Postsparkasse: Otto Wagner's Postal Savings Bank
Why is it significant?
Stand on Georg-Coch-Platz and face a facade clad in thin pale marble slabs, studded with hundreds of round metal bolt heads, like a giant strongbox. High on the roof, aluminium angels hold out wreaths, and over the doors a light canopy of glass and metal floats.
Key Facts
| Place | Postsparkasse: Otto Wagner's Postal Savings Bank |
|---|---|
| Address | Georg-Coch-Platz 2, 1010 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.21000, 16.38060 |
| Part of Walk | Vienna's Ringstrasse: The Grand Boulevard That Replaced the City Walls |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand on Georg-Coch-Platz and face a facade clad in thin pale marble slabs, studded with hundreds of round metal bolt heads, like a giant strongbox. High on the roof, aluminium angels hold out wreaths, and over the doors a light canopy of glass and metal floats. After an hour of Greek temples and Gothic towers, it feels like a door into the twentieth century... and it was.
This is the Postal Savings Bank, built by Otto Wagner between 1904 and 1906, with a second wing finished in 1912. Wagner had designed historicist buildings himself as a young man. But in 1896 he published a book called Modern Architecture, arguing that a building should show what it is made of and what it is for, instead of wearing the costume of another century.
So, the bolts. Wagner fixed the marble slabs to the wall with bolts capped in aluminium, then a new and expensive material, and historians still argue about how much weight they really carry, since the slabs are also set in mortar. But the statement was the point. Inside, the main banking hall has a glass ceiling, a floor of glass blocks that lets daylight down to the basement, and freestanding aluminium heating vents that look like sculpture.
The bank itself was a modern idea. Founded in 1883 under Georg Coch, it let ordinary people save small sums through the post office and moved money by cheque and transfer instead of cash. Wagner's hall was an office for the masses: light, clean and clear. Across the street, the former War Ministry, finished in 1913 by Ludwig Baumann, answers with columns, a huge double-headed eagle and the statue of Field Marshal Radetzky. Two answers to the same question, facing each other.
That is where the Ringstrasse really ends, not on the map but in ideas. It began with an emperor's decree in 1857 and became a museum of every style in history, and here, a few steps off the boulevard, Wagner showed the way out. The walk ends here; the trams on the Stubenring can carry you round the whole Ring once more.