WASSERSCHLOSS Speicherstadt

This guide to WASSERSCHLOSS Speicherstadt in Hamburg starts with an 1905 puzzle: where to house the workers keeping an entire warehouse district running, when every square foot was reserved for coffee, tea and spice. It follows the winch keepers and night watchmen who lived in this four-story building at the meeting point of two canals, tending the hydraulic winches that moved every sack and crate before elevators existed. The whole district rests on millions of oak piles driven deep into the marshland, an engineering gamble more than a century old.