Zurich House
| Zurich House | |
|---|---|
| Basic data | |
| Place: | Bockenheimer Landstrasse 2-4 ( Westend-Süd ) |
| Construction time : | 1959 |
| Status : | Tore off |
| Architect : | Udo von Schauroth , Werner Stücheli |
| Use / legal | |
| Usage : | High-rise office building |
| Owner : | Zurich Insurance |
| Main tenant: | Zurich Insurance |
| Client : | Zurich Insurance |
| Technical specifications | |
| Height : | 68 m |
| Floors : | 19 upper floors |
| Usable area : | approx. 14,000 m² |
| address | |
| City: | Frankfurt am Main |
| Country: | Germany |
The Zurich House was a 68-meter-high skyscraper in Frankfurt am Main . The building, erected between 1958 and 1960 by Zurich Insurance, based on designs by architects Udo von Schauroth and Werner Stücheli , was one of the first high-rise buildings in Frankfurt. He stood from 1989 to 1996 under monument protection and was demolished of 2002. Today the Opera Tower stands on the site .
history
In the mid-1950s, Zürich-Versicherung acquired the property on Bockenheimer Landstrasse in the immediate vicinity of the Alte Oper from the heirs of the Rothschild family . The area had previously belonged to Rothschild Park. The classicist Palais Rothschild , a work by the architect Friedrich Rumpf from 1832, was badly damaged in the war and the ruins were torn down in the early 1950s.
In autumn 1958 the architects presented their plans to the public. They envisaged a 19-storey tower standing on pillars with a square floor plan of 22 meters edge length on Opernplatz and an eight-storey longitudinal building measuring 70 × 20 meters towards Rothschild Park. The two buildings were to be connected by a low-rise building. A two-storey underground car park with 200 parking spaces was planned under the building complex.
Construction of the high-rise began in autumn 1959. First of all, the reinforced concrete core with an edge length of seven meters was built, which accommodated the supply facilities and three elevators . The facade was first erected as a curtain wall facade , in which the eight centimeter thick facade parts made of anodized aluminum were hung and screwed in front of the reinforced concrete skeleton. Due to the small wall thicknesses and the weak insulation, the employees later complained because the facade heated up strongly in the sunlight and the heat was dissipated inside the building.
The technical innovations of the building included two pressure boosting systems for drinking and extinguishing water, an emergency power supply for the elevators and the lighting of the escape routes as well as an automatic sprinkler system in the underground car park. The three automatically controlled elevators reached a speed of three meters per second. The stairwell in the north wing was only intended for emergencies. At the end of the 1970s, another escape staircase had to be installed on the outside of the high-rise, which severely impaired the external appearance of the slim tower.
The new building was occupied in November 1960. Around 1,000 workplaces are spread across 14,000 square meters of office space. First-time tenants included the Swiss Consulate General, Procter & Gamble , Merrill Lynch , Morgan Guaranty , Crédit Lyonnais , Alitalia , Siemens and Lurgi . The building complex was given its own address by the post office: Zurich House on Opernplatz .
The construction costs were around 20 million DM (in today's purchasing power € 46.62 million). On May 28, 1962, the opening ceremony of the new building took place in the Kaisersaal des Römers in the presence of the Swiss Consul General, the Mayor of Frankfurt and numerous guests from politics and business.
The flat building on Bockenheimer Landstrasse at the foot of the Zurich House moved into the United States Trade Center in November 1962 , a marketing company that put smaller US companies in touch with German companies.
With the construction of the Zurich House, a critical phase began for Frankfurt's urban development : In his opening speech, Lord Mayor Werner Bockelmann announced that the Westend should become the new expansion area for the cramped Frankfurt city center . The building speculation that began in the Westend in the following years finally culminated in the house-to-house war in Frankfurt in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Due to its importance for the building history of the city, among other things, the Zurich House was designated a cultural monument by the State Office for Monument Preservation of Hesse in 1989 . The owners then brought an action for declaratory judgment that the building was not a cultural monument. The process ended with a comparison: The state of Hesse finally agreed not to claim for at least ten years that the complex was a cultural monument. The owner then planned the demolition in 1998. The Zurich House was to be replaced by a 90 meter high new building designed by Christoph Mäckler with 2,000 workplaces. After disputes with the city, which rejected the very broad and compact design, the architect proposed the construction of a slim, 168-meter-high tower. In return, the Rothschildpark was to be enlarged by 5,500 square meters and redesigned.
The city approved these plans and in 2002 allowed the Zurich building to be demolished. After the demolition, Zurich Insurance did not start the new construction due to its own economic problems, and so the site lay fallow until it was finally sold to the project developer Tishman Speyer Properties in July 2004 . In January 2007 the construction of the now called Opernturm began , which was completed at the end of 2009.
See also
Other former Zurich insurance buildings are also in other major German cities such as Hamburg, Berlin, Düsseldorf - shown under some buildings of the "Zurich insurance" .
Web links
- First skyscraper: The Zurich high-rise ( Memento from April 9, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- Zurich building complex at www.emporis.com
Individual evidence
- ^ First skyscraper: The Zurich high-rise ( Memento from April 9, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 57.9 " N , 8 ° 40 ′ 12.7" E