1, 1923, Schumacher returned to Hamburg. The National Socialist city tour picked up on these ideas in their grotesquely oversized plan for a north-south / east-west cross. The Cologne Gauleiter Josef Grohé received on June 7, 1939 the order to redesign Cologne as the "Gau capital". The planning model envisaged a pompous street for marches, in keeping with the regime's megalomaniac self-portrayal. Except for the breakthrough of the east-west axis ( Hahnenstrasse ) in the Neumarkt area , these plans could not be implemented.
City architect Rudolf Schwarz (“Nord-Süd-Straße”) took up Schumacher's ideas together with Fritz Schaller . Between 1947 and 1951, Schwarz worked as the general planner of the Cologne-based "Wiederaufbau-GmbH" and presented his reconstruction plan to the public on August 1, 1947. On June 24, 1948, he presented his concept to the city council. According to Schwarz, the north-south street should lead “in a curved line through the old town”, “by carefully bypassing the old churches, squares, gates and shopping streets”. But he warned against tearing up the old town through aisles that were too wide. The severe destruction of the Second World War made it easier to route the streets through a formerly densely built-up old town. Schwarz also published his specific construction plans in a book. He had called the north-south connection, which he marked accordingly in his plans, as "street", which it would also be with a width of 18 meters including the planned tram tracks.
Construction began in mid-1950, and in the following year the reconstruction company was liquidated in 1951 and the town planning department took over the planning authority. The warnings from Schwarz were ignored. The execution took place in several construction phases. In 1953, chief building officer Hans Jacobi demanded that “the backbone is the new north-south street, a breakthrough through the entire old town”, which should not cause the existing streets to be widened, but deliberately split the rear, now mostly destroyed parts of the building blocks. The north-south drive should not be an expressway, but a "vehicle collector", on which the vehicles should drive through the area in a "green wave" at 40 km / h. At the same time, "attempts" were to be made in the area to "enable direct supply of the shops" via "block courtyards and loading streets ..." and "to keep the actual shopping streets even more free from disruptive vehicle traffic." The author wrote in the November 1954 issue of the German construction magazine Carl Oskar Jatho said during the construction of the north-south route that it was advisable "to ask yourself again whether it is not at least betraying the tendency to become a mistake."
The final route was determined in the “General Traffic Plan” of August 10, 1957, after Schwarz had already resigned. As early as 1959, consideration had been given to running the north-south route through the city entirely as a tunnel, but there was no money for it. As a result, a division of the city center was consciously accepted. It divides the Eigelstein from the Kunibertsviertel, which were previously homogeneous residential areas. The first construction phase of the lower north-south route began in 1961. On August 11, 1962, the first section between Brüderstraße and Sternengasse was completed, making 1.6 km between Komödienstraße and Severinsbrücke passable. In the area between Komödienstraße and Im Dau alone, 78 apartments were demolished and 29 commercial businesses relocated. The section with the official street name was inaugurated on September 1, 1962 at the bridge on Cäcilienstraße over the north-south route by the then Mayor Theo Burauen . He inaugurated the telecommunications tower on June 14, 1965, which at that time was the tallest secular building in Cologne at 75 meters . In 1974 the north-south route was finally completed. On April 27, 1975, on the left bank of the Rhine, the north-south route was connected to the Zoobrücke via Riehler Strasse.
No uniform street name
Only a small section of 253 meters - just a tenth of the total distance - has the official street name “North-South Drive”, between Brüderstraße and Cäcilienstraße. The remaining sections have different street names, but are colloquially referred to and understood as the north-south journey. The inconsistent naming of the individual sections regularly leads to confusion for non-residents, because no one expects that in the case of Ulrichgasse, a “lane” will mark a large road leading through the center of the city. The inconsistent naming also leads to discrepancies about the length of the north-south route. Further sections of the route are named after the partner cities in Cologne, unless there is a reference to the nearby churches.
course
| Sections of the north-south drive | ||
|---|---|---|
| designation | section | length |
| Turin Street | Ebertplatz - underpass (near the main train station) | approx. 650 m |
| Ursulastrasse | Track underpass - Stolkgasse / Victoriastraße | 250 m |
| Tunisstrasse | Stolkgasse / Victoriastraße - Breite Straße | 650 m |
| Offenbachplatz | Breite Strasse - Brüderstrasse | 210 m |
| North-South drive | Brüderstraße - Cäcilienstraße | 253 m |
| Neuköllner Strasse | Cäcilienstraße - Blaubach | 367 m |
| Tel-Aviv Street | Blaubach - Ankerstrasse | 510 m |
| Ulrichgasse | Ankerstrasse - Sachsenring | 484 m |
In terms of traffic, the north-south route is not an arterial road , not a tangent and also not a pure thoroughfare , because from it the traffic is distributed into the side streets and crossroads , only 75% flows as through traffic at the WDR . Rather, it is a main street that begins in the south at the Kölner Ringen (on the Sachsenring section ) in the Altstadt-Süd (Südstadt) and ends in the north again at the semicircular rings at Ebertplatz ( Altstadt-Nord ). Since it is almost straight, it is shorter than the rings.
