Post Arosa
The post and telephone building in the Graubünden sports and holiday resort of Arosa is the headquarters of the Swiss Post . It was built in 1947/48 as the new main post office by the local architect Georg Brunold and is commonly known as the Post Arosa .
History of the postal system in Arosa
With the creation of the modern Swiss federal state in 1848, a permanent postman connection was established in Schanfigg . For Arosa, which was still small at the time, this meant that the Langwies priest initially managed the delivery of mail between Arosa and Langwies on Sundays . Later on, the Swiss Post regularly employed footmen - mostly local schoolboys - to ensure the supply of mail to Arosa. The first post office was in the Leinegga house in Innerarosa.
With the opening of Schanfiggerstrasse to Langwies in 1875, an Arosa family took over the daily mail service between the two villages and set up the post office in the Seegrube near Untersee . From 1880 the post office financed the use of a pack animal. With the construction of the Hotel Rothorn in 1883 (today: Casino Arosa ), the post office was moved there. In 1884 and 1895 Arosa was connected to the telegraph and telephone network, respectively. In 1889 a small post office was built in the Leinegga house and around 1896 a small building was built next to the Leinegga, which from then on served as the Innerarosa post office until 1931.
After the Schanfiggerstrasse was extended to Arosa in 1890, permanent postal routes from Chur to Arosa were set up. In 1894/95 the old post office was built on today's village square, where the first Arosa main post office was set up on June 1, 1896. Since that day, the terminus of the Chur-Arosa horse mail was also there and no longer at the Leinegga house. The planned closure of Post Innerarosa was prevented. In 1914, the newly opened Arosabahn took over the transport of mail and again the closure of the Post Innerarosa failed due to the resistance of the Arosa people. At the same time there was a request for a post office at the train station. In 1926, the district post office proposed a new main post office at Obersee and a branch near the town hall, the latter as a replacement for the two existing offices. In 1928 the Posthotel was built next to the train station and the PTT installed a new post office there, in the hope that they could persuade the community of Arosa to give up the office in Innerarosa. This branch was retained and in 1931 moved into the ground floor of the newly established Alte Post Innerarosa .
After the construction of the new main post office in 1947/48, the post on the village square had to be definitely given up. At the same time, the public telephone and telegraph service, which had been housed in its own premises since December 1905, was integrated into the new building. As a result, the building, now called "Alte Post", was used by the Arosa Kurverein (later Arosa Tourism). Since it moved to the Sports and Congress Center (SKZA) in 2012, a new use has been sought for the building. From the spring of 1997, the Innerarosa Post Office, for which the Arosa municipality and Kurverein had paid contributions for decades, was only served with greatly reduced opening times in the summer. After 73 years of controversy about keeping it, it was finally closed on April 27, 2002. Since then, Arosa, with its long municipal area, has only one post office.
The post and telephone building from 1948
location
The three-storey main building is located in an important urban area on the sophisticated Oberseeplatz in the immediate vicinity of the Arosa train station , the Obersee and some large hotels and commercial buildings. The striking, slightly curved main facade largely determines the complex traffic situation on site. It forms the end of the Obersee promenade that joins the station and is also the distributor of the Schanfiggerstrasse (Poststrasse) coming from Litzirüti towards Untersee or Innerarosa.
description
Via the forward portico , which is raised by three steps , the visitor enters the foyer , where there is a mural created by Ponziano Togni in 1950 . There is access to the lockers on the left, to the counter hall on the right or via a curved staircase to the upper floor, where the public telephone booths and telegraph used to be located in addition to an apartment . The switchboard and another apartment were on the second floor. The facade is rich in sgraffiti created by Ernst Thommen . It was also adorned with a billboard-like, closed field with a central clock and the inscription "Post, Telephon, Telegraph". The aforementioned telephone booths were located directly behind this striking section of the facade. At the rear of the building, a single-storey connecting wing and an adjoining, two-storey warehouse building separate an actual post office yard. In 1986 (including installing a plexiglass pane over the facade clock) and 1993 (new counter hall), minor renovations were carried out, but these did not change the overall character of the building.
Architectural importance
Architecturally, the building is one of the most important representatives of the 1940s in Graubünden. It stands in the tradition of a special building culture , which was established in the context of the so-called intellectual national defense in the context of the national exhibition of 1939 in Zurich . The functionalist and rationalist aspirations were mixed here with interests in the region, the health resort Arosa and the decorative, for example in the juxtaposition of sgraffiti on the upper floors with the tuff stone of the building base . A facade comparable in terms of formal quality was created in 1997 with the renovation of the Arosa Kursaal (casino) by the Mendini brothers from Milan, who decoratively clad the facade over a large area with tiny glass mosaic stones. Finally, it is noteworthy that the Arosa post office building can be made out as a 1:25 model at Swissminiatur in Melide (exhibition number 13).
gallery
Foyer with staircase and entrance to the counter hall
Counter hall
Locker room
Casino Arosa with facade by Alessandro Mendini
literature
- Olivier Berger: World architecture excluding the world , in: Terra Grischuna 1/2011, p. 28 ff.
- Marcel Just, Christof Kübler, Matthias Noell (eds.): Arosa - Modernism in the mountains . gta, Zurich 2007, ISBN 978-3-85676-214-8 , pp. 72-75.
- Hans Danuser : Arosa - as it was then (1996-2003) , vol. 7, self-published by Danuser, Arosa 2004, p. 16, 87 f.
- Hans Danuser: Arosa - as it was then (1979–1995) , vol. 6, self-published by Danuser, Arosa 2002, p. 112, 219.
- Hans Danuser: Arosa - as it was then (1947–1961) , vol. 4, self-published by Danuser, Arosa 2000, p. 11 ff., 34, 186, 211.
- Hans Danuser: Arosa - as it was then (1928–1946) , Vol. 3, self-published by Danuser, Arosa 1999, pp. 60, 78, 80, 112, 127, 139, 180, 191, 209, 232, 242, 251 .
- Hans Danuser: Arosa - as it was then (1907–1928) , Vol. 2, self-published by Danuser, Arosa 1998, pp. 26 ff., 53, 82 f., 97, 132, 176, 217, 220.
- Hans Danuser: Arosa - as it was then (1850–1907) , Vol. 1, Eigenverlag Danuser, Arosa 1997, pp. 17, 22, 45, 58 ff., 70, 129, 144, 164, 195 ff., 202 .
- Hans Danuser, Ruedi Homberger: Arosa and the Schanfigg , self-published by Danuser / Homberger, Arosa 1988, pp. 123–126.
- Fritz Maron: From mountain farming village to world health resort Arosa , Verlag F. Schuler, Chur 1934, pp. 102-106.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Marcel Just, Christof Kübler, Matthias Noell (eds.): Arosa - The Modern in the Mountains . gta, Zurich 2007, ISBN 978-3-85676-214-8 , pp. 242–245.