Operngasse (Vienna)
The Operngasse is a traffic route in the first Viennese district, Inner City and Vienna in the 4th district, Wieden .
Course and characteristics
Operngasse begins at Albertinaplatz in the 1st district, one block within Ringstrasse , crosses this and two blocks further on Friedrichstrasse at Karlsplatz , whereupon the right Wienzeile branches off to the right (in the opposite direction) .
The Operngasse then continues in the 4th district of Vienna and after three blocks it finally joins the Margaretenstrasse at Schleifmühlgasse. The alley that runs from north to south is a one-way street in this direction.
As a connecting road from the 1st district to the south (access from the ring at the State Opera to Wiedner Hauptstrasse and Favoritenstrasse ), it is heavily frequented by car traffic. From the Ringstrasse, the bus route 59A runs on Operngasse. There is also a busy cycle path along the entire course. In the area of Friedrichstrasse, where the Wien River runs underground, are the green spaces of Esperanto Park and Rosa Mayreder Park; both are flooded by the heavy traffic on Karlsplatz and therefore not suitable for recreation.
The eponymous Vienna State Opera is located on the east side between Albertinaplatz and Ringstrasse , opposite and up to Friedrichstrasse are historicist houses from the period from 1860–1880. In the 4th district, most of the buildings on Operngasse date from the 1930s (previously, the large Freihaus on Wieden was located here, also across today's Operngasse ). The buildings of the Technical University were built from 1970.
history
Operngasse owes its origins to the construction of the Ringstrasse and the associated redesign of its surroundings. The Carinthian Bastion , later called the Augustinian Bastion , was once located on the site of today's Operngasse between Albertinaplatz and Ringstrasse . After the bastions were demolished, the alley was opened in 1861 and named in 1862 after the Imperial and Royal Court Opera Operngasse, which was then under construction. At that time, Operngasse only ran in the 1st district, initially to the Ring, then, with the expansion of the Ringstrasse zone, to Friedrichstrasse.
The extension of the alley to the 4th district, decided by the city administration in 1913, was associated with the demolition of the desolate Freihaus on the Wieden , through whose area the alley should lead to Margaretenstrasse. The demolition of the extensive Freihaus complex, which was planned in 1913, stalled due to the First World War and was not carried out on a larger scale until 1930. In 1930 Operngasse in the 4th district was listed as projected in the street directory.
Only after the demolition work began in 1930, the course of Operngasse in the 4th district could actually be made visible and the outer Operngasse was built on the western side of the street (even house numbers) in 1936/1937. It is considered the only example of such a non-communal row construction in Vienna during the interwar period.
On the left side of the street in the 4th district, decades later, there were remains of the old building with a Freihausplatz on the area of today's house numbers 13 and 15, which was directly connected to Operngasse and was only deleted from the city map in the mid-1970s. From 1970 a large building of the Technical University was built here, all the way to Wiedner Hauptstrasse.
Notable buildings
The even-numbered houses are on the west side and the odd-numbered houses are on the east side.
No. 1: State Opera
The entire east side of Operngasse between its beginning and the Ringstrasse in the 1st district is occupied by the kk Hofoper, today's Vienna State Opera, built between 1861 and 1869 by the architects Eduard van der Nüll and August Sicard von Sicardsburg , the main entrance of which is on the Opernring . One of the two opera fountains, which were also designed by the two architects mentioned, is located here in Operngasse. It is made of marble and has three flat basin bowls with a narrower top around a slender shaft. The figures were created by the sculptor Hanns Gasser and show the allegory of music above, including the allegorical figures of joy, seriousness and recklessness.
No. 2: Commercial building, formerly Hainisch house
This building with three fronts (the other two are in Hanuschgasse 1 and Goethegasse 1) and two inner courtyards was created in 1862 by the architect Ferdinand Fellner the Elder . It is a remarkable early historical corner house. At the corner of Hanuschgasse there is a columned bay window on caryatids by Josef Cesar (around 1863). The foyer has a pendent dome between barrel vaults and is decorated with decorative paintings. Oil paintings show the allegorical figures of justice, trade, agriculture and traffic. Today the building houses the Upper Austria house , the federal theater box office , the administration of the federal theater and various apartments; a modern attic was added for this purpose.