In the north it is connected to the highway system on the right bank of the Rhine via Riehler Strasse, to Innere Kanalstrasse , Zoobrücke and Mülheim ( Mülheimer Brücke ). The north-south journey starts at Ebertplatz as Turiner Straße, which passes under the railway bridge on the Eigelstein on the way to Ursulastraße . At the end of Ursulastraße, the street is connected to the Mediapark via Victoriastraße, Kyotostraße and further with the A 57 . This is followed by Tunisstrasse, which in a tunnel passes under the Gereonstrasse / An den Dominikanern intersection, Komödienstrasse and the WDR archive building, until it continues above ground level at Elstergasse. From Breite Straße, open to the west, Offenbachplatz adjoins, and the street leads past Glockengasse (seat of the parent company from 4711 ) and the Cologne Opera, until it then goes underground again under the official name of Nord-Süd-Fahrt Pedestrian zone ( Schildergasse ) runs. Originally, the street came back into daylight immediately afterwards and ran as an underpass below Cäcilienstraße until it was again at ground level between Sternengasse and Agrippastraße. At the end of the 1990s, the area between Schildergasse and Cäcilienstraße was completely enclosed and the Weltstadthaus built on it. After exiting the tunnel south of Cäcilienstraße, the north-south route for a few meters is named Neuköllner Straße after the Berlin sponsor district. Then it crosses the Cologne brooks on the Blaubach at the level of the former police headquarters , and the street name changes to Tel-Aviv-Straße. The north-south journey now leads over a feeder to Severinsbrücke and after a right-hand bend at Ankerstraße, it changes its name for the last time to Ulrichgasse and ends at Sachsenring at Ulrepforte , where the road continues with a significantly reduced cross-section as a foothill road.
The north-east connection to the city motorway towards A 3 and A 4 via Ursulastraße, Turiner Straße and Riehler Straße is guaranteed. There is also good transport connections to the southeast via Severinsbrücke, Deutzer Ring on the A 559 feeder . To the south, traffic can only flow via the Vorgebirgstraße bottleneck or the congested Bonner Straße. If the Cologne city motorway had been built, an extension of the north-south route via Vorgebirgstrasse to the planned junction between the Bonntor freight yard and the Am Vorgebirgstor street would have been an ideal solution. A route between Vorgebirgstrasse and Brühler Strasse, past the Südfriedhof to the military ring road , which has not yet been built on, would be possible. With this route, a connection to the A 4 to the west and the A 555 to the south would be possible.
There are three underpasses in total, namely in the Schildergasse / Elstergasse area, Unter Sachsenhausen / Komödienstraße and Eigelstein / Eisenbahntrasse. The tunnel at Unter Sachsenhausen is the longest at almost 500 meters. After Ebertplatz , the traffic axis continues in Riehler Straße.
Lane in the city
When it was planned and built, the north-south route was built primarily according to the model of the “ car-friendly city ”. Little consideration was given to the city center, historic districts and subordinate traffic routes. Today the street is also seen as a construction sin, the construction of which has irretrievably destroyed part of the typical character of Cologne, especially in the inner-city Veedeln (districts). Among other things, the eastern part of the Eigelsteinviertel was cut off from the Kunibertsviertel. With Unter Krahnenbäume a famous street was cut, which plays an important role in Cologne folklore and is sung about in several songs, e.g. B. the song Kinddauf-Fess Unger Krahnebäume by Willi Ostermann . The song Unger Krahnebäume by BAP , a melancholy swan song for a city district, refers to the photo book by the photographer Chargesheimer (1958: Unter Krahnenbäume), which documents the liveliness of the street before the north-south journey was made. In his last illustrated book (1970) Cologne 5.30 a.m. , Chargesheimer shows the north-south journey as a deserted urban wasteland.
Buildings
Coming from the south there are some striking buildings near the north-south route. The former telecommunications office Cologne 1 ("et long Zillchen") was 18 floors and 55 meters high including administration building ready for occupancy in 1961 (Sternengasse 14-16), followed by the headquarters of the German Investment and Development Company (DEG) (Kämmergasse 22) Inauguration took place on October 24, 2008. The "Cäcilium" (Cäcilienstraße 27) is a six-storey office building with slightly convex facades and 17,500 m² of office space, which was completed in November 2009. This is followed by the Weltstadthaus, inaugurated on September 7, 2005 . A signal red lettering, 26 meters wide and 4 meters high, by Merlin Bauer , has been hanging over the tunnel entrance at Schildergasse since May 2007 . After exiting the tunnel, you can see the 34-meter-high Cologne Opera , which was inaugurated on May 18, 1957, with a capacity of 1380 seats at Offenbachplatz . This is followed by the WDR Arkaden , which was inaugurated in October 1996. Its richly structured facade with storey-high glazing is 70 m long and 17 m wide. The 13-storey WDR archive building (An der Rechtschule 4) with a reddish-gray cast stone facade was built between 1965 and 1968 on the north-south route. On March 20, 1964, the publishing house of the Kölnische Rundschau (Stolkgasse 25-45) was inaugurated. After construction work for the Cologne subway began on September 19, 1963, a remnant of the Roman wall 30 meters long and 5 meters high including the semicircular north-west tower (50 AD) was found at the intersection of Tunisstrasse and Komödienstraße in March 1964 . - the best preserved piece after the Roman tower . It is the oldest building on the road.
