The showpiece

The Reumannhof is the block that ended up on the postcards, laid out around a courtyard of honour that opens toward the Gürtel, with a central section that rises high and wings that step down toward the street, exactly the arrangement you'd find in a Baroque palace.

 

The original design went even further, with a central tower of sixteen floors that fell victim to the budget and was eventually built at half that height.

 

The block carries the name of Jakob Reumann, the first Social Democratic mayor of Vienna, who died shortly before it was finished. The way the city gave its workers' housing such a deliberate shape was a message in two directions: to the residents, that they were getting something that looked as though it mattered, and to the opponents, that this city government would not be dismissed as a passing whim.

 

Foreign socialists came by the busload to see it, and in their accounts this complex is forever described as a city within the city.

 

Right next door, with a plainer facade, stands the block where it all began.