When clicking the language function, a connection with Google is established and your personal data is forwarded to Google!

Stadt Bocholt
de nl
Reset language
Simple language
Share
Share
Reset language
Simple language
Share
Share
 |  Social & Education  |  Museums and city history  |  City Archive  |  Bocholt picture panels  | 

Town hall and market

Town hall and market

Historic town hall 1895

The photo shows the town hall of Bocholt in its condition around 1895. The façade - last extensively restored in 1840/42 - again shows signs of wear and weathering.

At the time, the building was the seat of the city administration and the district court. Behind the two right-hand windows of the first floor - the outermost one is barred - were the so-called "guardrooms" of the police administration.

The town hall is flanked on its south side by the Hotel Steiner, which opened in 1883, and the Steiner brothers' drugstore "Zum weißen Kreuz" on the market square, which has existed since 1893. On the opposite side, the Gompertz textile shop with the entrance to Ravardistraße (today St.-Georg-Platz) can be seen. The baroque spire of the old town church rises up behind the town hall.

Fruit, vegetables and ornamental plants are sold on the cobbled market, the central square in the town centre. In the old days, the market square also served as a trading centre for livestock of all kinds.

Gallery

Sources of the audio files

On the opinions of the figures about the factory collapse:

  • Eduard Westerhoff, "The Bocholt Disaster" - Einsturz der Spinnerei Beckmann 1895, in: Hermann Josef Stenkamp (ed.), Cotton Mills for the Continent. Sidney Stott and English spinning mill construction in Münsterland and Twente, Essen 2005, pp. 55-62.

On the fire at the Ludwig Schwartz spinning mill:

  • Detlef Fischer, Chronik des Münsterlandes, Münster 2003, p. 383.

On the industrialisation of the textile industry and population growth in Bocholt:

  • Josef Simon, Bauliche Entwicklung der Stadt Bocholt in der 1. Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, Bocholt 31 December 1950, in: Unser Bocholt 38 (1987), pp. 35-45 and pp. 65-72, here pp. 35-36.
  • Eduard Westerhoff, The Bocholt textile industry. Unternehmer und Unternehmen, Bocholt 21984, pp. 33, 183, 191.
  • Eduard Westerhoff, Time of upheaval. A time of new beginnings. Contributors to Bocholt's social history in the imperial era, Bocholt 2003 (Bocholter Quellen und Beiträge, 12), p. 219.