The first savings bank of the Austrian monarchy built its headquarters here in the 1830s and stayed for almost two centuries. The pediment still carries its emblem, a bee in a laurel wreath. Since 2022 the building has been a hotel.
At a glance
The building fills a block between the Graben, Petersplatz and Tuchlauben, in the busiest part of Vienna’s old centre. It was designed by the architect Alois Pichl and built between 1835 and 1838 (1839 in the City of Vienna’s history wiki) for the Erste Österreichische Spar-Casse, a savings bank founded in 1819 to give people of small means a safe place for their money. Austria’s Federal Monuments Office describes it as a palace-like late-classicist building. The bank left in 2015 for a new campus near the Belvedere, and the complex reopened in August 2022 as Rosewood Vienna.
Key facts
- Where: Graben 21, 1010 Vienna (Innere Stadt), Austria; the hotel entrance is at Petersplatz 7
- Protection: listed monument of the Bundesdenkmalamt (object ID 50531), “Erste Österreichische Sparkasse, Hauptgebäude”
- Architect: Alois Pichl
- Built: 1835–1838 (Bundesdenkmalamt); 1835–1839 (Wien Geschichte Wiki)
- Original function: headquarters of the Erste Österreichische Spar-Casse, founded 4 October 1819
- Bank headquarters on the Graben: until 2015
- Current use: hotel (Rosewood Vienna, opened 1 August 2022)
- Coordinates: 48.209438, 16.368946 · open in Google Maps
History
The Erste Österreichische Spar-Casse opened on 4 October 1819, the emperor’s name day, in the parish house of St Leopold’s in the Leopoldstadt. It was the first savings bank in the Austrian monarchy. Its founders, among them the Leopoldstadt parish priest Johann Baptist Weber and the banker Bernhard von Eskeles, meant it as self-help for the poor after the Napoleonic wars, and the first savings books were handed to the emperor to give to poor children. The idea spread quickly: between 1822 and 1825 savings banks on its model were founded in Ljubljana, Milan, Venice, Prague, Innsbruck, Bregenz and Graz.
In 1821 the bank moved into the House of the Teutonic Order on Singerstraße. Business grew, and between 1824 and 1827 the directors bought three houses on the Graben, had them demolished and commissioned Alois Pichl to build a headquarters on the site. The result, finished at the end of the 1830s, was the bank’s home at Graben 21 until 2015, when the Erste Group and Erste Bank moved to the Erste Campus at Am Belvedere 1, on the site of the old South Station.
The hotel occupies more than one building of the former bank complex; Rosewood’s opening announcement speaks of several historic buildings. Its entrance address, Petersplatz 7, is also the identifying address of the listed house at Tuchlauben 4, a building with a late-medieval core and a monumental palace front of the second quarter of the eighteenth century, which from 1823 to 1877 housed Vienna’s police headquarters. After the bank moved out, the complex was converted by the Viennese practices A2K and BEHF and opened as a hotel on 1 August 2022.
What you see
The photograph shows the long white front on the Graben, seen straight on from the pedestrian street. A broad, shallow triangular pediment crowns the central section. In its field sits a gilded bee inside a round laurel wreath, the savings bank’s emblem, with gilded branches spreading to either side. Across the facade, between the upper floors, runs the lettering ERSTE ÖSTERREICHISCHE SPAR-CASSE in capitals.
The windows are set in even rows, as the heritage listing puts it, “additively”: one after another without grouping, each on the upper floors framed and capped, some with small triangular pediments. Pilasters mark the corners of the upper storeys. The ground floor in the photograph belongs to the bank years, with awnings, shop signs and the bank’s own logo over the central entrance; the listing records an arcade on the ground floor and a rusticated mezzanine closed by a string course. To the right the building meets a taller, more ornate neighbour, which makes Pichl’s restraint easy to see.
Practical information
- The building is a hotel; the Graben front is visible at any time from the pedestrian street.
- The best view of the pediment is from the middle of the Graben, a little way back from the facade.
- The Petersplatz side, with the hotel entrance, is a short walk around the block.
- Ten minutes covers the exterior; the Graben is busiest in the afternoon.
Getting there
The nearest underground station is Stephansplatz (lines U1 and U3); from there the Graben leads west, and the building is on its north side, near the Petersplatz end. Herrengasse station (line U3) is also within a few minutes’ walk.
Nearby
- St Peter’s Church (Peterskirche), directly behind the building on Petersplatz.
- Hotel Wandl, the 1843 corner house on Petersplatz, about 100 metres away.
- The Engel-Apotheke on Bognergasse, with its Art Nouveau mosaic angels, just to the west.
- The Artaria-Haus on Kohlmarkt, Max Fabiani’s shop-and-office building, a short walk south-west.
Sources
- Bundesdenkmalamt, list of protected monuments in Vienna, Innere Stadt (as published in the Denkmalliste pages for E–He and So–Z): object 50531, Graben 21, built 1835–1838 by Alois Pichl, with the description of the facade and the bee emblem; object 50533, Tuchlauben 4 (identifying address Petersplatz 7), police headquarters 1823–1877.
- Wien Geschichte Wiki, “Erste Bank der oesterreichischen Sparkassen AG”, City of Vienna: the 1819 foundation, the founders, the purchase of the Graben houses 1824–1827, Pichl’s building 1835–1839, the move to Am Belvedere in 2015.
- Rosewood Hotels, press release “Rosewood Vienna Opens Today”, 1 August 2022: the former Erste Group headquarters, “designed in 1835 by Austrian architect Alois Pichl”, the conversion by A2K and BEHF.
- OpenStreetMap / Nominatim: position of Graben 21 and of the hotel at Petersplatz 7.
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