I was desperately searching for some way to continue the City Views series and then I remembered I shot a few panoramas around Mülheim’s lower Kaiserstrasse at the beginning of November. This particular one will soon be a historic shot, because this whole old wing of the Catholic Hospital will be demolished next Spring. A new building has already been constructed in the inner courtyard which you can already see on Google Maps (see below) – both Google Maps and Earth have now recent satellite imagery from this August from our city and I will try to include more Maps coordinates now – sadly, we still don’t have Street View in Mülheim and we probably won’t ever get it, but this is why I started the City Views series in the first place! This panorama didn’t stitch perfectly and has a few errors, but I left it like this and there’s also a link to a colour version below that shows off the brown brickwork better.
» Colour Version « | « Google Maps »

This building looks a little like something from a Terry Gilliam movie, but it’s just one of the two middle schools here in our neighbourhood. This is the Realschule Stadtmitte with 5th to 10th grade, built between 1925 and 1928. I’ve never been in there, but I walked by it every day when I went to my school, which was a little further away. There were rumours that the big tower was closed for years because it was structurally unsound, but a couple of years ago the whole building complex was extensively renovated and the tower now apparently houses a library. But it’s still one of the uglier buildings around here!

A crazy building right on the Schloßstraße just about opposite of the old postoffice. I don’t claim to know much about architecture, but I think this design is spectacularly ugly. This strange re-decoration looks like it is from the 1960s, but it is relatively new and was only done sometime in the 1990s.

Some more architectural detail from a nearby house. It looks like there once was something in the middle of this “shield”, but it seems to have been removed for some reason. The rest is, however, nicely preserved!

I’ve already shown this corner house from several different perspectives – this is a very old row of houses at least from the early 1900s. There has been a greek restaurant on the street level for a long time and the house was actually renovated sometime in the last ten years and looks very good.

I have no idea what this house once used to be, but today it’s a kindergarden. I know that this building is at least a century old, because I once found a photo from presumably the early 1900s of this street in a book of old postcards and it’s immediately recognizable.

A double entrance on a nearby house. It’s one of the older, more classic buildings.

Some of the houses around here have been wonderfully renovated in almost medieval styles – the top floor of this one looks like it’s timber-framed.

It’s impossible to get a clear shot of this nice house with a corner “tower” in the summer with the trees hiding it, but it looks very interesting in the winter. This photo could use some snow, though!

Just two houses down on Mülheim’s Dickswall. I have no idea when these were built, but it looks like they might have survived the bombings – perhaps they’re from the 1920s or 1930s. It’s very hard to get any information about what was when built around here.