Haus Theresienstein

Haus Theresienstein is the large commercial building on the city center's visual axis. It was built in 1903 according to plans by city architect Albert Mollweide. The result was a prestigious Art Nouveau villa with a large clock tower.The square surrounding the villa is a popular tourist destination, attracting numerous visitors, especially during the summer months, when the Sunday restaurant opens on the forecourt from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and there are often promenade concerts as well.

A landmark not only of the park, but of the entire city of Hof, is the white-plastered Art Nouveau building with its striking red timber-framed gables and a clock tower dating from 1904. Hof's city architect Albert Mollweide designed it in 1900 to replace the existing commercial building in the park, which had become too small. Today, it remains a popular tourist destination thanks to its sporadically open beer garden and the view over Hof. Overall, however, Haus Theresienstein is a remarkably attractive vacant building. The restaurant and the large hall have been unused since 2015. The Hof Art Association operated the "Galerie im Theresienstein" in the building until 2023. Due to new fire safety regulations, the gallery also had to be abandoned. The city of Hof, which spent millions of euros renovating the facade from 2014 to 2024, is desperately looking for an investor to find a new use for Haus Theresienstein. If that doesn’t work, there will be a new lost place in Hof.

The farm building is the park's architectural masterpiece. From the Art Nouveau period, it offers a place for socializing with a beer garden and concert space. Built in 1904, it replaced the previous building that had become too small. City architect Albert Mollweide drew up the plan in 1900 in the first year of his term: a white plastered building with red half-timbered gables rests on yellow-grey stone catacombs — extravagant! Could Mollweide be inspired by an earlier beer hall? Four years earlier, in 1896, the well-known Art Nouveau architect Hans Pylipp had built one for the State Exhibition in Nuremberg. Strikingly similar!?In 1832, the city of Hof erected the first, still small farm building, which four years later received an extension on the left and right to cope with the influx of guests (see photo from 1848). Nothing helped - it was still too small. A new building was needed. The remarkable thing about the new building from 1904 at that time: the city paid for the construction. However, it was calculated in an exemplary manner (which is by no means the rule nowadays for public contracts).
The city approved 160,000 marks and in the end the construction cost 175,097 marks and 14 pfennigs. And that's only because the city had special requests worth 12,350 marks during construction, such as electric lighting for the concert area, planting older trees, creating a wide path and building a music pavilion. In today's terms, the construction cost was 1.15 million euros; this was (without special requests) only exceeded by 1%!