Art Nouveau architecture in Riga

Art Nouveau architecture in Riga makes up roughly one third of all buildings in the centre of Riga, making the Latvian capital the city with the highest concentration of Art Nouveau architecture anywhere in the world. Built during a period of rapid economic growth, most of the Art Nouveau buildings of Riga date from between 1904 and 1914. The style is most commonly represented in multi-storey apartment buildings.

At the end of the 19th century, the old Hanseatic town and seaport of Riga was an important city in the Russian Empire. It was a period of rapid economic, industrial and demographic development. Between 1897 and 1913, the city grew by 88% to a population of 530,000 in 1914. By that time, it was the fifth largest city in the Russian Empire and the third largest city in the Baltic region. This was the highest growth rate of the city so far experienced.

Already in the middle of the 19th century, the city had begun to expand beyond its medieval core, which was surrounded by fortifications. These were torn down, beginning in 1856, and replaced with a belt of boulevards and gardens surrounding the old town of Riga. The new part of the city was developed along a grid pattern and following strict building regulations (stating, for example, that no house could be taller than six storeys or 21.3 metres (70 ft)), thus creating a large degree of urban coherence. Between 1910 and 1913, between 300 and 500 new buildings were built each year in Riga, most of them in Art Nouveau style and most of them outside the old town. Still, a number of Art Nouveau buildings were erected in the old town of Riga, as well as several single-family homes in the suburb of Mežaparks. Indeed, the very first Art Nouveau building to be erected in Riga (to designs by architects Alfred Aschenkampff and Max Schwerinsky) lies on Audēju iela 7 (Audeju street) in the medieval part of the city. It is however the part of the city centre which lies outside the ring of boulevards which is where the vast majority of Art Nouveau architecture in Riga can be found.

The owners, builders and architects of these houses came from a variety of different ethnic groups; among these the first ethnic Latvians to reach such levels in society. Apart from Latvian architects (among the most well represented are Eižens Laube, Konstantīns Pēkšēns and Jānis Alksnis) there were also Jewish (Mikhail Eisenstein, Paul Mandelstamm) and Baltic German (among them Bernhard Bielenstein, Rudolph Dohnberg and Artur Moedlinger) architects working during this period in Riga. During this time of a developing Latvian national identity, a relatively small number of the architects were ethnic Latvians (with Latvian as their first language), but they designed nearly 40% of all new buildings in Riga in the early 20th century. An increasing number of the house owners were also Latvian, rather than German- or Russian-speaking. Regardless of their ethnicity, most of the practitioners creating the Art Nouveau architecture of Riga were locals, although stylistically influenced by foreign architecture – mainly from Germany, Austria and Finland. Significant for this development was the opening of the faculty of architecture at the Riga Polytechnic Institute (today Riga Technical University) in 1869, which helped educate a generation of local architects.

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