Our house will celebrate its 156th birthday this year and therefore I decided to write about its history and beginnings.
When I first saw it, it reminded me instantly of an English townhouse. It was a bit lackluster at the time, but I could already imagine a vibrant pastel blue like the beautiful pastels in Notting Hill in London.
Beyond the facade, it had two working fire places, Art Nouveau period details and an abundance of potential. I simply could not resist making it the next design and renovation project.
The house dates back to 1870, a time when Mondorf-les-Bains was reinventing itself with unabashed enthusiasm. The thermal springs had been discovered just a decade earlier, transforming this sleepy border village into Luxembourg’s first spa town.
While John Grün, later to become the strongest man in the world, was still being pushed in a pram down the street, Mondorf was busy flexing its own muscles.
Europe’s nobility arrived in carriages, drawn not just by the promise of healing waters, but by the allure of being seen. Hotels sprouted like well-dressed mushrooms. A casino opened. Suddenly, Mondorf was a dot on the map that people pointed to with gloved fingers.
In this atmosphere of ambitious transformation, our house was born.
While Mondorf evolved around it, the thermal park expanded, wars came and went, and the casino transformed from gambling den to Nazi headquarters and back again.
According to records from Luxembourg's monument protection office, the house was built by a Privatier, a man of independent means who never actually lived in it. Instead, he rented it to a woman listed officially as a cook. But no one builds a house like this just for their cook. Not today and not in 1870. The house keeps its secrets, but the arrangement hints at stories more complex than the official records suggest.
Fast-forward nearly 150 years: We restored it. While many other houses from that era in Mondorf were being demolished, this one was lovingly preserved.
In a world of housing developments named after the trees they replaced, this is a house that remembers when those trees were saplings.
written by Helen M. Krauss