A corner hotel of 1913 at the head of the Nikolaistraße, facing Leipzig’s main railway station across the inner ring. The Saxon heritage register protects it as a characteristic building between late historicism and the Reform style. It opened on 18 October 1913, the hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig, and after years of decline was restored in the 1990s as the Seaside Park Hotel.
At a glance
The Park Hotel stands on the corner of Richard-Wagner-Straße and Nikolaistraße, on the northern side of Leipzig’s old town, where the inner ring road passes in front of the Hauptbahnhof. The State Office for Monument Preservation of Saxony lists it as a hotel of 1913 with a strongly articulated rendered front, significant for the history of building and of the city’s development, and for the way it shapes the square opposite the station. It was built in the years when Leipzig was completing its great new station and preparing the centenary of the Battle of the Nations, and it opened on the day of that centenary.
Key facts
- Where: Richard-Wagner-Straße 7, corner of Nikolaistraße 42, 04109 Leipzig
- Built: 1913; opened on 18 October 1913, according to the hotel’s chronicle
- Architect: not known to us
- Protection: cultural monument of Saxony, ID 09298280 (“hotel in a closed row of buildings, on a corner”)
- Building: three wings around a small courtyard, five storeys and a two-storey attic under a mansard, rendered front with pilasters, bay windows and a large curved gable
- Restoration: bought in 1993 by the hotelier Theo Gerlach; fully renovated from 1993 to March 1995 and reopened as the Seaside Park Hotel; refurbished again in early 2017
- Current use: Seaside Park Hotel, part of the Seaside Collection
- Coordinates: 51.342824, 12.378515 · open in Google Maps
History
In the years before the First World War Leipzig was rebuilding its northern edge around a new central station, completed in 1915. According to the hotel’s own chronicle, three older houses were pulled down to make room for the new building. The Park Hotel opened on 18 October 1913, the hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig of 1813, the same day on which the Monument to the Battle of the Nations was inaugurated on the south-eastern edge of the city. The hotel’s chronicle records the opening in a deliberately old-fashioned German, as the founding of “a new castle, a castle of peace and hospitality” for the guests who came to the city “for the fairs and at other times”.
For the following decades our sources are thin. The hotel states that the building was heavily damaged in the Second World War and neglected in the years of the German Democratic Republic. It was still in use as the Parkhotel in the 1980s: a photograph of 1986 on Wikimedia Commons is described by its author as taken from the hotel, looking across to the station. In 1993, four years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the building was bought by the hotelier Theo Gerlach, founder of the Seaside group, which had begun with a hotel in Gran Canaria in 1974. It was renovated from 1993 to March 1995, with care, the hotel says, for its Art Nouveau character, and reopened on 20 March 1995 as the Seaside Park Hotel. The interiors were designed in the Art Deco manner by the Wiesbaden interior architect Henrik Frischgesell. The hotel was refurbished again between January and March 2017 and reopened on 22 March of that year.
What you see
The photograph shows the corner from the side of the station. The building has a pale rendered front divided into bays by flat pilasters that rise through the upper storeys, with small carved ornaments set on them at mid-height. On the Richard-Wagner-Straße side the front ends in a tall curved gable with its own round-headed windows; along the Nikolaistraße side runs a steep mansard roof of red tiles, lit by a row of dormers with round tops. A second, smaller curved gable closes the far end of the roof.
On the ground floor, the corner entrance under a glass canopy is flanked by two oval windows, and the lettering “Park Hotel” runs above it; the Nikolaistraße front is opened by large shop and restaurant windows. The mix of a historic outline (gables, mansard, pilasters) with flat, simplified ornament is what the heritage register means when it places the building between late historicism and the Reform style of the years around 1910.
Practical information
- The building is a hotel, the Seaside Park Hotel, with a restaurant and bistro on the ground floor; the interiors are for guests and diners.
- The fronts can be seen at any time from the Richard-Wagner-Straße and the Nikolaistraße; the best view of the gable is from the station forecourt.
- The interiors date from the renovations of 1993–1995 and 2017; the historic substance is the exterior.
Getting there
The hotel stands directly opposite Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, across the inner ring road, a couple of minutes on foot from the station’s main entrance. Trams stop in front of the station. The Nikolaistraße leads south from the hotel into the old town, towards the Nikolaikirche.
Nearby
- Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, the station completed in 1915 by Lossow & Kühne, across the ring road, about 350 metres to the north-east.
- The Nikolaikirche, the church of St Nicholas, about 250 metres to the south along the Nikolaistraße.
- Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum, one of the oldest coffee houses in Germany, about 450 metres to the south-west.
- Along the Nikolaistraße, other protected commercial buildings of the same years, among them the Selters Haus of 1907–1908 at numbers 47–51.
Do you know more?
On this page we have published what the Saxon heritage register and the hotel’s own records tell us. We could not find the name of the architect who designed the Park Hotel in 1913, the name of its first owner, or a reliable account of what happened to the building between 1914 and 1993: the war damage, the years of the German Democratic Republic, who ran it then. If you know something — a name, a date, an old photograph or postcard, a guest book, a document, a book that mentions it — write to Sofia, who looks after these pages.
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Please start your message with the title of this page, so it reaches the right file. Every contribution is checked against independent sources before it goes on the page, and we always say where a piece of information came from.
Sources
- State Office for Monument Preservation of Saxony, list of cultural monuments, as published in Liste der Kulturdenkmale in Leipzig-Zentrum, N–Z (Wikipedia, de): ID 09298280, hotel of 1913 at Richard-Wagner-Straße 7 / Nikolaistraße 42, and its description.
- Mirko Seidel, “Parkhotel Leipzig (Hotel Seaside, Stadt Leipzig)”, architektur-blicklicht.de, 15 April 2023: date, style, three wings around a courtyard, five storeys and attic, pilasters, bay windows, curved gable and mansard.
- Leipzig Tourismus und Marketing GmbH, press release of 28 April 2017: the building of 1913, the renovation from 1993 to March 1995 after the takeover by the Seaside group, and the refurbishment of 2017.
- Seaside Park Hotel Leipzig, press information (2011): the opening of 18 October 1913 and the chronicle, the three houses demolished, the war and GDR years, the purchase by Theo Gerlach in 1993, the reopening of 20 March 1995, the interiors by Henrik Frischgesell. The hotel’s own account.
- Seaside Collection, “Park Hotel” and the group’s history page: the founder Theo Gerlach and the first hotel of 1974.
- Wikimedia Commons, Leipzig Hbf. DDR 06-1986: view of the station “from the then Parkhotel Leipzig”, 1986.
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