WestLB Cologne (building)
The Ludwigstrasse 6 building in Cologne is a listed building . It was built from 1953 as an office building for WestLB Cologne .
prehistory
The building of the Cologne branch of the Rheinische Girozentrale and Provinzialbank , the legal predecessor of today's WestLB, was destroyed in the Second World War on March 2, 1945 during Operation Millennium , so that the Cologne branch of the Landesbank der Rheinprovinz started its business in the building of the Landeszentralbank ( Unter Sachsenhausen ) resumed. When the Düsseldorf headquarters was badly damaged by the bombing in June 1943, the accounting, which had been in Cologne-Lindenthal since 1941, was centralized in the administrative building of the provincial administration, while the bombed-out Cologne branch was relocated to Honnef .
building
The buildings in Cologne's Ludwigstrasse are in a prominent urban location in the immediate vicinity of the most frequented shopping streets in Europe, Hohe Strasse and Schildergasse . The building complex consists of three structural generations, which were built next to each other in 1955, 1975 and 1985.
From 1953 until the inauguration in 1955 by architect Hans Schumacher (* 1891, † 1982), the first building of the Rheinische Girozentrale and Provinzialbank was built at Ludwigstrasse 6 . Due to growth, a second wing followed, which was built as a neighboring building in 1975. In the meantime, due to the merger , the bank had been renamed Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale in January 1969 . Architect Harald Deilmann (* 1920, † 2008) received the order from the head office to build a new bank building for WestLB in a uniform corporate identity , as was the case in Cologne for the second extension building, stylistically linked to the first WestLB bank building of this type in Münster (1969-1975) was ajar. The buildings in Düsseldorf, Münster, Dortmund, Essen, Cologne and even Luxembourg were visually identifiable by the architectural style. A third generation of buildings arose during the expansion in 1985, again as a neighboring development, with the corner building extending into the neighboring Brückenstraße.
On November 15, 1996, the building was placed under monument protection under number 8010 (see list of architectural monuments in Cologne's Altstadt-Nord district ).
Reuse
After most of the banking business of the WestLB branch had been centralized to the main office in Düsseldorf in September 2002, the last area that followed in July 2010 was the specialty and precious metal trade, which operates centrally for the entire WestLB. WestLB AG had thus finally ended its business operations in Cologne. The reasons for the centralization of the banking business of Rhenish and Westphalian branches at the Düsseldorf headquarters were both banking operations and the consequences of subsidy-related conditions imposed by the EU Commission .
Today the building is used as an office and commercial building.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans Pohl, Von der Helfskasse …, p. 152 f.
- ↑ University of Dortmund, architecture database
- ↑ Bauwelt 12/1957
- ↑ Kölner Stadtanzeiger of September 22, 2009, WestLB closes several locations
Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 17.3 ″ N , 6 ° 57 ′ 19 ″ E