
Kaltenbachstraße 30
This rather unremarkable villa - or more precisely corner building - has finally been nicely renovated, after having been neglected for many years. Its primary feature is its red house front.
The house aligned to the course of the road is situated on the prominent junction Ahornstrasse/ Mastaliergasse/ Lindaustrasse. Surrounded by former villas like the Westend Bristol (on the other side of the street) and the Strauss Villa (no longer extant, unfortunately), the house was situated at a significant location. Around the corner at Mastaliergasse 5 is the “Brahms Villa”, where the composer Brahms stayed.
For a time, the villa was the summer residence of Olga Hauser, who received the house as a gift in 1920 from her father, a former imperial and royal public servant from Hungary.
In 1938/39, like many other villa owners at the time, she was expropriated due to her Jewish origin, but after the end of the war she fought for her property and finally got it back in 1950. By then, she was living in Australia, so she then sold the house.
On the ground floor, there was a grocery store for many years and until the end of the ‘70s there was a butcher’s shop.
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