Art Nouveau architecture in Riga makes up roughly one third of all buildings in the centre of Riga, making the Latvian capital the city with the highest concentration of Art Nouveau architecture anywhere in the world. Built during a period of rapid economic growth, most of the Art Nouveau buildings of Riga date from between 1904 and 1914. The style is most commonly represented in multi-storey apartment buildings.
According to UNESCO, the world’s largest Art Nouveau building is in Riga. Among the European cities, Riga is the city where, perhaps, most of them have about eight hundred Art Nouveau buildings, most of them in the city center.
At the end of the 19th century, at the beginning of the 20th century, Riga was a rich trading town and developed rapidly. In the first decade of the 20th century, an average of four hundred new buildings were built annually, including a significant number of Art Nouveau buildings. This period of almost a quarter century architecture of Riga architecture is divided into four phases: early eclectic style, vertical style, national romantic period and neoclassical art nouveau era. The decorative motifs of secession appeared in Riga at the turn of the century, mainly with Austrian and German patterns, with astrological motifs, animal motifs and allegorical motifs.
Art Nouveau has also had a great impact on the art of Janis Rozentals, Johans Valters, Rudolfs Perle and Peteris Krastins. The most significant artist of the period is Jūlijs Madernieks.
The Riga Jugendstil Center was set up in 2006 by the Riga Regional Council, which is responsible for preserving and promoting Art Nouveau art, fine arts, crafts and crafts, developing tourism and nurturing national values.
Background
At the end of the 19th century, the old Hanseatic town and seaport of Riga was an important city in the Russian Empire. It was a period of rapid economic, industrial and demographic development. Between 1897 and 1913, the city grew by 88% to a population of 530,000 in 1914. By that time, it was the fifth largest city in the Russian Empire and the third largest city in the Baltic region. This was the highest growth rate of the city so far experienced.
Already in the middle of the 19th century, the city had begun to expand beyond its medieval core, which was surrounded by fortifications. These were torn down, beginning in 1856, and replaced with a belt of boulevards and gardens surrounding the old town of Riga. The new part of the city was developed along a grid pattern and following strict building regulations (stating, for example, that no house could be taller than six storeys or 21.3 metres (70 ft)), thus creating a large degree of urban coherence. Between 1910 and 1913, between 300 and 500 new buildings were built each year in Riga, most of them in Art Nouveau style and most of them outside the old town. Still, a number of Art Nouveau buildings were erected in the old town of Riga, as well as several single-family homes in the suburb of Mežaparks. Indeed, the very first Art Nouveau building to be erected in Riga (to designs by architects Alfred Aschenkampff and Max Scherwinsky) lies on Audēju iela 7 (Audeju street) in the medieval part of the city. It is however the part of the city centre which lies outside the ring of boulevards which is where the vast majority of Art Nouveau architecture in Riga can be found.
The owners, builders and architects of these houses came from a variety of different ethnic groups; among these the first ethnic Latvians to reach such levels in society. Apart from Latvian architects (among the most well represented are Eižens Laube, Konstantīns Pēkšēns and Jānis Alksnis) there were also Jewish (Mikhail Eisenstein, Paul Mandelstamm) and Baltic German (among them Bernhard Bielenstein, Rudolph Dohnberg and Artur Moedlinger) architects working during this period in Riga. During this time of a developing Latvian national identity, a relatively small number of the architects were ethnic Latvians (with Latvian as their first language), but they designed nearly 40% of all new buildings in Riga in the early 20th century. An increasing number of the house owners were also Latvian, rather than German- or Russian-speaking. Regardless of their ethnicity, most of the practitioners creating the Art Nouveau architecture of Riga were locals, although stylistically influenced by foreign architecture – mainly from Germany, Austria and Finland. Significant for this development was the opening of the faculty of architecture at the Riga Polytechnic Institute (today Riga Technical University) in 1869, which helped educate a generation of local architects.
