Antique map - Bochum 1884-1885

Plan of Bochum in 1884-1885, based on the 1876 survey: the steel city of Bochumer Verein, its mines and its railway stations, before Greater Bochum of 1904.

This plan shows Bochum, in the heart of the Ruhr (Ruhrgebiet), at the end of the 19th century. It was drawn during the winter of 1884-1885, based on the new cadastral survey of 1876, by the surveyor A. Overhoff, in the city's planning department, and published by the city itself. Bochum was then Prussian, in the province of Westphalia (Provinz Westfalen), Arnsberg district. It is now in North Rhine-Westphalia (Nordrhein-Westfalen). Its name is the same in French and German.

Bochum received its city rights in 1321, from Count Engelbert II of La Marck, and from 1806 to 1813 it was part of the Grand Duchy of Berg, created by Napoleon, before passing to Prussia in 1815. Until industrialization, it was a small country town, which had about 1,600 inhabitants around 1800 and still 4,000 in the early 1840s. It had 28,368 in 1875, then 33,440 in 1880. In October 1876, the year of the survey, Bochum left the district it belonged to and became a district-free city (kreisfreie Stadt).

Places and neighborhoods shown:

• The Gussstahlfabrik - the large industrial complex west of the center is that of Bochumer Verein, born in 1842 under the name Mayer & Kühne, founded by Jacob Mayer and Eduard Kühne on the road to Essen, today Alleestraße. Mayer developed steel casting there, and his bells made a sensation at the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition. Krupp had claimed they were made of cast iron: Mayer agreed to have one broken and its pieces forged, to prove that it was indeed made of steel. He obtained a gold medal, and Napoleon III made him a Knight of the Legion of Honor. The 15,000-kilogram bell cast in 1867 for Paris stands today in front of the Bochum City Hall.
• The two railway stations - the "Berg.-Märk. Bahnhof" station, opened in 1860 by the Bergisch-Märkische company, was then just beyond the city limits, in the territory of Wiemelhausen. The "Rhein. Bahnhof" of the Rheinische Eisenbahn followed only in 1874. Each company had its own station.
• The mines and workers' colonies - the map names several mines (Zeche), such as the Zeche Vereinigte Präsident, founded in the early 1840s, or the Zeche Dannenbaum, and "colonies" of workers' housing, those of the Harpener Bergwerks-Verein and the Zeche Dannenbaum. Stahlhausen, in the southwest, is one of the first workers' neighborhoods built for the steelworks.
• The neighboring municipalities - Grumme, Hamme and Wiemelhausen are still independent municipalities, which the map separates from the territory of Bochum by thick boundaries. They will only be annexed on April 1, 1904, and these annexations make Bochum cross the threshold of 100,000 inhabitants, thus that of a large city. Altenbochum, to the east, is not absorbed until 1926.
• The Stadtpark - this large park north of the center opened in 1877, shortly after the 1876 survey.
• The old town - the "Straßennetz der Altstadt" inset details the street network of the old center, which was crossed by the Hellweg, one of the great commercial routes of the Hanseatic League, and which had five gates.

Map reference: the plan, printed in Leipzig by the house of Giesecke & Devrient, is gridded from A to J and from 1 to 6. A legend (Zeichenerklärung) distinguishes public and private buildings, fields, gardens, meadows, pastures, paths, water bodies and municipal boundaries, and the map also locates brick kilns (Ringofen), breweries and the gasworks.

In short: for anyone who has ties to Bochum or the Ruhr, loves the history of steel, mines and railway stations or 19th-century engineering plans, this map shows the steel city before it swallowed its neighbors.

What area does this map of Bochum cover? It covers Bochum and its surroundings: the old center and its inset, the steel foundry, the two railway stations, the mines and the neighboring municipalities of Grumme, Hamme, Altenbochum and Wiemelhausen.

In what year was this map published? This plan was drawn during the winter of 1884-1885, based on the 1876 cadastral survey. It was published by the city of Bochum.

Reproduction of the "Plan der Stadt Bochum", drawn in 1884-1885 by A. Overhoff based on the 1876 cadastral survey, published by the city of Bochum.

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