There's an odd thing that you'd come to notice about Wilhelm strasse....there are four houses situated on the street....all dating back to the mid-1800's.....all historical in nature....and all likely beyond a reasonable cost on the real estate market.
All lie in a row.....all neatly landscaped and part of the trend of Wiesbaden in that era of construction. One of the houses lead back to an episode with the Queen of Serbia.Use of the houses today? Most have business related signs for the first floor, and I get the impression that parts of each house are condo-related. Parking? Well....that's questionable and I doubt if anyone in the 1800s era worried much about that.
Affordability? I can only take a guess that you'd have to pull out a minimum of ten million Euro to purchase any of the four houses.
If you stand on the opposite street.....there's no park benches to sit and observe the houses....maybe on purpose.
Each probably has a rich history....leading up to 1914 (the era of booming economics for Wiesbaden).
So, if you have an one afternoon....just start walking from the train station up, and enjoy a stroll along a historical part of town that usually doesn't advertise itself....but it's generations old appearance says alot.
3 comments:
Hey, Mr. Schnitzel.
I occasionally share your posts in the Lindsey AS group on fb that I admin. I was delighted to find this post from you in my search for Wilhelmstrasse 15. I was digging through the Wiesbaden archives and happened upon an article detailing that the villa located at Wilhelmstrasse 15 was requisitioned by the U.S. armed forces and turned into one of six re-education libraries in Hesse on July 8, 1947.
It started out with 3,000 books and tripled by 1948. It was called the Amerikahaus; it was free to all, employees were paid by the U.S. gov and it was quite popular over the years. Then the Amerikahaus was moved in May 1950 to Villa Humboldt (previously used as the American Officers' Mess) on the corner where Frankfurterstrasse crosses Humboldtstrasse just across from the old American Arms (then newly built) and had 20,000 books by then. Around 1979, the Naussauischer Art Council moved into Wilhelmstrasse 15, which is now called the Duck House. They created a duck house sized replica of it, painted it white and put it on the lake in Park am Warmen Damm. Cool, eh? :)
Lindy
One of my projects for late August...a photo collection of five sites around Wiesbaden (like the old A-E Hotel) and do a couple of up-to-date essays over how things are today. So you might want to check back around early September.
Will do. Love your work.
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