Glückstadt water tower
| Glückstadt water tower | |
|---|---|
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| Data | |
| Construction year: | 1891 |
| Tower height: | 26.45 m |
| Usable height: | 16 m |
| Container type: |
 Loft
|
| Volume of the container: | 400 m³ |
| Shutdown: | 1965 |
| Original use: | Urban water supply |
| Todays use: | restaurant |
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The former Glückstadt water tower stands on a former bastion of the city's fortifications (address: Bohnstraße 1). The fortifications were razed in 1814 because they no longer made any military sense. Of the water tower built in 1891, only the shaft and the stair tower have been preserved in their original state.
Building
The brick building, designed in the historicist style , was reminiscent of a medieval castle in its original state. The shaft with the buttresses and the ogival row of blind arcades below the water tank is still preserved; likewise the slender stair tower , which with its pointed conical roof protrudes over the rest of the building. However, the entire upper area of the main tower with the water tank no longer exists. It originally had a crenellated wreath and was twice as high as the protruding part that now houses a restaurant.
The water tank was a wrought-iron loft container with a capacity of 400 m³.
→ More about the container shapes in the main article water tower
The design for the tower comes from the Altona building officer W. Kümmel, the construction was carried out by the Glückstadt builder Johs. Schüder.
History of the Glückstadt water supply
Until the second half of the 19th century, the people of Glückstadt took their drinking water mainly from the moat that was connected to the Elbe. The wealthy households cleaned the water with small filters, only a few had their own well.
At the end of the 19th century, Glückstadt was able to sell railway shares because the route of today's march railway was nationalized. This gave the city the financial means to set up a central water supply .
In 1891 an Elbe waterworks was built, which included four filter basins, a machine house and the water tower. The machine house and filter basin were located where the Fortunabad is today. The pressure was generated by a steam pump in the machine house, which could pump 50 m³ of water into the tower tank every hour. In the 1920s, the steam pump was replaced by electric pumps.
The conversion from filtered Elbe water to groundwater took place in 1936. For this purpose, the city acquired a 16-hectare property in the municipality of Krempermoor , 12 km away , in order to build a groundwater plant there. In Krempermoor, the water collects from the Geest and is pumped through wells 40 m to 60 m deep. The water reaches Glückstadt via a pressurized water pipe.
The Krempermoor waterworks has been expanded and modernized several times. Today, in addition to Glückstadt, it supplies Kremperheide, Borsfleth and parts of Bahrenfleth and the Blomesche Wilderness.
Decommissioning and further use
In 1965 the tower was shut down. Modern pumps and pressure lines had made it superfluous. In 1968 a businessman from Itzehoe acquired the building with the intention of setting up a restaurant in it. During the renovations, a ceiling collapsed and tore a hole in the outer wall. Cracks in the casing of the container meant that the entire tower head had to be torn off.
The conversion to a restaurant was finally successful: the restaurant floor was repositioned directly on the tower shaft, lower than the former tower head and protruding further than this. Towards the end of the 1970s, a discotheque was set up in the new tower head to entertain the people of Glückstadt and the many marines from the MKdstS. Today there is a private apartment in the tower.
See also
literature
- Jens U. Schmidt: Water towers in Schleswig-Holstein. History and stories about the water supply in the north and its most striking buildings. Regia-Verlag, Cottbus 2008, ISBN 978-3-939656-71-5 .
- Josef Singldinger: Glückstadt or About the Power of Invention. A brief history of his energy and water supply for the 150th birthday of Stadtwerke Glückstadt. Stadtwerke, Glückstadt 2005.
Web links
Coordinates: 53 ° 47 ′ 25.4 " N , 9 ° 25 ′ 12.5" E