Hotel Zoo Berlin
| Hotel Zoo | |
|---|---|
 Hotel am Zoo 2019 |
|
| Data | |
| place | Berlin |
| architect | Alfred Messel |
| Construction year | 1891-1893 |
| height | about 20 m |
| Floor space | 55 m × 27 m = 1,485 m² |
| Coordinates | 52 ° 30 '13.1 " N , 13 ° 19' 44.4" E |
| particularities | |
| Multiple renovations and extensions, most recently 2012–2014 | |
The Hotel Zoo is a hotel in Berlin-Charlottenburg , Kurfürstendamm 25, near the Berlin Zoological Garden . It was built in 1891–1893 as an apartment building, converted into a hotel in 1911 and two storeys added in 1956. The listed building was reopened in late autumn 2014 after careful renovation , refurbishment and modernization.
location
The house is on the north side of the street opposite the junction with Meinekestrasse. In the immediate vicinity (house numbers 26 / 26a and 28–30) there are other architectural monuments that were also built as residential or commercial buildings between 1891 and 1907 according to designs by renowned architects.
history
.JPG)
The building was built between 1891 and 1893 as part of a group of three apartment buildings (Kurfürstendamm 23/24/25) by the Berlin contractor Heinrich Mittag for his own account. The floor plans and implementation planning came from Mittag himself; he had the facades designed by the renowned Berlin architect Alfred Messel - a division of tasks that was not unusual at the time. The facades of the three of the brick - masonry erected, 5 1 / 2 -geschossigen solid constructions received on the ground floor a Bossenwerk nose cone, the remaining floors were tonal plastered . In keeping with contemporary tastes , Messel used historicist elements such as decorative gables , bay windows , balconies, balustrades on the eaves , caryatids under the gables, relief decorations in the parapet and gable fields as well as representatively decorated entrances. The details of the three houses were individually designed, but the group was clearly structured symmetrically, e.g. B. in the arrangement of the bay windows, the ornamental gables and the entrances.
The house at Kurfürstendamm 25 contained twelve generously sized apartments, in one of which the architect Walter Gropius senior lived for a time with his family, which also included the son, born in 1883 and later world-famous architect Walter Gropius . In 1910, the Charlottenburg businessman Adolf Koschel acquired the building and had it converted into an elegant hotel by the Berlin architects Carl Wittling and Georg Güldner, which opened in 1911 under the name Hotel am Zoo . After Koschel's death, his widow Hedwig Koschel continued to run the house. In the 1930s, the Kurfürsten-Theater cinema was built into part of the building , which competed with the cinema opened in 1913 in the neighboring house at Kurfürstendamm 26 (Union-Palast , later: Union-Theater Kurfürstendamm / UFA -Theater Kurfürstendamm , since 1945: Filmbühne Vienna ) .
In 1932 the property passed into the ownership of Valentin Köhler, who operated the house in the legal form of a GmbH . The cinema was closed, instead a restaurant was built. In the 1940s, Köhler ran the house together with his son. During this time, the Berlin address books again named an elector theater as the tenant or user of the building , in 1941 the cigar shop Gebrüder Borchardt and in 1943 the Hamburg cigar trading company with a shop on the ground floor.
Although many buildings on Kurfürstendamm were destroyed by Allied air raids during World War II , the Hotel am Zoo was preserved with relatively little damage. In 1949 the hotel lobby was rebuilt and the portal was given eye-catching glass cladding over the sidewalk. In 1956, the owner had the house increased by two lower storeys with a simple facade according to plans by the architects Paul Baumgarten and Bernd Zachariae. The Messel facade was also changed: the decorative gables and balustrades above the eaves disappeared, and the side loggias on the top floor were replaced by two separate windows.
The hotel flourished in the 1950s - prominent actors who came to the West Berlin Film Festival stayed here , including Romy Schneider and Gina Lollobrigida .
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification , the hotel lost its importance and the number of overnight stays declined. Necessary renovation measures could no longer be carried out because of the low profits. The house was finally for sale. In 2005 the real estate entrepreneur Manfred Weingärtner acquired the building together with his partner Robert Huebner and kept the hotel (with a total of 136 rooms) running until December 15, 2012. The new owners then commissioned the American interior designer Dayna Lee to work out redesign plans. These were gradually implemented by the middle of 2014:
The hotel name was shortened by the word “am”, the building was extended again, but the stainless steel flagpoles from 1949 were retained. A winter garden and an extension with a restaurant were added on the courtyard side . Because the entire building is not used as a hotel, Weingärtner rented the former main entrance in the middle area of the ground floor as a shop to the Hugo Boss clothing chain . The hotel entrance was therefore relocated to the western axis of the facade. A 20-meter-long corridor (called the catwalk by management ) now leads into the lobby , which is partly decorated with purely decorative pillars in a factory look and partly with a stucco ceiling . The rooms were furnished in Hollywood style: In addition to stucco ceilings, there are emerald green walls with dusky pink elements, chocolate brown floorboards and a fireplace in the winter garden.
After all the work has been completed, the hotel will have a total of 145 rooms. Weingärtner does not want to have hotel stars for the house , but lets it operate as a boutique hotel . This is understood as a personally managed, individual, mostly luxurious accommodation facility. The prices can thus be made variable. A collaboration has been agreed with neighboring facilities such as the cinema or a wellness provider.
literature
- Ditta Ahmadi, Peter Güttler, Klaus Konrad Weber (arrangement): Buildings for trade and commerce - hospitality. (= Berlin and its buildings , Part VIII, Volume B.) Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-433-00825-6 , pp. 20, 26, 41.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hotel am Zoo in the Berlin State Monument List
- ↑ Monument ensemble Kurfürstendamm / Fasanenstraße in the Berlin State Monument List
- ^ Berlin> Streets and Houses> Kurfürstendamm 25 . In: New address book for Berlin and its suburbs , 1896, part III, p. 278.
- ^ Berlin> Streets and Houses> Kurfürstendamm 25 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1912, Part III, p. 468.
- ^ Streets and houses of Berlin> Kurfürstendamm 25 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1931, Part IV, p. 547 .: Hotel am Zoo, Kurfürsten Theater, C. Haupt, Lichtspiele
- ^ Charlottenburg> Kurfürstendamm 25 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1943, Part IV, p. 1092.
- ↑ Elmar Schütze: Pop and kitsch in a historical guise. Modern accommodation behind a time-honored facade. After two years of renovation, the Hotel Zoo plans to open in autumn. In: Berliner Zeitung , August 29, 2014, p. 18.