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Map of the World Heritage application

LegendNominated propertySpeicherstadtAreasWater areasBuffer zoneVisual axes

Speicherstadt and Kontorhaus district with Chilehaus

Free and Hanseatic City of HamburgMinistry of CultureDepartment for Heritage Preservation

Position reference system : ETRS89Map background: DSGK (LGV, Oktober 2011)

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1 Visual axes number

Scale: 1:4.992

The Kontorhaus District

The Kontorhaus district to the north of the Customs Canal and thus immediately adjacent to the Speicherstadt, which was constructed primarily in the 1920s and 1930s, is characte-rised by a considerable degree of homogeneity, which can be experienced to this day, thanks to its mainly large-scale buil-dings with clinker façades, some fi lling an entire block and fea-turing expressionist and sober shapes. As the fi rst dedicated offi ce district on the European continent, it distils previous experience in the planning and design of offi ce buildings.

The buildings of the core zone, the Chilehaus, Messberghof, Sprinken-hof and Mohlenhof, which consti-tute an urban ensemble, are striking for their quality. Particular impor-tance was attached to having fl exible fl oor plans, meaning that as far as possible load-bearing internal walls were to be avoided, which is why the offi ce buildings were fi rst erected as skeleton structures, with infrastructure such as stair-wells and sanitary facilities concen-trated in compact core areas. Dis-tinguishing features of Hamburg’s Kontorhaus tradition were, on the one hand, modern access arrange-ments thanks to paternoster lifts and, on the other hand, the high standard of the buildings’ design. This is evident not only in their artistic adornment, with their care-fully designed and often elaborately detailed clinker façades, but also in the lavishly furnished hallways and staircases, the design of which sometimes verged on the ostenta-tious.

At that time, buildings of compara-ble conceptual and design quality could only be found in the USA. Yet, in contrast to offi ce block architec-ture elsewhere in the world at that time, which was characterised by the Beaux-Arts style or other histori-cised forms, Hamburg’s buildings already displayed modern clinker façades in expressionist shapes which, in the Chilehaus and the Sprinkenhof, achieved an almost unsurpassable degree of virtuosity in terms of design and craftsman-ship. The Messberghof, which was built with virtually no decoration or sub-division of its façades, so that ultimately little remained on view apart from two-dimensional clinker brickwork, was one of the fi rst buil-dings in the world to pave the way for the New Objectivity movement. The Mohlenhof, with its relatively bare, fl at façades can, in fact, already be classifi ed as an example of New Objectivity. Even from an international perspective, the buil-dings in the core zone of the Kon-torhaus district are thus among the most signifi cant achievements of offi ce block architecture of the 1920s and, being works by major architects, are also of considerable artistic importance.

13 Staircases: Messberghof (left), Sprinkenhof (right)

The Chilehaus

No textbook on 20th century architecture is complete without the Chilehaus, which was built between 1922 and 1924 by Fritz Höger and is regarded as an icon of architectural expressionism. Its signifi cance as such derives from both the characteristic detailing of its brick façades and its striking shape – the way it spans Fischer-twiete; its curved, S-shaped façade on the Meßberg side; and, above all, its eastern tip, which recalls the prow of a ship.

Furthermore, by exploiting the construction possibilities offered by reinforced concrete, and com-bining them with traditional brick-work, Höger developed in the Chilehaus a modern, ground- breaking building structure. With virtually unsurpassable virtuoso design and craftsmanship, he created a modern style of brick offi ce-building architecture, the like of which the world had never seen.

Höger achieved this by using both the marked mirroring and refl ec- tive effect of the irregularly fi red clinker bricks and the tightly

packed sequence of the pillars, required by the internal fl oor plan, for the artistic design of the façades. Inside, the building provi-ded fl exibility with the division of fl oor space, vital for a modern rented offi ce building, and could therefore be adapted to the needs of different users. In oblique view, the tightly packed sequence of pillars gives the impression of a calm, apparently windowless expanse of wall, which heightens the monumental feel of the building. The brick piers protruding from the façade at a 45°-angle follow their own internal rhythm, with the rotation of every seventh layer of bricks, so that when closely observed from an angle a diagonal pattern can be seen on the wall of pillars.

In addition to its artistic wall design, the building boasts cera-mic façade decorations by the sculptor Richard Kuöhl, who also created the terracotta design in the imposing entrance areas and staircases.

