Photo of the month - August 2022

In 2021, the photo series reported on Nordstraße as it appeared to the viewer in the inner city circle around 1910. The Historical Photo of the Month August 2022 is dedicated to a section of the street further north, the picture of which was taken a few decades later, in 1965.

The photographer placed himself on the eastern side of North Street in August 1965, roughly opposite the North Pharmacy, which was abandoned three years ago. It can be seen that the Nordstraße immediately before Wallstraßen is still dedicated to motor traffic. Traffic lights and road markings indicate this. Those who wanted to drive westwards turned left at this point into Nordwall; on the right after the traffic lights is the turn-off into Ostwall. Beyond the crossroads, the course of Nordstraße continues to Benölkenplatz. The deciduous trees planted in the 1930s still stand along both pavements.

A few years after this photograph was taken, however, they fell victim to the extension of Nordstraße, which then served as an access road to the planned inner city ring road. The multi-storey buildings on the left with the house numbers 59a to 63 were built at the end of the 19th century. At that time, the entrepreneur Johann Wilms first built a dwelling for his family on this site and subsequently erected further residential and commercial buildings.

At the "Café Kaisereck

Half of the red bankstone building on the corner of Nordwall was demolished in October 1970 in the course of the widening of Wallstraßen. During the Nazi era, it had housed offices of the district administration of the National Socialist People's Welfare Organisation and a department of the Bocholt Labour Office. However, the right side of the building and the adjoining "Café Kaisereck" were to remain part of the townscape for several decades.

The latter was one of the town's traditional hotels and restaurants. Heavily destroyed in the Second World War, the owner Edmund Kalveram rebuilt it at the beginning of the 1950s and had his café house clad in white exterior plaster. In the background of the picture, the side entrance of St. George's Grammar School with its tower can be seen.

Nothing can be seen of the buildings on the left today. In autumn 2011, the right half of the brick building finally disappeared together with the "Café Kaisereck". The central school canteen with around 250 seats was subsequently built there.