These unseen photos of Abu Dhabi transport you to another era

Images taken by German expatriate Peter Schneider in the 1970s show an old world being swept away

A wrecked plane at Liwa airfield in 1977. All photos: Peter Schneider

An airfield in Liwa, 1977.

An abandoned car on the way to Liwa, 1977.

A Leewa fort, near the Saudi Arabia border, in 1977. Photo: Peter Schneider

A desert settlement in Liwa, 1970s.

The Tourist Club area in Abu Dhabi in 1978 with Le Meridien hotel in the background. The hotel had not yet opened.

The Tourist Club area of Abu Dhabi in 1977. The neighbourhood, now known as Al Zahiyah, was then in the middle of a building boom.

Wimpy Burger in Old Airport Park, Abu Dhabi. Photo: Peter Schneider

The Nihal Hotel on Hamdan Street in Abu Dhabi under construction in 1977. The hotel is still there today but called 'Nehal'.

Electra Street, now known as Zayed the First, with the famed 'Onion Tower' on left in 1978.

The Bateen fishing port in Abu Dhabi, 1978.

Al Maqta Bridge in Abu Dhabi, 1970s. It opened in 1968.

A new road cuts through the mountains between Dibba and Masafi in 1978.

When Peter Schneider arrived in Abu Dhabi in 1977, there was only one road that cut through the sand from the airport to what was then downtown.

It was just a few years after the UAE had been formed and Abu Dhabi was changing rapidly.

Palm trees lined the road and Mr Schneider got a glimpse of a restaurant, now fondly remembered, on his way into town from Bateen Airport.

“We were very much impressed by the palm trees on both sides of the road and the round Wimpy restaurant surrounded by a large lawn [Old Airport Park]," he says. "It looked like a small oasis.”

Mr Schneider had come to Abu Dhabi from Bonn to work as an electrical engineer on the emirate’s power system. He was based in a now-dismantled station in Mina Zayed and responsible for distribution – extending the electricity supply across the town through a network of power lines and sub-stations.

It was an important task. Abu Dhabi at the time was in the middle of an oil-fuelled building frenzy. People were pouring into the city and new roads, hospitals, schools and hotels were being built at a breathtaking pace.

The old world of coral stone houses and barasti huts that prevailed for centuries was being swept away in a matter of years.

“I was clearly feeling and thinking that this was just the start of a very big thing,” says Mr Schneider, who was born in 1940. “This was just the first generation of Abu Dhabi.”

He had a front-row seat to these huge changes and chronicled them in a series of extraordinary photographs.

Shot on a Nikon camera, they show the construction boom that was turning sand into high rises; creating new roads through the desert; and the first international hotels.

One striking photo from 1978 shows Le Meridien hotel nearing completion. A year later, it would welcome Queen Elizabeth II of Britain on her first trip to the UAE.

Another shows a much-loved landmark, called the “Onion Tower”. This was a water tower on Abu Dhabi’s Electra Street (now Zayed the First Street), which has since been demolished but was a reference point for generations.

“I never saw a tank construction like this,” Mr Schneider says.

Abu Dhabi was then a smaller place. Airport Road (Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed) was the main motorway that he took that first day and it ran from Al Maqta Bridge past the airport and into town.

Buildings didn’t really appear until around Defence Road (Hazza bin Zayed the First). But what struck Mr Schneider was how a future Abu Dhabi was already being planned.

“The roads were already there,” he says. “This was interesting as the buildings were not there yet but the roads were.”

His first apartment was in the Tourist Club neighbourhood of Abu Dhabi, named after the entertainment venue that once sat beside Le Meridien.

It has since been renamed Al Zahiyah but the old moniker lingers. In the late 1970s, this was the centre of the building boom.

The photos capture the frenetic pace of development with buildings appearing to shoot up overnight.

Mr Schneider was a member of the Tourist Club, which consisted of a small beach, palm trees and restaurants and he recalls seeing UAE Founding President, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, there when he tried some bowling.

“I was impressed by him,” says Mr Schneider. “He was just like us.”

Where Sheraton Abu Dhabi stands today was open sea and Lulu Island wasn’t there yet.

The social scene revolved around parties in people’s houses but Mr Schneider recalls making the most of his weekends to visit places such as Dubai Creek, camping in Khor Fakkan and Dibba but, particularly, the Liwa desert.

The photographs he took on the travels there on the edge of the vast Empty Quarter desert show the Bedouin way of life, the oil fields at Habshan and, despite the new roads being built, the undulating red sand dunes that stretched as far as the eye could see.

The images also show how he was able to walk onto an old airfield and inspect a plane that crashed there.

“It was an adventurous and pioneering feeling,” he says.

But nothing could stay the same. While Le Meridien hotel is still there, much of what Mr Schneider photographed at Tourist Club has since been demolished and new towers were erected.

The city no longer ends at Defence Road but has expanded to the islands and mainland. Abu Dhabi has become a city of suburbs unrecognisable to many who lived here in the 1970s.

Mr Schneider did several stints in the UAE before retiring. But he still visits every year with his wife and looks back fondly at being able to witness a crucial time in Abu Dhabi’s history.

“It was so exciting,” he says. “Every day with all this construction. It was fantastic. I would do it all again."