No. 3: Opernringhof
The western narrow side of a commercial and office building of the Opernringhof opposite the State Opera on Ringstrasse in the 1st district, formerly the Heinrichshof , borders on Operngasse.
No. 4: Early Historicism
This early historic house was built between 1862 and 1864 according to plans by Anton Helfft. It is designed in neo-Romanist forms and emphasizes the central axis with a half-column portal flanked by a hermen. In the inner courtyard there is a statue of Diana as a fountain figure, in the stairwell there is a female bronze figure created by the company Barbezat and Co.
No. 6
The house was built in 1862–1863 by Johann Romano von Rings and August Schwendenwein von Lanauberg . After the Second World War, a renovation was carried out by Erich Boltenstern from 1953 to 1961 .
Albertina Passage
An underground pedestrian passage called Albertinapassage was built in 1964 at the intersection of Operngasse and Opernring . Since the pedestrian frequency later left a lot to be desired, the passage was closed from 2005. At the end of 2011, a dinner club was opened in the passage , which continues to use the name of the passage.
No. 7: Café Museum
The well-known Café Museum , whose interior was designed by Adolf Loos , is located at the corner of Friedrichstrasse 6 / Karlsplatz in the 1st district . This coffee house was a well-known literary café and is one of the traditional coffee houses in Vienna.
No. 9: Porrhaus
The current institute building of the Technical University in the 4th district, at the corner of Treitlstrasse 3 and Karlsplatz, was built in 1930/1931 by the architects Fritz Judtmann and Egon Riss . It was built by the Porr construction group , but served as an administration building for the textile and hospitality workers' union. A building for the Porr construction group itself was next to it at number 11. Nevertheless, the union building was and is generally called Porrhaus.
It is one of the most important buildings of the 1930s in Vienna and is very exposed in terms of urban planning due to its location on Karlsplatz. The six-storey reinforced concrete structure has functional shapes and continuous rows of windows. In 1932 , Karl Kraus gave his Offenbach lectures in the ballroom. The hall was then renamed the Offenbach Hall.
In the foyer there was a bronze bust for the workers leader Anton Hueber by Mario Petrucci from the 1950s. During the occupation after the Second World War, an information center of the Soviet Union was located here until 1955. Originally, the construction company had planned a high-rise building at this point, but this did not materialize due to resistance from the city building authorities.
No. 13–15: Building of the Technical University
See: Wiedner Hauptstrasse
In this massive new building from the 1970s with a side front at Schaurhofergasse 2–4 and the main address Wiedner Hauptstraße 6–10, there are lecture halls and institutes of the Technical University . This property was also once taken by Freihaus auf der Wieden .
- Resselgasse
The Resselgasse, which flows into this from the western side of Wiedner Hauptstrasse, was extended to Operngasse with a passage through the new TU building. Opposite this confluence is the Bärenmühl passage (see No. 18).
- Freihausplatz
In addition to the confluence of the Resselgasse was in Operngasse in 1913 in memory of the open house named Freihaus place which was in reality only in the 1930s, was demolished as the free house. It was closed in the 1970s in favor of the TU building site.
- In the rose hatches
From the 1930s onwards, parallel to Resselgasse, from Wiedner Hauptstrasse to Operngasse, the street In der Rosenlukken , decided in 1913, ran through today's TU property; the alley was left open during the construction of the TU building, as was Freihausplatz.
No. 16: New Vienna Renaissance
Ferdinand Schlaf built this strictly historical house on the corner of Nibelungengasse in the 1st district in 1871–1872 in the form of the New Vienna Renaissance. It has additive gable windows, corner projections, aedicule supraposition with caryatids and a three-axis column portal. In the house is the traditional pharmacy for the holy spirit .
No. 18: Bear Mill
Heinrich Schmid and Hermann Aichinger built the striking corner house on the tapering plot of land Operngasse / Rechts Wienzeile 1A. The house called Bärenmühle was built between 1937 and 1938 and has an elevated, risalit-like projected structure with a semicircular porch. A plaque with a stone relief reminds of the legend of the bear fight, which gave the former bear mill its name. The writer Ignaz Franz Castelli lived in the building that was here from 1794–1856 . Since 1937, the Bärenmühl passageway (projected as Bärenmühlgasse in 1913) has led from Operngasse through the building to the right Wienzeile and to the Naschmarkt . Opposite the Resselgasse leads from Operngasse to Wiedner Hauptstrasse.