meaning
The great Cologne writer Heinrich Böll lamented the axis as a "wound" that "has turned practically entire districts into cemeteries" and left his beloved Cologne not least because of the north-south journey. Action artist Boris Sieverts described the north-south journey in his essay “Nordsüdfahrt 1999 revisited” as a “very Cologne, failed experiment”.
Overall, their expansion has significantly improved the traffic conditions for individual motorized traffic in the city center. It was supposed to relieve the Cologne rings and Rheinuferstraße and is still the most important north-south connection in the center of Cologne. However, it is closed to non-motorized vehicles at the underpasses. The four- to six-lane, sometimes nine-lane north-south route is a maximum of 40 meters wide and mostly has a median . In the north it has a connection to the Zoobrücke with the motorway ring on the right bank of the Rhine and in the south to the Severinsbrücke . According to a count of May 21, 1992 at the level of the opera, 2110 vehicles from the north and 1750 vehicles from the south drove the road during the day. This makes it one of the main traffic axes in the city center. Due to its largely lacking lowering, however, it splits the city center to just under 2.5 km; The Breite Straße will be separated from it in eight lanes. The north-south journey ultimately caused the economic decline of Breite Strasse.
A municipal administrative draft "North-South Drive" from January 1989 discussed four variants of a complete lowering. This measure, which had been discussed since 1959, always failed because of the enormous, unaffordable construction costs. An ideas competition in 1993 also favored lowering the car. By Gottfried Boehm , a competition design was "Lowering north-south ride" with a master plan of the area in 1993. The by Cologne City Council Master Plan adopted on 5 May 2009 sees the "intervention room north-south axis" not a complete lowering within the next 10 years before; According to the architect Albert Speer , this is only conceivable for sections of the route. “Today's north-south journey is a relic of the car-friendly city. This is particularly evident in the dimensioning of the road, the routing, the width of the lanes and the design of the nodes with the intersecting inner-city streets. ”The master plan envisages a redesign of the north-south route between Breite Straße and Brüderstraße and traffic development of the quarters Nord-Süd-Fahrt / Bühnen / St. Kolumba and a narrowing of the lane in favor of pedestrians.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Fritz Schumacher, Cologne, Development Issues in a Large City , 1923, p. 185.
- ↑ Robert Frohn, Cologne 1945 to 1981 - From the rubble heap to the megacity , 1982, p. 233.
- ↑ Dorothea Wiktorin u. a .: Cologne, the historical-topographical atlas , 2001, section car- friendly city , p. 84.
- ^ Rudolf Schwarz, Das neue Köln , 1950.
- ^ A b Hans Jacobi, The urban development image of Cologne , in: Bund Deutscher Baumeister und Bauingenieure eV, Landesverband Nordrhein-Westfalen (Hrsg.): "Landesverbandstagung Nordrhein-Westfalen 1953 Köln", 1953, S. 40.
- ↑ Hans Jacobi, The urban development image of Cologne , in: Bund Deutscher Baumeister und Bauingenieure eV, Landesverband Nordrhein-Westfalen (Ed.): “Landesverbandstagung Nordrhein-Westfalen 1953 Köln”, 1953, p. 44.
- ↑ Carl Oskar Jatho, New Building Cologne and the Spiritual Standards , in: Deutsche Bauzeitschrift No. 11, 1954, p. 762.
- ↑ Heinrich Billstein, “So the city is moving back together”, in: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger of June 25, 1984.
- ↑ Peter Fuchs (Ed.): Chronicle of the History of the City of Cologne , Volume 2, 1991, p. 299.
- ↑ Peter Fuchs (Ed.): Chronik zur Geschichte der Stadt Köln , Volume 2, 1991, p. 302.
- ^ Marion Werner, From Adolf-Hitler-Platz to Ebertplatz , p. 235.
- ↑ Viktor Böll, Heinrich Böll and Cologne , program booklet of the "Akademie för uns kölsche Sproch", 1st half of 2000, p. 169.
- ↑ Urban planning and traffic ideas competition for the north-south journey , series "Verkehrsplanung für Köln", issue 19, ed. from the City Planning Office of the City of Cologne, 1993, pp. 10–12.
- ↑ City of Cologne, Cologne City Center Masterplan, 2009 ( Memento of the original from July 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 10 ″ N , 6 ° 57 ′ 10 ″ E