A Historical Walk Through Hamburg's Warehouse District

Welcome to our historical city walk around the Hamburg warehouse district! The bridge we are standing on now is called Brooksbrücke. It has been – and still is – one of the main entrances to the warehouse district, coming from the city centre.

… and is now part of the flood protection wall, easily recognisable due to its golden letters.  

Having crossed the bridge, we can now look back at the city centre. On the pedestal you see a statue resembling Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossa. Allegedly, on 7 May 1189 he issued a document which allowed merchants to store their goods customs-free in Hamburg. We now know that this document was in fact a forgery that the sly inhabitants of Hamburg had issued themselves 75 years after this date. Nevertheless, 7 May still is a day of celebration in Hamburg – we call it “Hafengeburtstag”, the birthday of Hamburg harbour.

Even though Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossa hadn’t applied his signature to any such document, the exemption from duty stayed in effect for centuries. However, when Hamburg became part of the German Empire in 1871, it was only a matter of time before the city merged into the German customs territory, effective in 1888.

Having walked another 50 metres into the warehouse district, we are now standing on “Sandbrücke”, or Sand Bridge. Along the waterway you can see a typical array of storage buildings opposite the boiler house.

Back in the day, the boiler house used to be the powerhouse of the warehouse district, producing the energy needed to power the hydraulically operated rope winches used in each and every storage unit. At the top of the buildings you can see green oriel-like structures – this is where the ropes emerged, hooks attached to their ends, to lift the goods up to the different floors. These rope winches must have seemed very advanced to the people back then, leaving them almost as much in awe as they probably were about the electric lights! The warehouse district was the first place in Hamburg where you could literally flip the switch. The power, of course, came from the boiler house.

This waterway we are passing now could tell us a story of days long passed: It is called “Wandrahmsfleet”, the bridge in front of us is called “Wandrahmsfleetbrücke”. The “Wandrahm” used to be a small river island where cloth manufacturers made cloth and garments up until the 17th century. After dying and milling the fabric, they stretched it onto large frames and put it out to dry right here.

Here we find another hint of what the warehouse district was like before the construction of its storehouses. The sign reads “Holländischfleet-Brücke”. During the 17th and 18th centuries, merchants from the Netherlands took up residence here. While the western part of the area was populated mainly by workers and craftsmen crammed together in narrow alleyway neighbourhoods, this place shone in splendour, displaying the most beautiful bourgeois townhouses. All the same, even those were demolished to make room for the warehouse buildings.

Nevertheless, in the end the reorganisation produced some quite pretty buildings, too. You have probably already noticed the so-called water castle here, standing a little apart. This building was the home and workplace of the workers that operated and maintained the warehouse district’s many rope winches. They were some of the few people that were privileged to live inside the warehouse district.

And this is how the building looks today. On the other side of the road, in stark contrast, you can see a very modern building, the former “Freihafenamt” or free harbour office. After World War II, this building emerged as part of the reconstruction of the warehouse district. Rebuilding the warehouse district is inextricably linked with the architect Werner Kallmorgen. It was he who also planned this building.

However, wherever Kallmorgen saw the slightest opportunity of restoring an area, he took another path: Although the frontage of this building opposing the boiler house had been badly hit, he had the bomb damage repaired little by little – a very fiddly process indeed! Parts destroyed beyond repair were restored true to the original – brick by brick. You can easily point out old and new parts thanks to the different colour scheme of the brickworks.

The warehouse district has been under monumental protection since 1991. In 2015, UNESCO listed the area as World Heritage Site. It is highly likely that Kallmorgen’s detailed restoration work contributed to this honour.

Having reached the end of the walk, let’s have a look at the warehouse district in the world of today. The street “Am Sandtorkai” below us marks the southern boundry of the warehouse district. Today, it is also the crossing point to the neighbouring HafenCity. Therefore, we are standing between the mega construction project of the past and the mega construction project of today. Back then, here was Sandtorhafen, brought into operation in 1866 – 20 years before the warehouse district – at that time one of the most modern harbours of the world.