In the past year I have wandered around the wide and narrow streets in Vienna, used my camera to capture the apartment buildings where ordinary people live. These apartments witnessed the glorious industrial modernization in nineteenth century, also suffered artillery bombardment during the World War II. Let us listen, these old apartments are telling stories about the past time in Vienna.
Those beautiful ones
When thinking about the apartment building in Vienna, what will come to your mind? Do they look like the building in the above photo, gorgeous adjacent of window, exquisite relief, delicate color tone, and occasionally decorated with flowers and green plants on the windows?
Right, it was built in that way 150 years ago in Vienna. Imagine that the whole street, or even the entire block are full of such fine apartment buildings, how pleasing it would be.
⬇️ Apartment buildings along the street WähringerStraße
These apartment buildings are usually not tall, mostly four layers, occasionally some buildings have a half-layer loft on the top. In Vienna people count the layers in an interesting way: the one on the ground is Floor Zero, usually used for stores and restaurants. The second from the ground is called the stock 1, so on.
⬇️ Curved apartment building in a corner
The constructions in Vienna usually use low-key colors. It is rare to see a building with very shiny colors. Apartment houses are likewise, it is very common to see the apartments with white, gray or light brown such neutral and low-key colors. However there are also quite a few colorful apartments. But unlike those building in Venice Burano Island which have thick and heavy colors in strong contrast, the way the Viennese color their apartments is much more gentle: they use milky color tone: milky white, milky yellow, milky blue, milky red, milky orange, milky green, etc. I always feel being cheered up, just by looking at such gentle and lovely buildings.
⬇️ Milky green, milky red, and milky white apartments
⬇️ A group of milky color apartments
Most of these apartment buildings were built during 1840-1870, which is called Gründerzeit period). At that time period, the industrial revolution has spread from Britain to the western and central Europe. The industrialization and urbanization were blooming. Many middle class people got rich quickly. Because of the quick industry development, railway and road transport have been improved significantly, many people flowed into the big cities from countrysides, to look for jobs.
These all require Vienna city to supply more living space. Therefore the getting rich middle class built many beautiful apartments, either enjoyed the nice buildings themselves, or for renting out to the migrated workers. Until today, many of these apartment buildings are still providing living place for the people who move to work in this city, such as me.
⬇️ The apartment building I am staying
Those not so beautiful ones
But not all apartments on the streets in Vienna are so beautiful.
In some streets, especially in the areas away from the main roads, the buildings often look like those ones in the below photo: grey and bald buildings. No relief, no pretty window design, almost look like simple big concrete boxes.
At the beginning I thought it was because these places are too far from the city center, perhaps when people built Vienna they have not reached here.
Soon I found that I was wrong. After I explored more places, got more samplings, I found that very often there is a bald building adjacent to a fancy building with delicate decoration on the surface, as shown in below photo. This made me very confused.
⬇️ Left: simple bald surface; Right: dedicated pretty relief
This puzzle has been solved after I asked some Austrian friends. Apparently all this is due to the war. Austria have been involved in the two world wars. As the capital, Vienna suffered a lot of bombing, especially during World War II by British air force, as Austria was Hitler's Nazi territory. Even the symbol of the city - St. Stephen's cathedral was badly damaged, let alone other buildings. Lots of apartment buildings were destroyed, and many are subject to different degrees of damage, and some lucky ones preserved.
I found a blog from Mr. Dan Durning, showing many photos of the damaged Vienna after World War II. After getting his approval, I cite one of the photos here. Mr. Durning got the photos from a Viennese called K. Redl, who might be the photographer. The below photo was taken at Tegetthoff Strasse.
⬇️ Vienna after World War II, cited Dan Durning blog
After World War II, Viennese started to rebuild the city from the ruins. Due to the limited time and resources, not all the buildings have been restored to their original looking. In order to re-settle the people as soon as possible, give them a home, many buildings were built in the simplest way. That's why nowadays we can see so many "concrete boxes" among other beautiful "Vienna" style apartment buildings.
Those touching ones
Continue to wander around the streets, find more interesting houses, listen to their voices, little by little I started to feel moved by some buildings. Let me show you a few photos first.
Obviously these regions the above photos were taken have been heavily damaged by the war, because no apartment is decorated by fine relief, while across a block you might see some. But I noticed that, those people who worked on the reconstruction, have added in some special flavor under the hard circumstances: the colors. Even if the wall still look bald, the buildings still look simple, they have been painted with light lovely colors, sometimes even with simple color patterns. That makes me feel that after the World War II, the people here are still hopeful and look forward to future! They did not give up to the life!
Seeing such a lovely box, even with a stylish apartments aside, how can I bear to laugh at them. They are telling us: even if they are just concrete boxes, they can be pretty lifeful boxes!
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Those details
I have also found some other interesting details on these Viennese apartment buildings.
First is the balcony. At the side near the road, the apartments in Paris usually have balconies for each family. However that is not the case in Vienna. Facing to the road side, usually there are only limited number of the balconies, and usually odd numbers like 1, 3, 5 etc. Because the arrangement of the balconies on the whole building was considered for the whole design. For example, the following two photos both show apartment buildings with only 3 balconies: the middle one is slightly larger than the other two on the sides.
⬇️ three balconies on a building in a pattern 
⬇️ another buildings with 3 balconies in a different arrangement
For the other side (inner side) of the apartment building, it depends. The apartment I live has balconies for every family, but when we look downstairs, there is courtyard with rubbish and recycle bins. One of our colleagues has a better view in his apartment: there is a garden in the courtyard.
The second detail is about the relief on window frames and door frames. There are simple type and complicated type. Simple ones are general a variety of flowers, leaves, cloud etc., with curvy lines, like the following two photographs.
⬇️ Simple relief on door
⬇️ Another example of simple flowers relief
Some relief are more complex, with heads of people or animals.
⬇️ Left: flowers relief. Right: Lion heads plus flowers
The relief in the below image are particularly representative. A female head-shape relief above the door. In the lower part, there are vine-like plants along the sides of the door. Look closely on the plants relief, there are a variety of fruits, most notably grapes. Not surprisingly, since there are lots of grapes and wine here. Other fruits might include lemon, and apricot which is also a popular fruit nearby. It is very likely that when people design these reliefs, they used the most common local plants as models.
⬇️ A female head and fruit clusters relief
Occasionally we see some special style, as shown as below, a scary head. The host of this building might have a different taste.
⬇️ scary head relief
I like looking into these details on architecture, which often tell a lot of stories. The old apartment buildings in Vienna must hide more stories, waiting for us to explore.
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