If you are used to thinking of Art Nouveau or Jugendstil as full of color and curves and shapes from nature, you wouldn’t be wrong—but you also wouldn’t have been thinking of one of the masterpieces of Otto Wagner, Austria’s leader of the style. The Postal Savings Bank building, or Postsparkasse is a quite different development of his style and ideas, but not a break from them.
Wagner designed the Sparkasse just after the turn of the century, twenty years past his extravagant Villa Wagner. If the villa represents a big step in breaking with historical styles and embracing new ideas, the Sparkasse represents a big step beyond into truly modern architecture, and possibly even a hint of Art Deco to come.
It was also a visual rebuke to the ornate and heavy-handed War Ministry building directly across the Ring from it. The earliest part of Wagner’s career was spent working on the new and imposing buildings erected when the Ring boulevard replaced the former city walls. Although the War Ministry building is newer than the Sparkasse, it belongs to the earlier era.
But more than an evolution in style, the building is a pioneer in other ways. Wagner made extensive use of new materials, including structural aluminum, and organized the building and its spaces to be economical and flexible—an extension of his dicta that “only that which is practical can be beautiful,” and the “Necessity is the sole mistress of art.”
Aluminum was new to building; the process for extracting alumina from ore was only ten or so years old. Its relatively low cost and light weight appealed to Wagner; he used it for the decorative ‘rivets’ which appear to hold the marble facade on the building, for fans and lights inside and for the monumental roofline statuary by his long-time collaborator Othmar Schimkowitz. One of those pieces was our One-Clue Mystery, recognized by George G.
Using marble for the facade wasn’t entirely an esthetic decision; the marble requires little maintenance and is easily cleaned at reduced cost. After all, shouldn’t a bank be thrifty? That’s not the only thrift in Wagner’s design; the main public banking floor, filling the center of the building, is covered by a large glass and polished steel skylight, reducing the need for electric light. The floor of the banking hall is made of glass tile, allowing some of the sunlight to pass through to the lower floor, where post office boxes and sorting rooms were located.
Unlike many other buildings of its era, it has not only survived intact, but in its original use. It is still the headquarters of the current version of the Postal Savings Bank. Unfortunately, it was not open beyond the impressive lobby on the day I visited, so I’ve had to rely on the photographs above.
In the lobby, credit given: To the left, “Under the reign of Royal and Imperial Majesty Franz Joseph I, built by Otto Wagner, 1904-1906,” and on the opposite wall, “The Postal Savings Bank opened for business on 12 January 1883 under Director Georg Coch.” The steps lead up to the main banking hall; through the doors you can see the skylight canopy.
Elsewhere in the building is this amazing circular staircase that connects all eight of the building’s floors. Wagner’s design for the building included central utility cores and placing nearly all the weight of the building on the outer walls and a very limited number of interior bearing walls. It was one of the first buildings, therefore, to allow almost limitless rearrangement of interior spaces, perhaps one of the reasons it still is able to serve its original purpose.
While the Sparkasse building seems like a design opponent for the War Ministry building, it is equally different from the buildings with which it shares Georg-Koch-Platz. They exhibit many familiar Art Nouveau and transitional touches, but none has the almost-austere reserve of the Sparkasse.
Vie