16 Chilehaus

17 Chilehaus, detail and architectural sculptures, created by Richard Kuöhl

18 Chilehaus ground plan, ground fl oor 19 Chilehaus entrance hall

Imprint

List of Figures

1 L. Wendemuth, W. Böttcher, Der Hafen von Hamburg, Hamburg 1928, Meissner & Christiansen

2 Section through a traditional Hamburg town house, Katharinen-straße 10/11, Hermann Hipp, Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, Köln 1989

Ground plan of a traditional Hamburg town house, Katharinen-straße 10, Rudhard, Wolfgang, Das Bürgerhaus in Hamburg, Tübingen 1975

3 Plan of the Brookinseln before the demolition of the existing building development in 1883, below: with transformation owing to the construction of the Speicherstadt and with coloured indication of the projected and the realized construction phases: red 1885-88, blue 1891-96, green 1899-1927. The purple-coloured blocks on the Ericusspitze have not been realized. Die Hamburger Freihafen-Lagerhausgesellschaft 1885–1910. Denkschrift zum 25-jährigen Jubiläum, Hamburg 1910

4 Architekten- und Ingenieur-Verein zu Hamburg (Hrsg.), Hamburg und seine Bauten, 1928

6 HHLA Immobilien

7 Aus dem Hamburger Freihafen-gebiet, Hamburg 1888, Strumper & Co.

9 Carl Koppmann

15 Wolfgang Voigt

16 Union Invest Real Estate

17 Chilehaus 1924, reproduction of a photography by Dransfeld Brothers

Chilehaus, detail, Wikimedia Commons, Foto: Wolfgang Meinhart

18 Zentralblatt der Bauverwal-tung 45, 1925

All other photos:

Staatsarchiv, Sabine Ganczarsky, Nicolai Wieckmann

Editor

Rita ClasenDr. Agnes Seemann

Translation

Niels Hamdorf

Design

Rita ClasenBianca Flamming

Bernd Paulowitz

World Heritage CoordinatorMinistry of CultureDepartment for Heritage PreservationGroße Bleichen 3020354 Hamburg bernd.paulowitz@kb.hamburg.de

www.hamburg.de/welterbe

V.i.S.d.P.: Andreas Kellner

© 2017

15 Mohlenhof

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12 Messberghof

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LegendNominated propertySpeicherstadtAreasWater areasBuffer zoneVisual axes

Speicherstadt and Kontorhaus district with Chilehaus

Free and Hanseatic City of HamburgMinistry of CultureDepartment for Heritage Preservation

Position reference system : ETRS89Map background: DSGK (LGV, Oktober 2011)

¸

1 Visual axes number

Scale: 1:4.992

WORLD HERITAGE HAMBURG

SPEICHERSTADT AND KONTORHAUS DISTRICT

WITH CHILEHAUS

Hamburg

In the 19th century, the pace of economic and trade globalisation began to quicken, driven by colo-nialism and economic liberalism, and boosted by industrialisation, new technologies, more exten-sive production, the division of labour, and the ability to trans-port goods more rapidly. This development not only had a major impact on the global economy, but also, amongst other things, prompted a change in the urban development of the world’s port and trading cities.

Germany was a particular benefi-ciary of these developments for, within just four decades, from the establishment of the German Empire in 1871 to World War I, it rose to second place in the global league of industrialised nations, surpassed only by the USA. At the same time, the volume of German commercial shipping on the world’s seas grew tenfold. One of the decisive factors in this development was the enormous growth in trans-port capacity, as well as the increase in shipment speed. The extension of the railway network and the expansion of ports, together with the boom in ship-building, in particular the con-struction of new steamers, also played their part.

As a port and trading city, Ham-burg was at the forefront of these developments. Thanks to the prescient actions of the city’s leaders, Hamburg was able not only to maintain its overwhel-ming pre-eminence in Germany, but also to become the most important port in continental

Europe. Fresh impetus was provided by the city’s full incor-poration into the German Customs Union in 1888 and the consequent expansion and modernisation of the port, as part of which the Speicherstadt was created. Within just two decades, Hamburg became one of the world’s leading ports, so that ultimately the only places where more goods were trans-shipped than on the northern part of the River Elbe were Lon-don and New York.

Hamburg’s accession to the Ger-man Customs Union triggered the construction of the Speicher-stadt, a project which not only led to all the houses in an entire district being demolished and over 16,000 people being displaced, but also marked the end of a traditional way of life in Hamburg, where residential, commercial and office life had been united under one roof. The separation of those three aspects of life, which had already begun when the middle classes had moved into new exclusive residential suburbs on the Outer Alster around 1850, was conside-rably hastened by the construc-tion of the Speicherstadt, and subsequently engendered the formation of mono-functional districts dominated by the service sector.

Historical Background to the Building of the Speicherstadt and Kontorhaus District

Hamburg’s Transformation into a Modern City

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Development of the port in Hamburg 1865 - 1925

In the world’s metropolises, the industrialisation and incipient globa-lisation of the economy and trade at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries was accom-panied by a new phase of urban development, namely the forma- tion of the modern city. This process overtook an increasing number of city centres around the world, and led to functional segre-gation, with residents and other users being driven out by the expanding tertiary sector.