The decorative details of the buildings, in the form of sculptures, stained glass, majolica stoves and so on were partly imported and partly made locally by companies in Riga. In this regard, decorative arts companies from Riga also worked on a regional market and products from Riga workshops were exported (within the Russian Empire) to e.g. Tallinn and Saint Petersburg.
Today, Art Nouveau architecture makes out roughly one third of all buildings in the centre of Riga, making it the city with the highest concentration of Art Nouveau architecture anywhere in the world. The style is most commonly represented in multi-storey apartment buildings.
Alberta iela
The main street along which the Latvian Art Nouveau buildings unfold is “Alberta iela” (in German Albertstraße), located in the middle of a quiet and elegant residential area created from nothing at the beginning of the twentieth century and which today hosts many embassies.
Among the most prominent buildings, the palace of Alberta iela 2a is an effective fusion of neoclassicism, Art Nouveau and references to Ancient Egypt. Remarkable are the perforated facade at the top and the two large sphinxes that watch in front of the entrance. The palace was built in 1906 on a design by Eisenstein.
Elizabetes iela
“Elizabetes iela” (in German Elisabethstraße) instead borders a large park and is the street where is located, at number 10b, the most famous Art Nouveau palace in Riga. Built in 1903 on the design of the inevitable Ejzenštejn, regroups all the features of the particular Eclectic Righese Jugendstil, starting from the combination of blue-white colors, mythological figures (masks with Medusa’s heads) and the profusion of eagles, garlands and helmets.
Development
Art Nouveau developed from but also as a reaction against Eclecticism and different Revivalist styles. Like Art Nouveau elsewhere, its development was driven by a desire to create an individualistic style less dependent on obvious historical references, a wish to express local traits and traditions and a move towards a rational architecture based on an “honest” use of materials and ornamentation which doesn’t deny the structural layout of the building.
Stylistically, the Art Nouveau architecture of Riga is often divided into four main categories: Eclectic or Decorative; Perpendicular or Vertical; National Romantic and lastly Neo-Classical. These categorisations are not always mutually exclusive; many buildings display influences from several different styles.
Periods of the Rhapsodic Secession
Architectural historians have divided this period of almost a quarter century into Riga’s architecture into four phases. This has a major role in the very rapid cultural and political changes of the era. By 1860, the national consciousness of the Latvians became ever stronger. After the liberation of serfs, they came from the countryside and became increasingly important in commerce and industry in addition to German nationalism. As a counterpoint to this, in the Baltic III. Sándor Czar began to be a strong rationalization. During the Revolution of 1905, the German landowners’ rural estates were attacked and burnt. They tortured and murdered representatives of the German-speaking aristocracy.
Eclectic Art Nouveau
The earliest Art Nouveau buildings in Riga were of this kind. Beginning as a purely decorative change from Eclecticism, buildings of this type simply adopted new forms of Art Nouveau decoration in lieu of earlier styles, but did little or nothing to change earlier concepts of the structure of buildings as such. Eclectic Art Nouveau still displays the rhythmic facades and opulent decoration of earlier styles. In this early form of Art Nouveau, foreign influence was quite strong, especially from Germany, as was influences from contemporary Symbolism. The arguably most famous Art Nouveau houses in Riga, a row of houses along Alberta iela (Albert Street), many to the design of Mikhail Eisenstein, are of this style. Though a major tourist attraction, they are not representative of the vast majority of Art Nouveau buildings in Riga.
Alberta ielā 13
Alberta ielā 4
Strelnieku ielā 4a
Perpendicular Art Nouveau
Eclecticism eventually gave way to a more rationalist style of Art Nouveau in Riga, characterised by marked vertical compositions of the facades, and geometrical ornaments integrated into the overall architectural composition. The structure of the buildings also shifted into an essentially modern quality where the exterior reflects the layout of the interior, rather than being a facade without any rational connection with the structural layout of the building as was the case earlier. Several department stores where built in this style, and it is sometimes also referred to as Department Store Style or Warenhausstil in German.
