Always go straight ahead by Thomas Riess

About "Always go straight ahead"

by Thomas Riess

About the artwork

Always go straight ahead: The building stands on the 15,000 square metre site at Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage 5-11 in the Gallus district, which stretches between Mainzer Landstraße to the south, Ludwigstraße to the west and Hohenstaufenstraße to the north. Neighbouring the old police headquarters are the Falkschule school and the Protestant Matthäuskirche church. After the annexation of the Free City of Frankfurt by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1866, the medieval Clesernhof, a building complex on the Römer that no longer exists, initially served as the first police headquarters. In 1886, a new police headquarters was built on the former Klapperfeld on the Neue Zeil, whose police station was in operation until 2002. Due to the increasing lack of space on the Zeil, the "New Royal Police Headquarters at Hohenzollernhof" was built in 1914 on what was then Hohenzollernplatz (today's Fried-rich-Ebert-Anlage). It was built in historicist style in a mixture of neo-baroque and neo-classicism. During the air raids on Frankfurt in the Second World War, almost half of the building was destroyed in 1944. Until its reconstruction in 1954, a large part of the police force was relocated elsewhere in the city. In 2002, the police headquarters moved into a new building on Adickesallee in Nordend and gave up its location on Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage. The building has been largely empty since then and is only partially used for commercial purposes. It is now a cultural monument under the Hessian Monument Protection Act. [SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]