Antique map - Aachen 1917

Pharus-Plan of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) in 1917 : a united city, its 1905 central station, its trams and the Rothe Erde steelworks.

This Pharus-Plan shows Aachen, Aachen in German, in 1917. The city was then part of the German Empire, in the kingdom of Prussia and its province of Rhineland (Rheinprovinz), a few kilometers from the Belgian and Dutch borders. It is now located in North Rhine-Westphalia (Nordrhein-Westfalen).

The city has changed its face since the 1877 plan: it no longer has an independent neighbor. Burtscheid was annexed to it in 1897, then Forst and Rothe Erde in 1906, and it is a single urban area that this map depicts, extending far beyond the old center.

Places and neighborhoods shown:

• The central station (Haupt-Bhf) - completed on December 21, 1905, in Jugendstil style, by the architect Friedrich Mettegang. It replaced the 1841 Rhenish station and brought together in a single complex the neighboring Marschierthor station, which belonged to a competing company: on the 1877 plan, the city still had three distinct stations.
• The peripheral stations (Aachen-West, Aachen-Nord, Rothe Erde) - the Aachen-West station, opened in 1910, replaced the Templerbend station, demolished in 1911. Aachen-Nord was originally the station of the Aachen-Jülich line. The Rothe Erde station, opened on December 31, 1875, served as a relay to the neighboring factories.
• The Rothe Erde steelworks - its name comes from an estate purchased in 1846; the first furnaces were lit in 1847. In 1904, it employed more than 6,600 workers. Two or three years after this map, the company became a Franco-Belgian-Luxembourgish consortium, and the Aachen factory closed in 1926 due to a new customs border with Luxembourg.
• The tramway (red lines, "Strassenbahn") - born in 1880 as a horse-drawn tramway, it switched to electricity in July 1895, with a first line to Haaren, just in time for the great pilgrimage of the Heiligtumsfahrt. Its extension to Vaals, in the Netherlands, is presented as the first electric tramway line in the country. The war destroyed several border lines, such as the one from Sief to Raeren.
• Haaren and Aachen-Forst - Haaren, in the northeast, was connected to the city as early as 1895 by the first electric tramway line; Forst, in the east, was annexed to Aachen in 1906.
• The Lousberg, the Stadtgarten and the Stadtwald - the city's green lung: the Lousberg hill in the northwest, the Stadtgarten park near the center, and the vast municipal forest (Aachener Stadtwald) which occupies the southeast of the map.

Cartographic reference: this "Pharus-Plan" is published in Berlin by Pharus-Verlag, founded in 1902 by Cornelius Löwe, his brother Eberhard and Ernst Knaudt. The name comes from the lighthouse of Alexandria, intended to guide visitors as a plan guides travelers. The publisher is known for its small perspective drawings of monuments, which can be found here in yellow in the center, and for its stations in red. Pharus plans covered nearly 800 cities in 1923, and the legend warns that any imitation, even partial, will be prosecuted. The map is gridded from B to H and from 3 to 11, each square representing 800 meters on each side. On the side banners is an advertisement for the Magdeburgische Zeitung.

In short: for anyone with ties to Aachen, or who loves the colored plans of the imperial era, this map shows the city on the eve of the end of the Empire, with its stations, its trams and its factories.

What area does this map of Aachen cover? It covers Aachen (Aachen) and its surroundings: the historic center, the former suburbs of Burtscheid, Forst and Rothe Erde, the town of Haaren, the Lousberg and the Stadtwald.

In what year was this map published? This map dates from 1917. It was published by Pharus-Verlag in Berlin.

Reproduction of the "Pharus-Plan Aachen", published in 1917 by Pharus-Verlag in Berlin.

Printed on 200 g/m² textured art paper. Portrait orientation, standard 50x70 and 70x100 cm formats: easy to frame.