Various different events combined to accelerate and accentuate this process in Hamburg. Catalysts included the Great Fire of 1842, as a result of which the small-scale medieval structure of the affected areas of the Old Town (Altstadt) was replaced by state-of-the-art parallel streets and blocks of buil-dings. In the process, most of the poorer residents were driven out. In addition, the abolition in 1860 of the Torsperre, the system of levying charges for unlocking the city gate in the evenings and at night, meant that the merchants who had pre- viously lived in townhouses and gone about their business in the Old Town were able to move per-manently to the green surround-ings of the suburbs, where some of them already owned summer resi-dences.

The construction of the Speicher-stadt, which began in 1885, engen-dered Hamburg’s radical transition from a mixed-use town to a modern city with mono-functional districts. 16,000 people, who had previously lived on the Brook Islands, had to make way for the building of the Speicherstadt. At the same time, the first office buil-dings were erected, which further

contributed to the displacement of the residential population. The process was further accelerated by the clearance of the city centre slums, the so-called Alleyway district (Gängeviertel), in the wake of the cholera epidemic of 1892. In their stead in the Old Town came mainly office blocks rather than new residential accommodation. Consequently, the population of the city centre fell from 171,000 in 1880 to 68,600 in 1937, only 15,500 of whom lived in the Old Town.

With the exception of London, this phenomenon was virtually unpre-cedented in Europe at that time. Even in the USA, only New York and Chicago had central areas dominated by the tertiary sector. While it is true that increasing numbers of office buildings were also constructed elsewhere, there – in contrast to Hamburg – the tertiary sector did not displace the residential population from such large swathes of the city centres. Rather, to a large extent the latter retained their character as functio-nally mixed residential and working districts.

The two mono-functional, functio-nally complementary districts of the Speicherstadt and the Kontor-haus district are therefore perfect exemplars of the concept of the ideal modern, tertiary-based city with functional zoning. Their unique state of preservation, their concen-tration and their sheer size docu-ment the process of city formation at the end of the 19th and begin-ning of the 20th centuries in a way that is unrivalled anywhere in the world. In addition, both districts also have outstanding qualities in their own right.

4 Redevelopment area south of Steinstraße

5 Aerial view of the Speicherstadt and the Kontorhaus district

Hamburg’s Speicherstadt

Hamburg’s Speicherstadt, with its numerous warehouses and func- tional buildings and its specifically planned functional, architectural and urban structure with cobbled streets, waterways, bridges and railway connections, was created between 1885 and 1927 in three construction phases under the direction of the city’s chief engineer Franz Andreas Meyer as the largest and most modern logistics centre of its time. It provided generously-sized storage areas, which were equipped as standard with innova-tions such as electric light and hyd-raulically-powered winches. Pressu-rised water and electricity were supplied by its own power station. Thanks to their mode of construc-tion, the warehouses provided a stable internal climate, where sen-sitive goods could be stored wit-hout additional heating or cooling.

One of the Speicherstadt’s charac-teristic features is the use of skeleton frames, predominantly constructed using prefabricated iron components, but also incorpo-rating wood and sheathed cast iron pillars clad in concrete. The resulting reduction in the load borne by the external walls means that the latter primarily serve as protection against the elements. The modular struc-ture of the façades, whose propor-tions are derived from the standar-dised brick size, in accordance with the tenets of the “Hanover School”,

is also characteristic of the Speicherstadt’s architecture. Yet the result was not a schematic and aus-tere warehouse complex, but rather a highly adorned and varied ensem-ble, using predominantly neo-Go-thic architectural forms to make a strong impression as an urban space – an effect which is further reinforced by its exposed position on a group of islands on the edge of the city centre.

Thanks to sensitive and painstaking reconstruction, despite the effects of World War II the Speicherstadt still retains its characteristic uniform appearance. Even today, the Speicherstadt remains the largest cohesive and integrated ensemble of warehouses in the world. It is notable not only for its high degree of architectural and urban unity, resulting from the uniform design with red brick façades, but also for its evocative setting, which empha-sises its imposing character and contrasts that with its function. It is the Speicherstadt’s prestigious function, so clearly underscored, which makes it, as it were, the architectural showpiece of Hamburg’s port, and which, along with its size, sets it apart from the warehouse complexes of other port cities, lending it special status both nationally and internationally.

6 Speicherstadt , constructions and building age of the blocks

8 Wasserschlösschen

7 Cross-section of the customs canal and the free port zone, Hamburg 1888

9 Waterway around 1900 10 Block V 11 Block P

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