architecture

I know, in the USA a lot of appartment comunities newly built still follow a somewhat historistic and rustic theme. However they are modern from the floorplans, and window shutters are usually twofold. Electric driven rolling ones well hidden in the wall, non-movable decorative panes to the sides. Here most appartment houses that started life in a time before rolling shutters but not eespecially protected are renovated not only to look more modern but also for bare bones efficiency and cheapness. Especially Heimatstil -- that German arts-and-crafts like stuff popular in new worker villages from scratch. For some cause, window panes are wildly expensive today, and most tenants of a simple flat would not care for opening the glas window and reach out to close or open shutters anyway, and the very look of Heimatstil appartment houses as such is, albeit now quite rare and historic, not very valued I fear, the cliches going with this are as well uncomfortable to most germans I think. It kindles thoughts of neighborhoods with no privacy, repressive people watching and calling each other out, a Blockwart.....

On this block the Reichsbahn built flats for their employees exclusively. An other house of this type but renovated a bit more prosaic and modern has an inscription about having been finished 1919. When the Endrass family lived there in the mid-30s, it sure must have been state of the art.

However, I am afraid people living there today got a few amends made for facilities, but it will be likely a bit awkward. See, the whole concept is from times with no need of parking lots for all partys, no space for individual washers and dryers, no full bathrooms for each unit with showers and warm water comming from the tap, no cables for many electric plugs, antenna and a phone running perfectly hidden in virgin straight walls from their first day....

To renovate such a house in a way someone with a regular income and a bit of aspiration towards a stylish and comfy interrior and floorplan might shell out a good rent for each flat... one would have to be mad, unless it's some kind of social project providing housing for the needy and the exterrior is restored for some special historic cause. This is actually why I wonder that I could not find propper dark blue city marker, fleshing out the story of the railway employee resistance and also of the building style of the time at the street corner. Usually, when the city got a part of a worker settlement assemble renovated, they plaster their historic markers all over, pages of text and old photos like a newspaper article.