page_title: Nordhorn
section_title: Buildings
hierarchical_section_title: Nordhorn / Culture and sightseeing / Buildings
caption_attribution_description: English: Original name "Alte Sägemühle". When I was there a Dutch artist prepared his photo exhibition. He can be seen picking up a piece of decoration
context_page_description: Nordhorn is the district seat of Grafschaft Bentheim in Lower Saxony's southwesternmost corner near the border with the Netherlands and the boundary with North Rhine-Westphalia.
context_section_description: Nordhorn has mostly kept itself from being spoilt by the few individual building styles of the postwar years. The town's appearance has kept the appealing red brickwork that has long been a tradition in northern Germany and in the neighbouring Netherlands. It is even seen in modern buildings. The new district building, for instance, combines the local building materials of brick and sandstone with glass, concrete and copper.
  A fine example of restored architecture formerly overgrown by plant life is the Frenswegen Monastery from the 14th century in the town's northwest. A lightning strike in 1881 destroyed the church consecrated in 1445. The monastery buildings, however, were mostly preserved, even the square, two-floored cloister, the little wellhouse, the bridge over the moat and the impressive cellar vaulting. On the east wing's outer façade, a "Madonna and Child" made of Bentheim sandstone attracts the beholder's attention. After cautious renovations, the building now houses an ecumenical educational and meeting place whose origin and basis the unusually broad mix of faiths in Nordhorn and its environs is.
  Traces of Gothic mark the Reformed church, which stands defiantly in Brandlecht‘s old village centre. Among examples of Romanesque sculpture is this church's baptismal font, which is Nordhorn's oldest artwork, made out of Bentheim sandstone, and still holds its original importance today.
  At present, two buildings characterize Nordhorn's skyline. The Alte Kirche on the marketplace, built out of Bentheim sandstone in the 15th century and the Augustinuskirche, built in 1913 on the former castle's lands, can both be seen from afar. The inner town, today as in days of yore an island around which flows the Vechte, is now a pedestrian precinct.
  Painstakingly restored façades, modern arcades, shops, boutiques and pleasant outdoor cafés invite one to tarry. The oldest building on the main street is the former mayor and chemical manufacturer Firnhaber's house, in which he both lived and worked. Behind the two-story classicist façade, the triangular gable with its hipped roof and a round-arched window with a plaster swag, the tradition of Nordhorn's first apothecary lives on.
  When walking about town, one finds little oases untouched by hectic daily life. In big, parklike gardens, behind old trees and tall rhododendron hedges, stately manor houses may be discovered. These villas built on Dutch models were textile manufacturers’ homes a hundred years ago. A walk through Nordhorn will in many places also still bring to light signs of the recent and more distant past, be it the town hall completed in 1952 with its little belltower or the old well at the park at the Völlinkhoff. Memories of a time when the heavy blocks of sandstone used in the oil mill's edgerunner still fulfilled their original function are brought forth at the town park.
  When the grist mill and sawmill on the milldam were shut down, an almost 600-year history of milling came to an end in Nordhorn. These buildings were renovated and now offer an appealing venue for cultural events.
  Nordhorn's industrial history was written by, among others, the Povel textile plant, which shut its gates in 1979 after nearly a hundred years of production. As a last witness to the town's economic heyday early in the last century, the former spinning works tower has been maintained as an industrial memorial. It serves today as a museum. The upper floor can be hired for private celebrations.
  In the Bussmaate, a former boggy area, another textile plant with an adjoining residential area for textile workers was built a hundred years ago. In the early 1950s, Professor Emanuel Lindner, lecturer at Bauhaus and student of Mies van der Rohe, together with architect Eberhard Heinrich Zeidler, who now lives in Canada, designed expansion building works for this business. With a clearly structured glass façade, the timeless industrial building fits seamlessly into the industrial complex dating from the Gründerzeit. This building today stands empty and is to be converted for urban development.
caption: Old Sawmill, now an exhibition hall for artists
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