The Chilean House – a Flagship built of Stone.
Manufactum’s Hamburg branch is in a building that is one of the highlights of the town – the Chilean House in Hamburg’s business office district. It was built according to plans drawn up by Fritz Höger between 1922 and 1924 – a time when the German economy, due to war and inflation, lay in ruins – and was seen by both architect and owner, Henry Barens Sloman, as a symbol in bricks and mortar of Hamburg’s renewal. Sloman, a businessman, had made his fortune in Chile in the saltpetre trade.

The Chilean House was in its time one of the biggest office buildings in the whole of Germany. 48 million bricks were used to construct 30,000 sq. metres of office space. It became famous in architectural circles for its inclusion of maritime motifs – for example the east side, one of the most photographed corners in Hamburg. This juts out like a ship’s bow; the various floors are designed like decks; there’s even a ship’s figure-head shaped like an Andean condor.

The Chilean House is seen today as a prime example of the clinker brick architecture of the region and as one of the greatest works of North German Expressionism. Its importance is shown by the fact that Germany is to propose it to UNESCO shortly for inclusion in the world’s cultural and natural heritage list. The people of Hamburg themselves have always taken a rather cooler view of the building, nicknaming it simply ‘The Iron’ – but (who knows?) perhaps they are just a little bit proud that their town can boast a piece of metropolitan architecture like this: not quite as high, but at any rate as interesting as Daniel H. Burnham’s ‘Flat Iron Building’ in New York.