Arthur Peters Villa

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Villa Peters, street view

The Villa Arthur Peters is a building in the lower town of Eupen , which was built in 1884 on behalf of the cloth manufacturer Arthur Peters (1854–1931) according to plans by the architect F. Peltz in the neo-renaissance style. The overall plan of the property includes a spacious landscaped park and a spacious coach house north of the area. Like the coach house, Villa Peters is included in the catalog of listed buildings in Eupen, but has not yet been placed under monument protection.

history

After taking over his father's cloth factory, Peters had his villa rebuilt not far from it as a representative residence and expanded it for cultural purposes such as house concerts in the 1890s. After the Second World War , the innkeeper Nikolaus Weinberg took over the complex and ran a hotel-restaurant there for around 20 years. Then the state building management acquired the villa and made it available to the “Royal Athenaeum Eupen”, which used it as a boarding school for girls until 2003. The building then stood empty for more than a dozen years before the conversion into a music academy was planned, approved and implemented. In the course of this, the building was rebuilt according to the latest acoustics and taking into account the historical building stock, which is worthy of protection, and prepared for the needs of the music academy. Further work, especially in the outdoor area, as well as minor additions and improvements are still pending and then in a later step the property will finally be taken over by the city of Eupen.

Building description

External relief

The main building itself is a two-storey structure structured by uniaxial projections and recesses, which rests on a massive, semi-protruding cellar vault, which turns the basement into a mezzanine floor. It ends with a mansard roof made entirely of zinc . As early as 1900, the house was extended by a wide, single-axis extension on its west side for a music room, the west facade of which is adorned with an elongated cast-iron relief , which, with its motifs of singing and music-making figures, indicates the use of the extension in Greek style. In addition, a much earlier winter garden was added to the garden side of the building , the roof of which serves as a spacious balcony for the upper floor and which now extends the new large music hall.

The building's facades are made of yellow ocher brickwork , with the individual floors being divided by light-colored, ornamented cornices made of stone and the corners of the building emphasized with strong rusticated blocks . The mighty central projection facing the street is crowned by a tail gable, the upper section of which with the embedded clock ornamentation, which extends beyond the mansard roof, is no longer present.

Villa Peters - garden view

The actual main entrance, which can be reached via several steps, is located to the left of the central projectile and is protected from moisture by a square, arched and decorated portico . As part of the first renovation work, there was a mirror image of a second entrance on the right-hand side of the central risalit, which, however, was created without roofing. As part of the last conversion to the music academy, a glass, light staircase with an additional zinc-encased lift system for disabled people was built at the rear of the extended western extension.

Stained glass window of the Peters Villa

The light in the basement and first floor falls through high rectangular windows, which are divided into three high rectangular sections in the central projectile and in the western extension and which are all framed with ashlar masonry. On the mansard floor, the significantly smaller rectangular windows are emphasized with rounded dormer windows and embedded in the central project as twin arched windows. Particularly in the inner staircase and next to the winter garden, some historical stained glass windows with floral decorations have been preserved, but they are protected by a second glazing.

Inside the villa, the building captivates with a spacious vestibule , from where massive wooden doors adorned with neo-Gothic decor lead to the individual rooms of the basement. In earlier times, a decorative open fireplace provided the necessary warmth and a high wall fountain made of Italian marble, set into a marble wall to the left of the entrance, completes the classicist picture. The gem of the room is the ornate coffered ceiling , which is accentuated by subtle indirect lighting. Another testimony to the old days is the bright staircase leading from the vestibule, the walls of which up to the upper floor level, as well as the wide staircase, are made entirely of white marble. A wrought-iron cast iron railing with floral ornaments and a wooden handrail ensures safety on the staircase and the upper parapet . A bronze mythological equestrian frieze adorns the face of the upper staircase floor and the end of the staircase is emphasized again by strongly structured coffered ceilings.

While the former large representative rooms in the basement have been converted into concert, ballet and theater rooms, the rather small rooms on the upper and mansard floors as well as the massive basement rooms have been adapted to today's purposes and prepared as classrooms.

The now privatized coach house, which was stylistically adapted to the Villa Peters and whose former use can be recognized by the horse's head in a round medallion on the right side facade of the house , belonged to Villa Peters in earlier years .

  • Interior views

  • Wall fountain in the Estibül

  • Room doors in neo-Gothic style

  • Coffered ceiling in the vestibule

  • Staircase with coffered ceilings and relief

literature

  • Lutz Hennig-Mayer: The cloth factory Wm Peters & Co. in Eupen and the villas of the Peters family , in: Marga van den Heuvel: Das fein Tuch , Grenz-Echo-Verlag Eupen 2014, p. 157ff. ISBN 978-3-86712-089-0 .
  • Villa Arthur Peters, Bellmerin . In: EUPEN yesterday was today , Grenz-Echo-Verlag, Eupen 2016, pp. 126–129

Web links

Commons : Villa Peters  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heike Kussinger-Stankovic: Recording the inventory of monuments in the Eupen Lower Town, Grenz-Echo-Verlag, Eupen 2014
  2. ↑ House Bellmerin 39 , portrait and images of the coach house on ostbelgienkulturerbe.be

Coordinates: 50 ° 37 ′ 11.8 "  N , 6 ° 2 ′ 56.7"  E