Aarhus Godsbanegård

Aarhus Godsbanegård before the recent restoration.

Ancillary buildings with the Aarhus Congress Center in the background

Aarhus Godsbanegård (Aarhus Goods Station) or simply Godsbanen is a former goods station in Aarhus, Denmark. It was in use from 1923 to 2000, but has its roots in the 1800s. In December 2010, Realdania announced that the disused goods facilities would be transformed into a modern city district, through a collaborative project involving Aarhus Municipality and Realdania.

History

Originally the goods yard was located at Aarhus Central Station (on the site now occupied by the Aarhus Bus Station).

In the 1890s it was proposed to move the goods yard to Mølleengen from its original location. The plans for the move became part of the city planning in 1896 and 1898 but a full 27 years went by before they were executed. As the project was very costly, it led to extended discussions in both the city council and the national parliament, the latter being reluctant to provide funding.

Only after a law was passed in 1917 covering relocation of the shunting yard and the goods station to Mølleengen near the Aarhus River were the plans put into practice. In 1919, a new city plan was adopted and in 1920 work on the new goods station in Skovgaardsgade was able to start. Owing to difficult soil conditions, extensive piling work had to be carried out, including 1,150,000 m3 of landfill which was moved by hand. In addition, a portion of the river was moved further north, and 3,000 fir trunks were pounded in to a depth of 20 meters as foundations for the facility's new buildings. The engineer responsible for the foundation work was track manager Thorvald Engqvist.

The goods station's main building was designed in a Neo-Baroque style by architect Heinrich Wenck and built in 1920-22 after a design phase that had begun in 1918. It was one of Wenck's last works as DSB's chief architect. The two-storey building is 15 bays long and is crowned by a hipped roof with a lantern and four ridge turrets together with a copper-clad spire topped by a Baroque onion dome. The facade is divided into lesenes. It is built of red brick and roofed with red tiles. The ventilation hoods and the flashing around the dormers are also in copper.

Perpendicular to the main building are two warehouses, originally on either side of a yard where the tracks came to a blind end. This was where the loading and unloading of the incoming and outgoing freight trains took place. In 1972 and 1984, the yard between the warehouses was transformed into a building connecting the warehouses. In 1925, the shunting yard was inaugurated together with the goods station.

Most buildings in the area have high preservation status in the Aarhus municipal atlas.

Godsbanen

In recent years the main building has been restored, the two warehouses has been rebuilt and refurnished and a new building has been erected in between, to house a new cultural centre named Godsbanen. Godsbanen opened on the 30th of March 2012^[1] and organize a host of cultural arrangements and facilitates everyday cultural engagement for the citizens of Aarhus and surrounding suburbs. This includes theatre, dancing, music, film, artwork, printing, workshops, festivals and business networking.^[2] There is a restaurant and café, at the center of the new building. The restaurant is named Thorvalds, after the goods stations first manger Thorvald Engqvist and focuses on ecology and raw food.^[3][4]

References

Sources

Søren Bitsch Christensen (ed.), Århus Godsbanegård - historie og kulturarvsanbefalinger. January 2009, Dansk Center for Byhistorie 2009, p. 40. (Danish)

External links

• Godsbanen (Danish) English available

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Godsbanen.

Coordinates: 56°09′15″N 10°11′41″E / 56.15417°N 10.19472°E / 56.15417; 10.19472