Brīvības ielā 37, Eižens Laube 1909
Ģertrūdes ielā 34, Jānis Alksnis 1911
Ģertrūdes ielā 23, Eižens Laube 1909
National Romantic Art Nouveau
The Latvian National Awakening which began in the 19th century initiated a process of conscious formulation of a specific Latvian identity, both politically and culturally. This, together with political developments (especially the Revolution of 1905) led to a stronger desire to express a specifically Latvian identity also through art and architecture during the early 20th century. The National Romantic style is sometimes considered an architectural style in its own right, but in Latvian context often described as a variant of Art Nouveau. It was relatively short-lived and flourished between 1905 and 1911. A certain amount of influence came from Finnish architecture, but as the idea was to develop a specific Latvian form of architecture, many of its aspects are particular for Latvian architecture. It is a style characterised by restrained decoration inspired by local folk art, monumental volumes and the use of natural building materials.
Vīlandes ielā 10, Konstantīns Pēkšēns 1908
Patrimps (wd) allegorical fresco depicting the mythological hero at the headquarters of the Riga Society. (1910)
Blaumaņa ielā 31, Aleksandrs Vanags 1911
Neo-Classical Art Nouveau
The last stage of the development of Art Nouveau architecture in Riga is also the style least well represented, so-called Neo-Classical Art Nouveau. Drawing on the language of Classical architecture which had been a prolific style in the Russian Empire during the 19th century (but not common in Riga), this rather monumental variant of Art Nouveau was used in several new bank buildings.
Dómtér, Paul Mandelstamm 1913
Building plastics
The decorative motifs of secession appeared in Riga at the turn of the century. The very rich plastic decoration of the buildings served to express the wealth, talent and consciousness of emerging local citizenship.
Their spread and popularity was helped by the foreign architects and craftsmen who came to Riga and the merchant houses that brought European fashion and decorative products to Riga. The best known of Jaksch & Co was. The Jaksch & Co in 1901, built the facade of the store Villeroy & Boch company mosaic decorated. (The building was destroyed in the Second World War.)
The catalogs and editions of foreign exhibitions also played a major role in the spread of motifs of Austrian, German and French Art Nouveau art. Many art magazines have dealt with European art nouveau. The most beloved were the lithographs of Alexander Grosset’s studio. Apart from this, the Grosset House is one of the oldest Art Nouveau buildings in Riga.
In the first period, the decorations of the buildings, as in Budapest, followed the European, mostly Austrian and German patterns from the catalogs and art journals. Characteristic are stylized astrological motifs (the Sun, the Moon, etc.), animal motifs (fairy-tale animals, lions, dragons), allegorical motifs (winged genius, Egyptian Phytoxins, pharaonic heads). With the spread of the vertical style, geometric patterns will become more common. Later in national romanticism, decorative patterns taken from Latvian folk art, mainly from the form of Latvian textiles, appear.
The Rigai Jugendstil Center
Riga has rich traditions, with over 800 Art Nouveau buildings, one of Europe’s most famous secessionist metropolis. That is why the Riga Jugendstil Center was established in 2006 at the initiative of Riga City Council. The Riga Jugendstil Center is responsible for preserving and promoting Art Nouveau architecture, fine art, applied arts and crafts, developing tourism and cultivating national values.
In order to fulfill the tasks assigned to it, the center will issue information material promoting Riga’s secession, produce Art Nouveau souvenirs and gift shops, organize lectures, seminars, conferences and sightseeing tours.
As part of the Riga Jugendstil Center, Riga’s youngest museum was founded in 2009, the Riga Jugendstil Museum. The museum is located in the 12th-century Art Nouveau building in Alberta iela. The building was designed by Konstantin Pēkšēns in 1903. The interior of the museum is decorated with interior décor in 1903 and authentic contemporary furnishings.
Source from Wikipedia