Harkorten Manor

Haus Harkorten is an almost completely preserved estate and the former residence of the patrician and entrepreneurial Harkort family in the Westerbauer district of Hagen in the eastern Ruhr area.

The listed complex on the northern edge of the former municipality of Westerbauer is accessed by a long avenue and consists of several buildings:

• the former manor house from the second half of the 18th century, which is entered via a six-step outdoor staircase,
• the farm building, which was built in the 17th century
• and the granary built in 1707, which was partly also used for residential purposes.

Haus Harkorten is the birthplace of Gustav, Eduard and Friedrich Harkort, the "father of the Ruhr area". Only a few hundred meters away, near the Ennepe, was the Harkort factory, of which, however, only a few parts of the building remain today. Right next to it, the Harkort coal railway ran until the 1960s.

In the years 1756/57, Johann Caspar Harkort III had a new manor house built on the older Harkort family estate by the Schwelmer Meisterschule in the Bergisch Rococo style. The inspiration for the construction of the manor house came from Louisa Catharina Harkort.

The two-story half-timbered building on a high quarry stone base has a broken, partly curved hip roof, with a large dormer window with a curved gable placed on the entrance and garden sides. Large baroque windows are distributed over the facade in six axes. Between the central windows is the entrance with an outdoor staircase. It has a richly carved portal with a decorated transom.