Digging deep: the arrival of fibre optics

I was rudely awakened at 7 am some days ago. It turned out the works for laying the new optical fibre glass cables had started and my street had been cordoned off. Men in high vis jackets  were digging up the pavement assisted by a little digger that lifted the paving stones and concrete tiles. Then a large reel was brought in with lengths of orange cable on it. The work took them two days and they have now moved on to a street just around the corner...

Pedestrian were directed to the pavement on the other side of the street (left) as the pavement had been lifted for digging a trench. In the middle of the street a connective trench was dug between both sides of the street. The result was a tiny linear dune of sand on the curb, the spoils of digging the trench for the fibre optic cables.

A large reel on a cart held the cable (left). As the cart was pulled forth the cables were laid down along the trench. This trench was about 2 feet deep. The cables are laid at the bottom and it is than back-filled with sand (middle).You can clearly see a house connection sticking out. Finally the pavement was resurfaced by levelling the sand and placing the concrete pavement slabs back and stabilising them with a vibratory plate that presses the surface. More sand was swiped between the joints to add more stability, thus creating a half-open pavement that lets rain water permeate -to some extent- into the ground.

Examples of vanished workers colonies: Westend, Schederhof and Kronenberg

From an ideological as well as a well understood business perspective the Krupp family advocated good housing for its workers. Thus the housing was better than what could be expected in the regular tenements (Mietskasernen). The earliest housing was built as so-called Mulhouse Quadragles or as rows of tenements with a central kitchen, washroom, communal toilets and a family room in every dwelling. From the 1870s amenities such as schools, a church, a post office, a park, a playing field, a market square and community hall were included in the schemes. They thus can be seen as forerunners of workers housing along the lines of the Garden City Movement. There is however, a very big difference! This housing was provided by the employer and was also aimed at tying the worker and his family to the company. This was done by providing clubs and decent housing but also by truck systems for instance with a company store (Konsumanstallt) where all employees should buy their essentials.

Every workers colony was in principle a company town. They were all located outside of the city in the Dreibauernschaft of Altendorf, Frohnhausen and Holsterhausen. The local politicians were overwhelmed by the effects of the rapid urbanisation and were very thankful to the Krupp family for arranging for urban plans and the provision of housing and amenities. By the end of the nineteenth century a Krupp city had been built next to the old city of Essen.

The workers colony Kronenberg (K) on the edge of Altendorf (A) and the workers colony Schederhof (S) in Holsterhausen (H) were both located adjacent to the Krupp Steel Works. Workers colony Westend (W) was located within the confines of the plant, mostly within the boundary of the city of Essen. Kronenberg was situated directly north of the station (Bahnhof - B) and a goods depot (G) on the Essen-Mülheim railway line. The town hall of the Burgemeisterei Altendorf (H) stood in between Altendorf and Holsterhausen. The resident from these colonies had the Lutherkirche (C), a large church located in Frohnhausen, built for them by the Krupp company in 1881.

The three workers colonies on the west side of the steel works were dwarfed by the factory buildings. This was especially true of Westend (1863 + 1870) the first of these colonies built by Krupp. It comprise of two building phases with in the northern half long barracks arranged in parallel fashion at some distance to a street. The second phase has a small garden square at its heart with more  tenement blocks around it. At the side a block was built for office workers with a large company shop and a Bierhalle (a drinking hall that is more or less equivalent to a community hall).

Schederhof (1872) is similar to Westend. It also comprises of two spatial ideas. In Schederhof the first building phase consisted only of simple timber framed houses that could be best described as barracks. These are built along two old rural lanes in parallel rows to fill the available plot. The second phase comprised of brick tenement blocks with covered wooden stairs on the outside. These were all arranged along a pre-existing road around a market square and a park. Again the plot was completely developed with gravel paths in between. Amenities were included along the edged, with a large park for recreation. At some distance allotment gardens were also provided for the residents of this colony.

