Siedlung Margarethenhöhe

Essen’s Margarethenhöhe, named after its founder Margarethe Krupp, is one of Germany’s most beautiful garden towns. Architect Georg Metzendorf combined romantic facades with a practical and comfortable infrastructure. Thanks to its post-war reconstruction, the housing estate, listed since 1987, can be visited in its historical shape.
After the death of her husband, Friedrich Alfred Krupp, ran the family-owned company. Her work as a patron of the arts aside, she also showed social commitment. In 1906, on the occasion of her daughter Bertha’s wedding, she founded the "Margarethe-Krupp-Stiftung für Wohnungsfürsorge" (a housing foundation). This then paid for a supra-class housing estate – very much in contrast to other such Krupp projects.
Georg Metzendorf, a reform architect who had planned a number of public buildings, commercial buildings and other estates in the Ruhr area, was commissioned to plan Margarethenhöhe. The garden town principle aside, in Margarethenhöhe Metzendorf also realised his concept of the “small residential building”. This is characterised by a ground plan geared to the needs of the industrial nuclear family and all mod cons hitherto unknown to this target group (bathroom, WC, central heating).
The centre is "Kleiner Markt" with its axis of inn, market fountain and the former Krupp co-op. The estate’s topographical position on a plateau surrounded by deep valleys has not only had an influence on the arrangement of roads and houses but is also responsible for the estate’s closed character. Behind the arch is the most representative part, on Steile Straße. The houses are mainly one- or two-storey plastered buildings. The doors, hipped and pitched roofs, shutters and windows are very varied; the houses are protruding or receding like in an old village. Kleiner Markt is bordered by houses with access balconies, at its narrow side we find the building of the former Krupp co-op, today a supermarket.

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Author: Route der Industriekultur / editorial baukunst-nrw
Last changed on 21.03.2024

Categories:
Urban Design » Square and Neighbourhood Planning
Architecture » Residential buildings » Multiple Housing