Apartment house at Seminarstrasse 28

About the building

At Seminarstrasse 28 stands a house whose parts seem freely grouped and yet form a coherent whole. It was built in 1903 as an apartment house, with flats on several floors. The plans are by Henry Berthold von Fischer; according to the City of Bern building inventory, the client was the Bern merchant G. F. Vatter. The house is rated worthy of protection and belongs to the Kirchenfeld building group.

Von Fischer (1861–1949) had studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and worked in Bern from 1893. According to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland he revived the Bernese country-house style of the 18th century; his early works include the villas “Le Souvenir” and “Le Pavillon” on nearby Thunplatz. On Seminarstrasse, too, he used late baroque forms.

The building is held together by its mansard roof, by banded pilaster strips at every corner and by a cornice running round the whole house. Downstairs the windows are rectangular; upstairs they carry shallow arched pediments. The main accent on the stepped street side is a free-standing veranda tower. On the ground floor it opens with two flat arches over a column, above that with three windows behind a balustrade. At the top an open barrel vault with a curved roof and a mansard cap completes it.

Beneath this vault is a balcony with Art Nouveau railings. Further towers punctuate the roof: a four-sided spire over the central projection on the south side and a polygonal cap over the staircase on the opposite side. The ensemble includes a fence with an artfully wrought gate, also in Art Nouveau forms.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Seminarstrasse 28 · HLS: Fischer, Henry Berthold von (Peter Honegger) · Wikidata: Q128797550 · Wikipedia (de): Liste der Kulturgüter in Bern/Kirchenfeld-Schosshalde (Nord) · Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Baugruppe Kirchenfeld