Rodgau-Jügesheim water tower

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The water tower

The water tower Rodgau-Jügesheim is 43.5 meters overall height that from far away visible landmark of Rodgauer district Jügesheim and is available as an industrial monument under protection. It protrudes out of a dense pine forest at the eastern exit of the district, only a few meters from the federal highway 45 .

Planning and construction

As part of the construction of the water pipeline in the eastern Offenbach district , a whole network of group waterworks and three water towers as pressure and storage tanks were planned from 1933 onwards . The requirement for the planning architects was that the towers, as outstanding structures, had to adapt stylistically to an already existing high structure in the surrounding area. The water tower in Hanau-Steinheim resembles a tower of the old fortification and the Seligenstädter water tower resembles the city gate. The Jügesheim tower was to adapt to the neo-Gothic style of the Church of St. Nicholas .

An architecture firm in Darmstadt designed the building plans and created the daring statics , which many experts initially classified as impracticable. Nevertheless, the office received the building contract in 1935 and began building the tower in 1936. The foundation stone is in the foot of the right supporting pillar.

As the construction progressed, the unusual construction of the tower became visible: a round, raised concrete container with a diameter of about 15 meters, faced with red clinker bricks, sits on a square central section with a very small floor plan and four support pillars arranged in a cross, stepped downwards, as is often the case to be found in Gothic churches and here are modeled exactly on those of the Nikolaus Church. An additional ring anchor made of concrete in the lower third of the tower gives the construction the necessary stability. The middle section and support pillars are also made of red clinker bricks and, with their eight open arched windows, show clear echoes of the expressionist design language of the 1920s. These openings reduce the wind load on the building.

The tower room is located above the elevated tank. It can be accessed by a narrow staircase with 170 steps, which leads through the middle of the water tank. The tower room is crowned by a round roof dome that tapers up to around seven meters. This difficult roof structure was carried out by the local carpentry firm Henkel and finally covered with natural slate. The elevated tank holds 400 m³ of water with an extinguishing water reserve of 40 m³ and was topped up at night by the Jügesheim group waterworks, which was built at the same time, via a riser .

history

On May 15, 1938, the water tower was given its intended purpose as part of a large festival at which eight fanfare players stood in the open arches of the window. The press, which was synchronized at that time , described it as a unique, gigantic structure . In fact, the tower is unique . There is nowhere else a construction made of brickwork that is even remotely similar.

The water tower supplied the districts of Dudenhofen, Jügesheim, Hainhausen and Weiskirchen with drinking water until 1979. More powerful pumps in the three municipal waterworks near Hainhausen and Jügesheim made the tower superfluous as a water reservoir, so it was run dry and shut down. After that, it was initially forgotten. When demolition threatened in the mid-1980s, the city of Rodgau took over the tower from the water association in 1988 in exchange with the Hainhausen waterworks and the payment of a symbolic mark and had it renovated for half a million DM. The masonry was re-grouted and the roof re-covered. Since then, the tower has been used and maintained by the Friends of the Water Tower . The lost dragon fountains to the right and left of the entrance were reconstructed and the coat of arms stone above the door was restored.

A nesting box for kestrels was set up in the tower room around 1980 , which they gladly accepted. The empty tanks are used by bats as winter quarters. Since 1991, the Jügesheim water tower has been illuminated at night by three spotlights with quartz vapor lamps.

Oddities

In the 1950s it became necessary to replace the iron spiral staircase that led through the concrete water tank into the gable room, as it threatened to rust. They decided on a concrete staircase, put in the formwork and poured the staircase in one piece. The next morning there were clearly visible footprints of a young person in the now set concrete, which led upwards. Mind you: up, not back. But there was no one in the tower room and it was feared that the person had fallen into one of the tank openings and drowned. The water was drained completely as quickly as possible, but no body was found . Now the footprints were examined more closely and it was discovered that the nocturnal visitor had indeed descended again, backwards exactly in his own footprints that he had left when he went up. The joke was serious insofar as Jügesheim had no water until the container was reasonably full again. Incidentally, it never came out who the culprit was.

View from the water tower of Frankfurt's skyline and the Taunus

It also seems strange that the foundation stone at the foot of one support pillar is closed with a simple concrete slab that bears the inauguration date May 15, 1938 . Obviously, a surface in the form of an inverted square was knocked out of this plate later. In contrast, the old Jügesheim coat of arms is located above the entrance door as an elaborate half-sculpture with the year of the start of construction and the laying of the foundation stone in 1936 . It can be assumed that both plates were exchanged after the Second World War and only then took their current place.

Tower Festival

The Wassertormfest takes place every third Sunday in September . Then the tower room above the water tank is open to the public. From there, from a height of 36 meters, there is a wide panoramic view of the Main Plain , framed by the Taunus , Spessart and Odenwald . To the north, the skyline of Frankfurt am Main is within reach.

  • Views

  • Water tower and B 45

  • Looking Up

  • Entrance with coat of arms

  • Dragon fountain at the entrance

  • Foundation stone cover

  • Ascent to the tower room

  • Tower room with roof truss

  • B45 and Jügesheimer water tower

literature

Web links

Commons : Water tower Rodgau-Jügesheim  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 50 ° 2 ′ 6.5 ″  N , 8 ° 53 ′ 21.2 ″  E