Villa at Steinerstrasse 45

About the building

A small connecting lane runs between Steinerstrasse and Ensingerstrasse. On its edge stands a cube-shaped house of 1904 that clearly stands out from the neo-Baroque villas around it: it is an Art Nouveau villa, and in the judgement of the city's building inventory it is one of Bern's rare examples of Secessionist Art Nouveau.

It was designed by the Bernese architect Gottlieb Rieser; the client was M. Ernst-Catoir from Winterthur. The house is two by three bays wide and has a moderately steep, not quite regular pyramid roof. Towards the lane, a double-curved gable sits in the middle of the facade, and in front of the southern end bay there is a three-sided bay window with a balcony on top. To the south lies a veranda terrace, and in the roof sits a polygonal dormer under a strongly curved cap.

The rendered building is articulated with dressed stone, above all around the windows. Their tops are curiously wavy – the detail by which you recognise the Art Nouveau here most quickly. In 1947 a garage and various alterations were added.

Rieser had already worked with Art Nouveau before. At Thormannstrasse 48–54 he built, as his own client, a row of apartment houses in 1901 in neo-Baroque forms whose details are already influenced by Art Nouveau. The building inventory's quarter history describes how, after 1900, the curving lines of Art Nouveau appeared in Kirchenfeld first in window grilles, stained glass and ornament and later shaped whole facades. Wikidata also assigns the villa to Art Nouveau.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Steinerstrasse 45 · Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Thormannstrasse 48–54 (Rieser 1901) · Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Quartiergeschichte Kirchenfeld-Brunnadern · Wikidata: Q138819592