Next to it a free school (fS) was built. Another non-denominational school was the Haushaltschule or domestic service school (dS).All other schooling provided was either an evangelical school (eS) or a catholic school (kS). These three colonies were different in their architecture and number of houses. At the centre of each colony lay an open space, in Kronenberg this was a central market square (4) with a post office (1), a company store (2), a beer hall (3) and a concert hall (5) on the edge of a park (P). Around the edges bleaching greens (6) were provided. Schederhof also had a large central square next to a park (P). On this square a large company store with bakery (7) was built. On the edges of this colony further amenities such as a boarding house for apprentices (8), a pharmacy (9) and a plant nursery (10) were provided. Westend only had a company store (2) and a beer hall (3).

The largest workers colony Kronenberg (1874) has affinity with the other colonies in layout, but shows more maturity in the design ideas. Kronenberg was given a very clear structure of streets planted with trees with building either positioned along or perpendicular to these streets. Most tenement blocks were accessed from the streets from both sides, thus allowing for greater density and flexibility in the layout of each dwelling. Only 4 types were built. This is however double the number in comparison to the other two workers colonies shown here.  

Kronenberg had 8.000 residents in brick-built 3 storey blocks on orthogonal alphabetical streets. At the heart of this settlement all amenities were located around a central market square. This greatly improved the sense of place, which is the biggest problem in grid layouts with similar housing. Schools were located around the edges of the workers colony, as these also served neighbouring workers colonies.

These colonies were a vast improvement for the resident at the time they were built. But only two decades later in 1893 the head of the company Friedrich Alfred Krupp decides that low-rise family housing is the more desirable option for workers housing and he commissions Altenhof I from the Krupp Housing Bureau. Around 1900 his wife has become a fervent supporter of the garden city ideals which ties in neatly with Altenhof. Thus the old colonies were deemed old-fashioned and became less desirable. All were removed for development of industrial buildings between 1937 and 1957. Now nothing remains of these 3 and 2 other of the workers colonies built by the Krupp Company in de 19th century.

Vanished Krupp company workers' colonies in Essen

De city of Essen would have flourished without the Krupp Company. Essen is as much Krupp as Krupp is Essen. You can't distinguish one or the other as far as urban development is concerned. Sure, the area knew many types of industry, namely coal mining, glass works, furnaces, cokes works, gas works and of course steel works, but these were mostly located outside of the pre-existing urban centres and gave rise to a rapid suburbanisation via workers colonies known as Siedlungen (literally: settlements, as the people inhabiting these places mostly came in anew to settle in these places).

Ever since the Krupp Company was founded on the edge of the city of Essen in 1811 the fate of  this historic city and the industrialisation became interlocked. From modest beginnings of an almost failed industrial company Krupp grew to become a city within a city, driving both the growth and the direction of urban development of the city. In 1819 a small factory was built on the edge of Altendorf just outside of Essen's medieval  city limits. In 1924 the large townhouse in Essen has to be sold to free up cash for the business and the family builds a new modest timber framed house next to the factory. This will become the centre of the later Krupp Steelworks that occupy more than double the area than the whole of the medieval city.

As the company grows so does the workforce. These are initially housed in scant dwelling built hastily by private developers or in large existing housing that is rented out per room to whole families. This pattern is basically true in the first phases of industrialisation everywhere! In 1863 the Kruppsche Wohnungsbau (Krupp House building) starts its activities as a way of balancing working conditions with a wellness program for workers, but also as a means of binding the factory workers to their employers. So in 1863 The Arbeiterkolonie Westend is built on the edge of the factory site directly west of the city of Essen. This worker colony was followed by Neu Westend (1870), Nordhof (1871), Schederhof (1872-73), Baumhof (1871 + 1890) and Kronenberg (1872-74).

  

The Krupp Steel Works (W) with the Krupp House (H) was surrounded by a number of workers colonies that have now vanished. The first to be built was Westend (1), consciously located upwind from the steel works. Later the workers colonies of Nordhof (2), Schederhof (3), Kronenberg (4) and Baumhof (5) followed. Krupp also funded the city park (Stadtpark -S). The steel works occupied a much larger area than the neighbouring medieval city of Essen (E).

