The Speicherstadtrathaus (English: ''Warehouse City Town Hall'') is the administration building of Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG. It is located in the historic

warehouse A warehouse is a building for storing goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial parks on the rural–urban fringe, out ...

complex of the

Speicherstadt The Speicherstadt (, literally: 'City of Warehouses', meaning warehouse district) in Hamburg, Germany, is the largest warehouse district in the world where the buildings stand on deep foundation, timber-pile foundations—oak logs, in this parti ...

in the

Port of Hamburg The Port of Hamburg (, ) is a seaport on the river Elbe in Hamburg, Germany, from its mouth on the North Sea. Known as Germany's "Gateway to the World" (), it is the country's largest seaport by volume. In terms of TEU throughput, Hambur ...

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. The Speicherstadtrathaus has been a listed building since 1991 and has been on the

UNESCO World Heritage List World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural heritag ...

since July 5, 2015, along with the neighboring

Kontorhaus District The Kontorhaus District is the southeastern part of Altstadt, Hamburg, Altstadt, Hamburg, between Steinstraße, Meßberg, Hamburg Wallring#Eastern Wallring, Klosterwall and Brandstwiete. The streetscape is characterised by large office buildings ...

Construction

The building was erected on 463 oak piles as part of the third construction phase during the construction of the Speicherstadt, which lasted from 1899 and 1912 on the former island of Wandrahm, in the street Bei St. Annen 1, as part of the U block of warehouses. The construction of the building itself took place between 1902-04. The architects were Johannes Grotjan, municipal architect in charge of the construction of the town halls for the various city districts, with Bernhard Georg Hanssen and Wilhelm Emil Meerwein of the local Hamburg firm Hanssen & Meerwein, who designed much of the warehouses in the district. The building's inauguration took place on June 1, 1904. The building was planned for the Hamburger Freihafen-Lagerhaus-Gesellschaft (HFLG), today called Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA), as the head office and was the successor to the headquarters building at Sandtorkai 1, which itself was inaugurated in 1887 and had since become too small. That building had also been built by Hanssen & Meerwein.

Description and Significance

Hanssen & Meerwein and Grotjan were not only involved in the management building, the predecessor building, but also in the construction of the

Hamburg City Hall Hamburg City Hall (, ) is the seat of local government of Hamburg, Germany. It is the seat of the government of Hamburg and as such, the seat of one of Germany's 16 state parliaments. The Rathaus is located in the Altstadt quarter in the city ce ...

(for the entire municipality). The naming of the Speicherstadtrathaus reflects the importance of HFLG for the Speicherstadt. But there are also similarities with the Hamburg City Hall in the architecture. The bell tower above the corner dominates the surrounding buildings and the façade has an eclectic collection of architectural elements. Romanesque round arches and Renaissance windows were combined with baroque decorative elements. In addition, the facade, made of Saxon brick, is accented with strips of gray Oberkirchen sandstone. The coat of arms of the HFLG can be seen on the heavily decorated gable. The tower helmets are shod with copper. The construction of the building cost 600,000 Reichsmarks and took two years to complete. The interiors were furnished in a Jugendstil (Art Nouveau style). The curved forms of Jugendstil can be found on the tiles, the doors and the wooden panels. In addition, the rooms were lined with black slate slabs with embedded fossils. The building was, surprisingly, not damaged during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

and was completely renovated for its centennial in 2002. The work was managed by the architects' office Gmp Architekten von Gerkan, Marg and Partners. In addition to preserving the historic architecture, the building was modernized for the 21st century. New meeting rooms were created in the foyer when the originally open atrium was closed off by a curved glass roof in 2001-02.

External links

Hamburg-090613-0244-DSC 8341-Speicherstadt

Notes

{{reflist Transport in Hamburg Buildings and structures in Hamburg-Mitte Geography of Hamburg

River ports of Germany Ports and harbours of the North Sea