Fürstenhof (Frankfurt am Main)
The Fürstenhof , formerly Hotel Fürstenhof-Esplanade , is a neo-baroque building in Frankfurt am Main that was built in 1902 . It has a floor space of around 18,450 square meters and is located in the Bahnhofsviertel between Münchener Strasse , Gallusanlage and Kaiserstrasse . The building, which was renovated in 1992 by real estate investor Jürgen Schneider , is rented long-term to Commerzbank . From 1994 onwards, Dresdner Bank , which was merged with Commerzbank in May 2009, used it as the parent company for its private customer business.
history
In 1901 the Swiss hotelier Wilhelm Eduard Drucker commissioned the architect Oskar Heussner to build a luxury hotel with 120 rooms. The southern wing of the Main-Neckar train station, which opened in 1848, previously stood on the property at the corner of Kronprinzenstraße (today Münchener Straße ) and Gallusanlage . After the main station went into operation in 1888, the Wilhelminian-style station district was built on the former track apron of Frankfurt's western train stations . The Hotel Fürstenhof was one of the last and, according to the judgment of the city curator Heinz Schomann, the most pompous new buildings in the station district. It was created at the same time as the theater opposite
Before the hotel was completed, the restaurateur of the palm garden , Louis Bolle-Ritz, took over the new building, which was officially opened on July 10, 1902. Towards the Gallus complex, the five-storey neo-baroque building made of white Franconian sandstone had a continuous central projection framed by two pairs of columns, which was closed off by a segmented gable with acroteria. The corner buildings facing Münchener Strasse and Kaiserstrasse were crowned by domes.
Inside the hotel, a six-meter-wide marble staircase led up to the fifth floor. The front garden, which served as a car driveway, was later redesigned into a terrace restaurant.
All rooms were equipped with telephones and electrical clocks. Especially had the fire protection value set, so all rooms had double doors and fire-proof walls. The building was constructed entirely of steel and reinforced concrete.
As early as 1910, the hotel was stopped again. The house accommodated numerous high-ranking guests in these years, but the economic success failed to materialize. On the one hand, the hotel was relatively far away from the main train station, where several other luxury hotels were, on the other hand, the location on the edge of the city center was a disadvantage compared to traditional houses such as the Frankfurter Hof . However, the Frankfurters did not attribute the end of the hotel to but rather on a visit from the Shah of Persia in the spring of 1910. When he was on a cure in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe , he did not want to share Ritter's Park Hotel with the Prince of Wales . That is why he organized his receptions in the Hotel Fürstenhof, where he had mutton roast on a spit over an open fire. The smell drove all the other guests away, so that the hotel then had to file for bankruptcy and close.
In 1914 the former hotel was converted into a commercial building. The large corner dome was removed as early as 1920. The building was badly damaged in World War II. After it had been provisionally made usable again, it initially housed the Federal Audit Office , and from 1956 the motorway office.
In 1986, the investor Jürgen Schneider acquired the run-down property, according to newspaper reports for around 40 million DM. He had the building completely renovated, with only the facade, vestibule and staircase remaining from the original structure , while the rest was completely rebuilt. The radical renovation met with criticism in parts of the public, but took place with the approval of the monument protection authorities. In 1991 Schneider sold the office building to the Japanese Kowa Real Estate Investment for approx. DM 450 million. The Fürstenhof was one of the few properties that he sold before the fraudulent collapse of his group of companies in 1994.
After the grand opening in May 1992, the building stood empty for 16 months before the Dresdner Bank moved into it. In 1996 a subsidiary of Dresdner Bank bought the property. It has belonged to Union Investment since 2008 and, according to newspaper reports, the purchase price was 129 million euros. In September 2010 Union Investment sold the property to DFH Deutsche Fonds Holding for 126 million euros.
literature
- Wolfgang Klötzer: A guest in old Frankfurt. Heinrich Hugendubel Verlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-88034-493-0 , pages 109-111.
- Jürgen Schneider: All of my houses. Modern monuments in Germany. Verlag Bildung + Wissen, Bad Homburg / Leipzig 2000, ISBN 3-932366-10-7 , page 59ff.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of August 15, 1994
- ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of May 14, 1996
- ↑ Union Investment acquires Fürstenhof in Frankfurt
- ↑ DFH Deutsche Fonds Holding acquires Fürstenhof in Frankfurt
Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 30.9 ″ N , 8 ° 40 ′ 18.4 ″ E