Deichstraße

The dike road is a street in the city center of Hamburg and has the last surviving ensemble of althamburgischen town houses of the city. Therefore, it has a historical value and has a major tourist importance. With the obtained on the other side of the Nikolaifleet storage group Cremon a relic of the old Hamburg has been preserved.

Location

The road is beyond Cremon and Grimm in the historic district in the Nikolaifleet. It runs from the Willy -Brandt -Straße street quays and thus provides a link between the area around the town hall and the warehouse district or HafenCity represents the road is largely pedestrianized.

Description

The ensemble of the town houses on the dike road is - as the name says - on a dike between the road and Nikolaifleet. In the early modern era the land was built on the dikes with buildings, since Hamburg by increasing trade took a huge boom in the city and soon there was a lack of space. The group of buildings consists of several half-timbered houses that are equipped to the street with representative facades, the Fleet side ( Nikolaifleet ) but have retained their timber. There are hatches, discharge through the barges in Nikolaifleet by means of a pulley and the goods could be directly used as the storage rooms of the house.

In the front part of the house was located, however, the living room, the office and the typical, representative floorboard included. However, this form of the house to this day has remained hardly obtained because the houses were changed greatly over the years, so shops were installed at several houses on the ground floor. The most important building is the house number 37 ( " Althamburgisches Mansion "), which has been changed by the establishment of housing in the 19th century, but by obtaining an authentic, two-storey hall from the Baroque and valuable furniture, consisting of the Second world War II destroyed town houses originates, has a certain importance.

Importance

In the dike road there are houses in the Great Fire, the Second World War and demolition activities dominated before the destruction of the "old Hamburg " from 1950 to 1980 a large part of Hamburg's city center, the so-called althamburgischen town houses. These combined living, working and storage under one roof. The last was built as the outer dike house baroque Hamburg merchant house stands on the dike road on the water side of the protective wall. 1686, it united office, residential and warehouse under one roof. After the Great Fire of 1842 - which began in the dike road - transformed increasingly the urban image of Hamburg, as amplified live and work were separated: the merchants, such as that inhabited the mansions in the dike road, moved to the suburbs outside of downtown and came to work in the city, especially in so-called office buildings, which were soon to dominate the center of Hamburg as a new type of house.

The old town houses have been converted into pure multi-party homes, in the ground floor usually covered shops. Due to the aforementioned destruction of old buildings in the center of Hamburg fewer houses have been preserved in recent decades.

Back in 1909, wandered a complete hall of the house Deichstraße 53 in the Museum of Hamburg History, where it creates its own space today. As the ensemble on the dike road was to be demolished in favor of a road extension, was formed by citizens resistance in the founding of the Association Rescue led the dike road in 1972. The association could obtain the houses by collecting donations and renovate.

Today, the dike road belongs to a tourist attraction of high attraction. Cafes and restaurants in the houses reinforce this situation. About narrow passages between the houses now you get to the water side, where a pontoon is installed.