Blue-gold house
The Blau-Gold-Haus is a listed commercial building in the north of Cologne's old town in the immediate vicinity of Cologne Cathedral with the address Domkloster 2.
History of origin
Two buildings from the Wilhelminian era stood one after the other on the site of today's Blue and Gold House . The course of the street Domkloster and the numbering of the buildings there are important for the identification of the previous buildings. It ran from today's Wallrafplatz in an easterly direction over today's Roncalliplatz and ended with the Dommädchenschule in Domkloster No. 8. The house numbers on this street at that time did not completely correspond to today's, because Domkloster 4 is now the address of Cologne Cathedral, it used to be under this No. 4-6 the city palace of Abraham Oppenheim opposite the still unfinished cathedral.
Previous buildings
At the address Domkloster 2 on the south side there was a palace built in 1843 as a residential and commercial building for the Cologne banker Simon Oppenheim , who moved here from Trankgasse 9. Simon Oppenheim's brother Abraham Oppenheim lived since 1843 in the newly built cathedral monastery No. 4–6, for which Jacob Kaaf carried out the interior decoration. Oppenheim lived here until 1873 and then moved to his summer residence Gut Bassenheim .
In order to create more space for Cologne Cathedral, the entire building complex where the Dom-Hotel is today (Domkloster 2–8) was demolished in November 1886, with the neighboring building of the Cathedral Girls' School (Domkloster 8) also falling victim to the demolition. Only the Oppenheim-Palais in Domkloster 2 remained. In contrast to the Stübben plan of October 1885, the new Dom Hotel came to be free on three sides because the Domkloster 4 property on the north side of the building block was included in the hotel complex.
The Cologne perfume manufacturer Ferdinand Mülhens had Oppenheim's palace in Domkloster No. 2 converted into the “Savoy Hotel Großer Kurfürst” by architect Wilhelm Kurth in 1892. The result was a hotel with 65 rooms, which, in addition to the side bay windows crowned by gables and the corner to Wallrafplatz adorned with an onion dome, was distinguished by a central dome with a lantern on the north facade. The inauguration took place on November 2, 1893 with a large dinner, the day after there was the official opening. Client Mülhens invested his profits from perfume production in the construction of this hotel and did not explain to anyone why he had chosen the rather unusual hotel name. He had the hotel rebuilt in 1905 by the architect Ludwig Paffendorf , the interior was renovated in 1910, and since then it has been known as the "Savoy Hotel". In 1931 there was a roof and facade renovation. The hotel, which was destroyed by an explosive device during World War II , was closed in 1950.
New building after the war
The 4711 house architect Wilhelm Koep prepared construction drawings for a commercial building on behalf of the Mülhens family until October 1951, which was completed in October 1952. The construction plans envisaged a facade made of aluminum, steel and glass, richly decorated with decorative elements, which surrounded a six-storey steel frame building. The system profile for the aluminum cladding came from Hueck . The building is visually particularly impressive at night when the turquoise-gold-colored curtain wall (visible on Domkloster and Wallrafplatz) with indirect lighting can be seen, especially in the pronounced roof valley . During the day, the gold-colored anodized aluminum and the turquoise-colored parapets present the color combination that corresponds to the turquoise-gold defined by Peter Joseph Mülhens in 1839 as the “ corporate design ” for the 4711 brand . This gradually gave rise to the popular name "Blue-Gold House".
The corner building extends into Wallrafplatz leading to the cathedral courtyard, where Koep was able to complete the single-storey “Crystal Palace” - with a side entrance to the Blue-Gold House - in No. 6 as a neighboring building, also in October 1952. It was a single-storey shopping arcade, which got its name from the "Kristall-Passage Cox GmbH" moved into it. The building will give way to a five-storey new building by the architect Johannes Kister (he was responsible for the restoration of the blue and gold house).
The company headquarters of 4711 had been at Glockengasse 4 since October 1964 , but the new building at the cathedral was supposed to reach the target group of tourists in an exposed location on the southern Domplatte as an advertising medium. In the early stages of the building there was only a store from 4711, today it houses luxury stores from Louis Vuitton , Hermès and Longchamp . The building was first renovated in 1979 and 1991, and it has been a listed building since June 18, 1991.
Major renovation
The Blau-Gold-Haus has belonged to the supplementary pension fund of the Bavarian municipalities since January 2010, which is also the owner of the neighboring Dom Hotel (Domkloster 2a). In order to expand the Dom Hotel, the Blue Gold House was gutted and redesigned by the architect Johannes Kister between June 2010 and August 2012. In doing so, he created space from the second floor for 42 hotel suites from the adjoining Dom Hotel (with 162 rooms), including an 88 m² “ Presidential Suite ” on the fourth floor. The renovated blue and gold house was handed over in September 2012 in good time before the start of the Christmas market at the cathedral. In June 2012 it received a special award from the Federal Ministry of Construction and the German Steel Construction Department.
Individual evidence
- ^ Judith Breuer, The Cologne Cathedral Environment as a Mirror of the Cathedral Reception in the 19th Century , 1981, p. 18
- ^ Karl Möckl, Economic Citizenship in the German States in the 19th and Beginning of the 20th Century , 1996, p. 427
- ↑ Ute Grefe, Cologne in early photographs 1847–1914 , p. 83
- ↑ Joseph Stübben , The exposure of the Cologne Cathedral , in: Deutsche Bauzeitung, XIX (1885), pp. 152–154
- ↑ Köln-Süd, Stadt-Magazin No. 6/2012 , December 2012, p. 14 f.
- Jump up ↑ Historical Commission for Westphalia, Rheinisch-Westfälische Wirtschaftsbiografien , Volume 12, 1986, p. 175
- ^ Wilhelm Treue : Ferdinand Mülhens (1844–1928). In: Cologne entrepreneurs in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. (= Rheinisch-Westfälische Wirtschaftsbiographien, Volume 12). Aschendorff, Münster 1986, p. 175
- ↑ Rudolf Vierhaus (Ed.), German Biographical Encyclopedia , Volume 7, 2007, p. 235
- ^ Judith Breuer, The Cologne Cathedral Environment as a Mirror of the Cathedral Reception in the 19th Century , 1981, p. 148.
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 56 '26.3 " N , 6 ° 57' 24.8" E