These colonies are very similar to the housing built for miners all around the Ruhr Area. The name workers colony is very apt as they were built in one building campaign (although Arbeiterkolonie Baumhof was more than doubled in 1890) and were meant as complete new settlements. These colonies are always located near the work place. In the case of the Krupp Company they were situated on or adjacent to the Steel works on the west side of the medieval city. These workers colonies are very regular in their layout with parallel streets often on a grid and housing in long rows. Most of this housing were Mehrfamilienhäuser (Multiple Family Housing) although some provision was made for single young man and later women in the form of large dormitory hostels. Not unlike the new housing in the colonies these settlements were strictly orthogonal and only reacted to their surroundings at the edges.

These colonies were very successful and provided much needed housing for Krupp workers. The ideas on housing changed however, and by 1890 the family house was placed at the heart of the company housing policy by Friedrich Alfred (see also Altenhof). The rapid expansion of activities at the steel works meant the decline of these workers colonies located within or adjacent to the factory site. In 1938 Kronenberg is demolished to make way for a new tank factory and the expansion of the cast steel plant. Westend, Norddorf, Baumhof and Schederhof were (partly) destroyed by bombs and replaced by offices and industrial buildings after 1947. None of the oldest Krupp company housing remains, except for a few so-called Meisterhäuser, built for overseers in 1860.

Messages beneath our feet

I tend to look around me and not so much at the ground. But sometimes this is a good idea as there are messages beneath our feet in embedded in the pavement. The happy faces ( on the left) were painted on pavement slabs in Twenthe and followed the preferred school route towards and from a primary school. These ladybirds are to be found in various places in the Netherlands. They mark the spot where "senseless" street violence has claimed the life of someone. The ladybird is a ferocious killer so it is a rather strange emblem against street violence, but is works well graphically. Also in the Netherlands these colourful feet painted on successive pavement slabs signify  a pedestrian route for school children. In this case the route towards a zebra crossing -that isn't in front of the school where it would make more sense- around the corner.

Siedlung Pottgiesserhof: simple apartment blocks set in green

 

A view along one of the orthogonal ensembles of apartment blocks that make up the Siedlung Pottgiesserhof. In this section all buildings have hipped roofs with dormers and balconies in a contrasting ochre colour that contrasts with the cream colour of the rest of the facades.

In another section - around the garden square- the buildings are most decorative with facades in roughcast and precast concrete details that serve as ornaments. The play of lines betrays an influence from Art Deco. The vertical arrangement of the windows is balanced by the concrete ledges that ad a horizontal accent to the facade.

The garden square itself is surrounded by pollarded plane trees an accommodates a large playground.

The housing behind the garden square are distinctly more vertical with the arrangement of the windows emphasised by the outlines stairwells (left). This statue of a Gänsereiter reminds us of the folk sport of goose pulling. In Germany the goose was dead before the "sportsman" riding a horse tried to pull off the greased head. In Anglo-Saxon countries the goose was alive making this a cruel rural pastime.

The blocks are placed at right angles. The facades follow the line of the street but don't create a distinct street space. Communal green space flows around the blocks in this open parcellation.

In other sections the buildings follow the street. The building section which is setback on the left side is a replacement wing. These have distinctly different architecture, but blend in well with the simple architecture of the original 1930s blocks.

In some places the communal space between two blocks has been planted as a communal garden for the residents. Here space no longer envelops the blocks but the garden boundaries create a sub-space within the housing estate.

All blocks have balconies (loggias in actual fact) on the side of the communal green space, here a garden (left).The front side is often very closed, although the original outlook would be different with wide green verges instead of cars lining the streets.

In this street the original intentions of the designers come through with blocks in three storeys separated from the central street by a wide green verge.

A close-up of one of the replacement blocks with the distinctive balconies on the street side instead of the original buildings that gave the loggias at the back. A row op long blocks with hipped roofs in blue and grey (on the right) line the central street that divides the different sections of this housing estate.

Another example of the orthogonal placement of the blocks in enveloping green space. Some apartment blocks follow the line of the streets others don't. The alternating orientation within the green space binds the estate together.