A "hof" in German German (as opposed to Austrian German, to be clear) can refer to a family farm (Wiki) and Google Translate will tell you it means "court." The way the word was used in Vienna, it meant more something like a courtyard. The imposing Palais that line the Ringstraße all have beautiful Hofs at their core: a small interior courtyard open to the light, generally not visible from the street.
The children's school was an old Viennese institutional building that had been modernized: their play-yard was the small Hof on the interior, protected from street view and surrounded on four sides by historic buildings. It was way too small, really, but it was intimate and beautiful for those who could admire its beauty in the absense of masses of children.
7 Bäckerstraße, Haus Stampa (the photo below), has a particularly "well known" Hof and one we shall visit in a bit more detail next, but for now, let's talk about the doors that access Hofs, because, they are of interest to the horse enthusiast.
Do you know why? There are two specific details of the doors that I find fascinating, and that take me back to my days at the old Hamilton Farm facility in Gladstone of what was then the USET. Not because, of course, I was competing, say, at The Festival of Champions, but because for many years I ran different events there for the Eastern States GMO (ESDCTA). If none of that makes any sense, sorry, but if you have ever been to the Hamilton Farms facility in Gladstone, close your eyes and picture the massive green doors that give you access to the Rotunda. They look very similar to the doors pictured above. The doors are of course incredibly large in order to allow horses and carriages to drive through them.
The first of the two details that I find interesting are the massive rounded buttresses at the foot of the columns. Those were in place, Jim Wolf once told me, in order for carriage wheels to safely clear the door without catching. If you have ever driven a horse and cart, the danger of wheels catching on fence posts, random parked cars or other obstacles is a real and present danger. These egress to the stabling area, these massive doors, were built with concrete safety bumpers to prevent the carriages from catching on the door frames.
The second details, which you can see clearly in the photo above, is the small "people door" carved into the larger door. In the winter months, the large doors would be kept tight shut unless needed, but people could enter and exit easily with a smaller, more convenient access point. "People doors" are fairly common on farms, where large sliding doors to barns often have a small door for easier use, and these doors all across Vienna always took me back to farm living.
The inner courtyards can look a million different ways, but they tend to be intmate and cozy. Although for the larger Palais, there would be enough room to drive the carriage in and stabling for the horses.
The access to light from above, and the intimate privacy of having a small peaceful courtyard off the busy byways makes them special and quite important to the Viennese.
And to me.
Next: Haus Stumpa
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