Remnants of Army in Our Neighborhood

After the Germans acquired Strasbourg in the 1870s, they turned it into a garrison town. They took the fields and the swamps to the north-east of town and turned it into their military camp. In the 1890s the city expanded in that same direction due to a building boom of government buildings and also apartment buildings for the German transplants who came to fill the beauracracy.

The old military grounds eventually became our neighborhood. The main reminders are the private buildings and office buildings that were built in the German style. But if you walk a few blocks to the north, toward Place d'Hagenau, you can see some vestiges of the military.

The first thing you see is a long, red brick building that runs for several city blocks along the south side of the road. This building, shown above, is actually part of the École Militaire, or military school complex. The intro picture shows the front side. In fact, the red brick buildings form a rectangle that encloses several city blocks. In the center is an open courtyard that probably used to be the drill grounds. Today, it is still operated by the French Army.The red brick buildings here remind me of the old buildings on Franklin Avenue in Evansville...or also the old brewery there. Maybe my sense of architecture is twisted by homesickness. But it does remind me of those things.

Across the street and to the north of the École Militaire there is an old section of the Strasbourg Ramparts. This section would have been built by the Germans in the 1870s. All that remains is just a one block section with casemate #11.