Schlieperblock Housing Estate

The Schlieperblock housing development was built in three phrases between 1928 and 1936 as temporary housing for the unemployed. The developer was the City of Iserlohn, which assigned the young Theodor Hennemann, who was working in the building department at the time, to plan it. Hennemann chose a simple and low-cost construction method oriented around Neues Bauen and ideas borrowed from a design by the architect J. W. Muhm for twenty temporary residential buildings that had recently been built in Bad Kreuznach by the firm Holzmann. He thus created an example of public housing construction of the 1930s that has been preserved completely.

The two-story housing development lies to the west of the city center and is named after the former Schlieperstrasse (now Ankerstrasse). It is composed of six rows of terraced houses with three, five, or six units and two single buildings on Grüner Weg. Originally, the Schlieperblock had 100 two- and three-room apartments of twenty-nine and forty square meters, respectively. In the center of the housing development once stood a green common area as a place to hang laundry and for children to play.

In keeping with the low-cost construction method, the simple buildings had flat roofs, alluvial-gravel masonry, and plaster façades. The floor plans were reduced to a corresponding minimal standard. In 1941, the Iserlohner Non-Profit Housing Association purchased the housing development. In the early 1950s, a store with an apartment was added as well as a one-story addition on the southern end of Ankerstrasse.

From the outset, the Schlieperblock had a poor public image. For a long time, the buildings were neglected, and so they were threatened with demolition in 2010. At the initiative of the Iserlohn Landmark Association (IGW), however, the housing development, excluding the buildings from the 1950s, was listed as a historical landmark in 2011. In 2017–18, the renamed Schlieper Bauhaus Housing Development was renovated by the IGW. In the process, the unlisted buildings were demolished. Today, rental units are found only in the row on Drosselweg. The other row houses were converted into two-story owner-occupied houses with private front yards. [KS/HY]