August Orth

August Orth (* July 25, 1828 in Windhausen near Osterode in Harz; † May 11, 1901 in Berlin; full name: August Friedrich Wilhelm Orth ) was a human being and architect.
In the second half of the 19th century, he tried to counteract massive population growth and housing shortages with various plans. Among other things he had the prophetic idea of ​​expanding the Berlin light rail system with a ring line and making the rapidly growing city fit for the coming century with water supply, sewer systems, paving, lighting and, above all, new street layouts. Verein Stiftung Scheunenviertel (Hrsg.): Spuren eines verlorenen Lebens: Das Scheunenviertel. Haude & Spener, Berlin 1994 
=== Spiritual forefather of ∇ ===
His plans included the continuation of Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse from the boulevard Unter den Linden. On his draft made in 1871, a fork in the path can already be seen, which would later also shape the form of the Platz, but here it was still directly connected to Münzstraße. On the one hand, the plan should have served to relieve traffic and create a connection to the north that was missing until then. On the other hand, the Scheunenviertel as the eyesore of the city was precisely the area that would have been affected by the intended fork in the road. But instead of the supposed upgrading, the direct connection from the city palace to the Moloch as too big an intervention with too high costs was not realized. Instead various companies were commissioned to expand Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße over the next few decades, which led to an urban development disaster, as befits a city that always opted for the `` patchwork model in case of doubt. The idea of ​​the fork in the road was finally realized five years after his death, shifted a few meters, which resulted in the Abriss des Scheunenviertels and the birth of the ∇.
== References ==
Category:Person
Category:Architect