Palais Strousberg

The Palais Strousberg was a large city mansion built in Berlin, Germany for the railway magnate Bethel Henry Strousberg. It was designed by the architect August Orth and built between 1867–68 at No.70 Wilhelmstraße. The grandiose splendour of its accommodation and novel integration of the latest building technologies into the fabric of the building, ensured that Berliners would still find the Palais impressive decades after its construction, becoming the model of refined luxury in Berlin architecture.

After the Strousberg family's bankruptcy in 1875, the building was rented to the embassy of Great Britain and Ireland who eventually purchased the property in 1884. Following World War II Wilhelmstraße was partitioned into the East German sector of Berlin in 1948. The Palais, which had been severely damaged during the war, was demolished in the 1950s.

Before the purchase of No. 70 Wilhelmstrasse, Strousberg had bought No. 80 Wilhelmstrasse which he then sold on to the Prussian treasury at a profit. He bought No. 70 Wilhelmstrasse for 122,500 Taler in 1867. Designed by August Orth the palace was built for 900,000 Goldmarks, re-using materials from an older building which had served as the residence of the Prussian statesman Friedrich Carl von Savigny. Orth, at the time, was the personal architect for the Strousberg family and had provided them with designs for several private building projects such as the renovations to Castle Zbirow near Pilsen which was the family's country seat. Orth also designed buildings for some of the business enterprises controlled by Strousberg, amongst which were the Berliner Viehmarkt (Berlin Cattle Market) at Brunnenstraße, Berlin, for the Cattle Market Company (Viehmarkt Kommanditgesellschaft) and the Görlitzer Bahnhof railway terminus and such buildings as the Kaiserbahnhof Halbe for the Berlin-Görlitzer Railway. The Palais is one of the few buildings where Orth designed a facade in a neoclassical style rather than his usual use of neo-renaissance for secular buildings and Neo-gothic for ecclesiastical buildings. Some details of the exterior such as the Baroque balustrade and the rich decoration of the interior, were borrowed from many other architectural styles, single the palace out as an example of eclectic historicism.

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