No. 23-25: gusset construction
In 1936, Franz Gessner created this striking gusset construction on the corner of Operngasse and Margaretenstraße 10 at the southern end of the street as an expressive corner solution. A sgraffito on the house reminds of the former Freihaus on Wieden and its history.
No. 26–36: Row of houses
This uniform row of seven-storey residential buildings in the 4th district, on the western side of the street between Faulmanngasse and Schleifmühlgasse, was built in 1936/1937. The corner house at No. 26 / Faulmanngasse 1 comes from Franz Gessner and is called Papagenohof. A majolica relief by H. Revy with the picture of Papagenos commemorates the world premiere of the opera “ Die Zauberflöte ” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the former Freihaus theater .
House no. 28 was designed by Alfred Adler and Martin Johann Schmid , no. 30–34 by Eugen Kastner and Fritz Waage . At No. 36 / Schleifmühlgasse 12, at the southern end of Operngasse, there is a large sgraffito with the image of the former Freihaus, underlaid with the layout of the current street layout. There is also a row of shops here with the original black glass paneling.
Public transport
The Operngasse was used in the 1st district 1902-1942 for the full length of the tram in regular service. The lines began on the Neuer Markt (where there was no space for a loop and therefore had to be recoupled) and reached the beginning of Operngasse on the city center side through Tegetthoffstrasse. Trains on the lines:
- Z (after Hietzing and Lainz , 1907–1911)
- 61 (to Meidling station , 1907–1918, then until 1960 from the Ring, Opera)
- 59 (after Lainz or Mauer , 1911–1942, then until 1972 from Ring, Babenbergerstraße )
- 58 (to Unter-St.-Veit , 1908–1942, then from the Ring, Babenbergerstraße, since 1992 from the Westbahnhof underground station )
The four lines crossed the Ringstrasse and drove in Operngasse to Friedrichstrasse. Then Z, 58er and 59er drove on the Getreidemarkt , a section of the two-way line , to Mariahilfer Strasse and on this out of town; The 61 drove out of town through Linke Wienzeile . Operations on the Ringstrasse ceased in the middle of World War II.
After 1945 the tracks in the Operngasse within the Ringstrasse were no longer used in regular service and were removed from the network in 1948. Around the Opernringhof (see No. 3) there was a reversing loop of the tram until 1963, which was used by lines 63 (to Schönbrunn , until 1959) and 61 (see above, until 1960). Then these lines were converted to bus service. Today the bus route 59A runs on most of Operngasse, between Ring and Margaretenstrasse, out of town. In the opposite direction, to the Ring, it runs in this section on the right Wienzeile .
literature
- Dehio-Handbuch, the art monuments of Austria. Topographical inventory of monuments. Department: Vienna. Volume 1: Wolfgang Czerny: I. District - Inner City. Schroll, Vienna et al. 2003, ISBN 3-85028-366-6 .
- Dehio-Handbuch, the art monuments of Austria. Topographical inventory of monuments. Department: Vienna. Volume 2: Wolfgang Czerny: II. To IX. and XX. District. Revision. Schroll, Vienna et al. 1993, ISBN 3-7031-0680-8 .
- Felix Czeike : Historical Lexicon Vienna. Volume 4: Le - Ro. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-218-00546-9 .
- Felix Czeike: Viennese district culture guide. Volume 4: Wieden. Jugend & Volk, Vienna et al. 1979, ISBN 3-7141-6220-8 .
- Walter Krobot, Josef Otto Slezak, Hans Sternhart: Tram in Vienna - the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow , Verlag Josef Otto Slezak, Vienna 1972, ISBN 3-900134-00-6
- Helmut Portele: "Wiener Tramwaymuseum" collection, self-published by the Wiener Tramwaymuseum collection, Vienna ³2009, ISBN 978-3-200-01562-3
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ New street names on the Wieden and in Margareten .. In: Neue Freie Presse , November 4, 1913, p. 11 (online at ANNO ).
- ↑ karl-kraus.net 'Theater of Poetry
Coordinates: 48 ° 12 ′ 5.9 ″ N , 16 ° 22 ′ 2.9 ″ E