Stephansplatz (Hamburg)
The Stephan place in Hamburg consists essentially of a city street and a junction in the center of Hamburg . It was named after the general postal director Heinrich von Stephan (1831-1897), the founder of the Universal Postal Union and organizer of the German postal system. The renaming of part of Dammtorstraße and Dammtordamm took place in the course of the inauguration of the (old) Oberpostdirektion built on the square .
The Stephansplatz subway station on subway line 1 is located below the area .
Location and history
The square is in the Neustadt district . Coming from the Hamburg Dammtor train station to the north, Dammtordamm becomes Stephansplatz before the intersection. It leads along the old post office building and becomes Dammtorstrasse from the confluent Dammtorwall. This leads past the State Opera on to the Gänsemarkt . From the west, the Gorch-Fock-Wall flows into Stephansplatz, which after the crossing continues as an esplanade to the Inner Alster.
North of place was up to the demolition of the Hamburg ramparts the Dammtor , one of the city gates. On the former city fortifications, the Gorch-Fock-Wall was built at the end of the 19th century as part of what was then the Ringstrasse with a number of state buildings, while the Esplande was laid out as a uniformly built boulevard as early as the 1820s. On one side of the square, next to a bronze sculpture by Edgar Augustin ( Die Liegende 1977), is one of the entrances to the Planten un Blomen park (here part of the old botanical garden), where the last remnants of the city moat have been preserved.
Apart from the old post office building, the square is shaped by the former Grand Hotel, today's Casino Esplanade , which, from 1907, completed the former north-facing esplanade development as a head building.
Of the formerly closed historical development opposite the post office, consisting of four residential and commercial buildings from the mid-19th century (Stephansplatz 2–8), only the classicist corner building on the esplanade, which was built around 1829 and which is also an office building completed in 2009, has been preserved should give way. Listed as a historical monument in 2008, it was preserved with a new, larger roof structure.
Oberpostdirektion
The building was built from 1883 to 1887 as a head post office , post office and telegraph service building according to plans of the postal administration (simplified designs by Julius Carl Raschdorff ). The facade is adorned with groups of sculptures by the sculptor Engelbert Peiffer , which illustrate the benefits of post, telegraphy and telephony . There is a flying Mercury on the corner tower . The representative building is thus an expression of the new regulation of postal relations by Heinrich von Stephan and the validity claim of the former empire.
In 1887 it was replaced by the Alte Post . Between 1898 and 1901 the building between Gorch-Fock- and Dammtorwall was expanded with an extension. In 1949 the Post Museum also moved in, which later became the Museum of Communication and illustrated not only the history of the post office but also the history of communication with a special focus on the transmission of messages on the oceans. In the 1960s, the postal administration moved to City Nord . After the privatization of Deutsche Post , the listed building was sold to the Hamburg real estate agent Johann Max Böttcher in 1995 and the interior was partially rebuilt. Post office 36 was housed there until the year 2000, in whose counter hall some elements of the originally representative equipment of the main post office were preserved.
In 2007 the house changed hands again, who is pursuing further renovation plans. The museum's lease was terminated, which led to its permanent closure in 2009.
Subway station
For the " KellJung Line ", now part of the U1 line of the subway Hamburg , opened the Hamburg elevated railway in 1929 the underground station Stephansplatz . From the north end of the underground station, pedestrians can reach the Dammtor S and long-distance train station via the Dag-Hammarskjöld Bridge .
Esplanade
The Gorch-Fock-Wall and the Esplanade go off from Stephansplatz .
See also
- Dammtor , with Dammtorwache and war memorial
- Colonnaden , street with a historical ensemble of buildings between Stephansplatz and Jungfernstieg .
Web links
Coordinates: 53 ° 33 ′ 27.7 " N , 9 ° 59 ′ 19.2" E