Goldman & Salatsch Building (Looshaus)

Loos admired Karl Friedrich Schinkel as the last architect he considered able to use the architectural orders without rhetoric, and in the Goldman & Salatsch Building, his own classicism found expression in the marble columns of the entrance canopy and the entablature raised above the mezzanine.

The interior of this building, with its marble veneers and mahogany joinery, also reveals Loos’s preference to use rich materials in place of applied ornamentation.

After its completion, the house caused a shock in the city which was still characterized by its historical taste. It was called by the Viennese “a house without eyebrows” since the window-roofing, which was usual at that time, was completely missing. It was said that Emperor Franz Joseph had not only avoided passing next to Looshaus for the rest of his life by using the exit at the Michaelerplatz but also had to leave the windows of the Hofburg nailed so that he did not have to see the “hideous” house anymore.

In 1987 the Raiffeisen Bank bought the building and renovated it.