Overview
Monuments recall history at many locations, but the industrial monuments in the Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park are unique. The Blower House is one of these witnesses of the industrial past. It produced 3 million cubic meters of blast air for the manufacture of one thousand tons of pig iron a day, as visitors learn through their visit. A complete mill with all the offsites serves as a true-to-size museum. Grown-ups and children alike are awed by the huge machinery, feel small in front of a blast furnace and admire industrial culture. Steel fascinates, as many discover, and when their thirst for knowledge is quenched, the Switchgear House helps with the hunger.
The north of Duisburg is among the areas of the Ruhr region which were only wakened from their quiet rural life when the iron and steel industry began to flourish during the Industrial Revolution in the middle of the 19th century. As industry left the Ruhr valley and migrated north, it transformed the country which lost its rural innocence.
August Thyssen's ironmaking company began the construction of a blast furnace plant in Meiderich in the immediate vicinity of the coal fields acquired by Thyssen in the 19th century back in 1901. Iron and coal came together, as symbolized by the cableway which moved coke from neighboring Friedrich Thyssen 418 coking plant to the five blast furnaces in Meiderich. Until the closure of the mill in 1985 as a result of overcapacities in the European steel market, the mill produced pig iron mainly for processing in the Thyssen steel mills.
As iron production was abandoned, 5 acres of industrial wasteland remained, waiting for new use. Huge steel structures were all that was left to bear witness to human toil and labor and to outstanding periods of industrial architecture. The commitment of citizens prevented the demolition of the buildings and installations that was threatening. Between 1990 and 1999, finally, the IBA Emscher-Park International Building Exhibition created a new type of park which achieves a symbiosis between man-made artifacts and natural flora. Divers filled the gasholder with 20,000 cubic meters of water and developed a fascinating underwater world and the German Mountaineering Association transformed part of the former ore bunkers into a climbing garden. Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord GmbH, the Park operator set up by the City of Duisburg, now manages the unique Park project.
