Gartenstadt Welheim, Bottrop: vernacular ensemble architecture

The village-like suburb of Bottrop at Welheim is a good example of a garden village, although it was built as factory housing for the neighbouring mine Vereinigte Welheim. Gartenstadt Welheim has been lovingly restored and the post-war replacement buildings blend in well to the overall ensemble that was created here between 1914 and 1923. There is a great sense of place here!

The street Am Kämpchen (at the little field) is typical for this garden village. The curved street is lined with terraced housing in long blocks with a variable roof treatment. The block in the middle is much simpler in execution and design, but stull retains the overall design with rendered walls and red clay tiles on the roof: this is an example of a post-war replacement block.

The Flöttestrasse is an old lane that connected the hamlet of Welheim with the floating watermill (a Flötte Muhl) on the Boye Brook. It has been completely incorporated into the garden village and this leafy residential street is lined by large semidetached houses and short terraced of row houses.

The Ulmenplatz (Elm Square) is one of the typical “places” that feature heavily in Sitte-esque design. Here the place has been designed as a garden square surrounded by asymmetrical long blocks of terraced housing. The trees on the square are actually elm trees, a nice detail!

Each house was given a small glass awning above the front door. The entrances are often grouped in pairs with the floor plan of each dwelling mirrored. The original doors in green with the small window have been restored or reinstated where they had been replaced as part of the restoration in 1993. The houses are set back a little from the street with a typical street profile with a narrow green verge planted with trees. The front gardens are laid to grass and have no hedges or fences.

The streetscape is typical of a garden village. The housing on the streets is a mix of semidetached houses and row housing in long blocks. These terraces typically have protruding sections at the ends and dormers that create a certain rhythm. In the middle of the picture a high grey concrete structure can be seen from this street Streuwiese. This is the bunker that stands on the central Mathias Stinnes Platz that was named after an important coal shipping mogul.

 

The Apselstrasse is another typical street wth vernacular architecture lining a long slightly curved street with a green verge planted with trees on one side of the road. The corner plots often do have a hedge (visible on the right) to provide more privacy for the residents.

The street Im Holzgrund show the typical treatment of corners which are kept open. Angled blocks are seldom used in this garden village. This supports the idea that it is more German than English in character with a focus more on places and informal arrangement of blocks combined with the symmetrical ensemble of asymmetrical buildings in an overarching vernacular style.

That vernacular staple of half timbered panels are not often used in this garden village. Here such non-structural detail is used to differentiate blocks and create more visual variety using a limited number of basic floorplans and designs. Here two blocks of up-down apartments that are identical internally but differ greatly in external appearance. The low annex with two coal sheds are part of the total design. In some blocks they connected at a different point or are built detached from the main building.

These double villas on the Welheimer Strasse have been connected by a low annex that again contains the coal sheds. The individual houses are emphasised by the treatment of the roofs. These larger buildings are situated on the edge of the garden village near the underpass of the railway that gave access to the colliery site beyond.

The Lindenstrasse (Lime Street) is a clos-like narrow street with a symmetrical layout of asymmetrical blocks of terraces housing at either side. By creating a set-back in the middle of the street a place is created. The lime trees would have been cut back regularly, but have now grown very high. There are no true closes in this garden village. This staple of the English garden city movement was less used in continental Europe for safety concerns, as dead end streets were seen as undesirable.

The Hugo Stinnes Strasse (named after an industrialist, who owned the United Welheim Mining company) was bayonetted with a small place at the shift in street alignment. This is again typical for Sitte-esque urban design. The houses are of a basis type similar to the rest of the garden village, but feature many porches with rounded arches, a sand-coloured render and a low plinth.

The dormers above the walls in sandy yellow render are clad in wood shingles. The entrances are again paired. The arched entrance porch reappears in other places. But only as a corner feature. The reuse of such a feature gives the whole garden village a great sense of consistency of design.

Im Sundern is one of the streets that feature a wide expanse of grass as a linear green along the street. This creates space in the street layout and also emphasises the anti-urban character of this Gartenstadt. The trees follow the street and thus focus the view.

At the corner of the Gungstrasse and Im Gungfeld a defacto entrance to the garden village was created by two angled blocks and pushing the corners back to have a rounded green that connects to the linear green along Im Gungfeld. This is one of the few places where angled blocks were used.

On the other side of the Gungstrasse the Horstbruch (a name indicating marshland with a thicket) shows replacement blocks on either side of the street. A bomb destroyed the original terraced housing here; it was replaced by apartments. Two original blocks can be seen at the entrance to the street (at the back). These blocks are typical of the 1950s but blend in well.