The aerial photo below is also from the Nederlands Instituut voor Militaire Historie. The photo must have been taken before 1932, because the old Catholic church at the bottom left is still there. In 1932 it was replaced by the current Sint-Jacobus due to dilapidation. In the photo below you can see that it is under construction.
Much is still recognizable, but the textile factories have now disappeared: on the left those of Ter Kuile and on the right the factory of Van Heek, in 1910 still the largest industrial company in the Netherlands with 2369 employees. Left above the track is the characteristic Villa Ledeboer, demolished in the 1970s.
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The next photo was taken a little further south. The new town hall is ready, they got a bit of inspiration for this in Stockholm. Exactly below that, the bathhouse is still visible on the Zuiderhagen when it was still a real street. That would change later. The bombings of 1943 and 1944 damaged the city in a number of places, and the townscape there was also thoroughly changed. The Van Heekplein was created to the south of the Zuiderhagen, the lower part of the Kalanderstraat would also merge into this and the Oldenzaalsestraat at the top left would change into De Heurne. A new Oldenzaalsestraat was constructed and the necessary buildings were removed for that purpose. More information about the city in earlier times can be found on the geschiedenis van Enschede.
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We thought the reconstruction plans in Hengelo were already quite radical, Enschede took it one step further. An estimate was made of the population growth, it was expected in 2000 about 250,000 inhabitants. And that included metropolitan plans: there had to be a large east-west connection and 'elements of metropolitan allure' on both sides, as well as medium-high buildings with arcades for strolling pedestrians. A special place should be given to the large textile trading building.
The decision to build the Bouelvard was already taken in 1946, construction only started in 1956 and in 1961 it was set up for traffic. But it was precisely in the 1960s that the turning point came: the textile crisis. The textile trading building was never built (the V&D went into the building) and all kinds of plans were not implemented or much later. Thus the Boulevard 1945 remained surrounded by bare plains for a long time to come....
More old images of Enschede can be found at www.enschedeinansichten.nl
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The city's history is inextricably linked to the textile industry. The map below gives an almost complete picture of the textile factories in the city. In 1929, just before the great economic crisis, 42,000 people were employed in the textile industry. That was no less than 70% of the people of Enschede. From 1930 this decreased due to modernization and competition from other countries. After the war, there was still a significant revival, but from the 1960s onwards it definitely went downhill. Almost all factories close and are eventually demolished in the 1970s and 1980s. Fortunately, a number of objects have been preserved.
More about the textile history of Enschede can be found here.