Opposite is the small, 1774/75 build tree house to be seen, the former office building of the tree keeper who closed the port entrance with a wooden log, the tree. The harbour master supervised from here the old Hanse port. Today the half-timbered house is home to a small private Stade-Museum.
Already at the end of the 10. century the first pier was built at the foot of a just heaped up mirror hill which was protected by a small fortress. With the change over of the cities authority to the Bremer archbishops, the whole area from 1235 was filled up and a dock created, surrounded by wooden attachments, which were only replaced by brick walls in 1870. Thereof is the 13. century Hanse port, even though it became too small quickly, its original form is still unchanged. This type is one of the few were port facilities are still visiable.
The port is framed by two closed steets of houses which stamped the picture of Stade, water west and water east. Water, that is for Stade the Schwinge which flows a few kilometres beneath the city into the Elbe. 'Water' is as well the circumscripton for the harbour which the city owes its meaning to. The houses on the east side of the water belonged to the ferry skipper and captains, on the west side the owner were merchants and grain traders. That's why some of the houses on the west side are more pompous, like the
Bürgermeister-Hintze-Haus
Deutschland
