William Lindley

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William Lindley 1879

William Lindley (born September 7, 1808 in London , † May 22, 1900 in Blackheath ) was a British engineer who was successful around the middle of the 19th century in the fields of supply and disposal technology , railroad and hydraulic engineering , and electricity - and port construction and urban planning . During his stay in Hamburg between 1838 and 1860, he made a significant contribution to the modernization of the city and the water supply in Hamburg . In the years after his departure from Hamburg, he planned, increasingly supported by his sons, water supply and disposal systems for numerous other European cities.

Life

Joseph Lindley's son attended school in Croydon , in the south of London, at the age of 16 he retired from Wandsbeck Pastor Arnold Dietrich Schröder for ten months and then worked briefly in a London bank. From 1827 he was trained in the office of the engineer Francis Giles in England and worked for a long time as his assistant. Then he turned to self-employed engineering.

Hamburg construction planning

Supply network of the Hamburger Stadtwasserkunst 1864, designed and executed by W. Lindley

After he had already participated in the planning of a never realized railway line between Hamburg and Lübeck in 1833 , he was commissioned in 1838 to realize the Hamburg-Bergedorf railway line . Its opening ceremony had to be canceled due to the great fire in 1842. However, this first Hamburg railway line to Bergedorf, only 19 kilometers away, proved its worth and was incorporated into the then newly created Berlin-Hamburg line in 1846 .

In the time before the Great Fire, the water demand was largely met from the canals and the Elbe , into which, however, the sewage was also discharged. In order to cope with the unsanitary situation, Lindley had already received the contract to build Hamburg's "Stadtwasserkunst" at the time of the fire . The large-scale destruction of the city center now offered undreamt-of possibilities for a fundamental change in water supply and disposal.

His designs, influenced by the English social reformer and health inspector Edwin Chadwick , included the first underground sewers of modern times on mainland Europe. The sluices had a drop of only one meter over a length of three kilometers, were made of bricks and were accessible. The larger trunk drains run under the small sluices for sewage and rainwater. The sewers have backflow flaps to protect against flooding and emergency outlets into urban waters. Eleven kilometers of sewers were built within three years.

Tower of the "Stadtwasserkunst" designed by Lindley in the Hamburg district of Rothenburgsort (1848)

He tackled the central water supply with Elbe water, clarifying it in storage basins and pumping it up in a water tower from the Hamburg district of Rothenburgsort . The concept also included public bathing houses for the poorer population, because “physical uncleanliness very soon creates a lack of self-respect, rawness and vice. [...] If individual after-work hours can be used to cool off in the pool, then in most cases it will take that long away from the inn. ”A washing and bathing establishment was built by 1855 on the pig market.

In the years that followed, Lindley designed and built water supply systems in other German cities such as Kiel , Stralsund , Stettin , Leipzig and Düsseldorf . The success of Lindley's designs can be seen in the example of the city of Frankfurt am Main - for which he worked from 1863 - where the death rate from typhus fell from 80 to ten per 100,000 inhabitants from 1868 to 1883.

In addition to the water supply and disposal, Lindley also planned a modern gas works in Hamburg in 1845 to illuminate the streets and households. The systems replaced the first Hamburg gas factory , which was destroyed by a storm surge a few weeks after it went into operation. Little attention was paid to the fact that Lindley, as a “technical consultant” to municipal committees in Hamburg, had such a great influence on construction activity in the city of Hamburg that he practically filled the role of today's senior construction director. He was heard on almost every major construction project in the city in the 1850s.

Lindley's "Plan to Improve Hammerbrooks" (1844)

Lindley succeeded in influencing the urban development of Hamburg in particular: in 1842 he presented the first reconstruction plan after the Great Fire and, in cooperation with the Technical Commission, was able to determine the future urban design in the inner city area. In addition, Lindley set the course for the development of the areas outside of the medieval city center. As early as 1840 he had presented a plan for the drainage of the Hammerbrooks , which provided for the creation of a strict canal and street grid and thus the prerequisites for the formation of the first modern, but commercial urban expansion (realized by 1847). Further plans such as the highly progressive overall plan for a city expansion for St. Pauli and Harvestehude could not be implemented. The plan by Hübbe , Walker and Lindley to build a docking port on Grasbrook was only implemented to a limited extent.

Prestigious Hamburgers honored Lindley's achievements, sheet from the Lindley album by Hermann Wilhelm Soltau

However, William Lindley had to fight against numerous opposition in Hamburg, including criticism from construction officials such as the hydraulic engineering director Heinrich Hübbe . In addition to a lack of specialist knowledge, the British were assumed to be too close to the Senate and the city's entrepreneurs. After a constitutional amendment in 1860 changed the balance of power in the city, the citizens finally denied him the intended position as senior building officer and thus the final regulation of his employment relationship. He lost control of the Hamburg city water art and returned with his family, his wife Julia Heerlein from Hamburg, the three sons William Heerlein Lindley (1853–1917), Robert Searles Lindley (* 1854), Joseph Lindley (* 1859) and one Daughter, back to London .

European building plans

From London he continued his work, for which there were requests from all over Europe, initially in Frankfurt am Main . The commission from Sydney , which he was to receive in 1876, he had to refuse because he had already agreed to the city of Warsaw . The designs for Warsaw were made until 1878, after which his son William Heerlein Lindley took over the construction .

In 1879 Lindley retired from business life, handed over his engineering office to his three sons and filled the years up to his death in 1900 with social commitments and extensive trips.

Commemoration

Lindley Memorial in Hamburg

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : William Lindley  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
  • Norbert Wierecky: Engineer portrait of William Lindley. Technical hygiene pioneer. In: Deutsche Bauzeitung, ISSN  0721-1902 , Vol. 137 (2003), 6, pp. 84–90 ( PDF ; 137 kB)
  • Harro Albrecht: master builder of hygiene. William Lindley started a cleanliness revolution in Europe in the 19th century . In: DIE ZEIT, edition 52/2008 of December 17, 2008, p. 40
  • Wolfgang Burgmer: WDR ZeitZeichen. May 22, 1900 - Anniversary of the death of the engineer William Lindley. In: [1] (with audio file)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexandra Grossmann: New ways. In: Hamburger Abendblatt from January 15, 2011, magazine p. VII
  2. ↑ In the further course of the article Börsenbau , the opinion of CG Abendroth is given ( Hamburger Nachrichten of October 20, 1856, page 4, digitized version )
  3. ^ Winner of the William Lindley Ring. In: dwa.de. Accessed January 30, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Lindley, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British engineer
DATE OF BIRTH September 7, 1808
PLACE OF BIRTH London , England
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1900
Place of death London , England