The Renaissance of Art Nouveau in Latvia

The slouchy goddesses and stalwart griffins of Alberta Street have come back to life with fresh paint and pride of ownership in this architectural jewel of a city, which has finally evicted communism’s destructive landlords.

The restitution of private property seized by Soviet occupiers after World War II has inspired the renovation of Riga’s treasure trove of Art Nouveau buildings. It has more than 600--the largest surviving collection of the architectural style that was the rage in Central Europe at the start of this century.

As with all face lifts, however, the wrinkles have not been erased but rather tucked away at the edges. With the return of the elegant old houses to descendants of the original owners, many inhabitants have been wrenched out of the atmosphere of equality imposed during the Soviet era to face resettlement into the prewar order of haves and have-nots.

Riga was a bourgeois boomtown during the height of the Art Nouveau era. Latvian, Russian, Jewish and German shippers who came into wealth as the Industrial Revolution rolled eastward poured their riches into real estate. They styled their homes with the era’s eclectic blend of flair and function.

Nearly 40% of Riga’s city center consists of debut-de-siecle housing that has withstood this tumultuous century of uprisings, invasions, occupation and painful rebirth.

“It was because of the difficulties in the postwar period that so much of Riga’s Art Nouveau architecture has been preserved, although in poor condition in many cases,” said Silvija Grosa, an art historian with Riga’s Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art. “When Art Deco fell out of fashion in Western countries, many of the homes were pulled down to make way for new construction that was considered more tasteful. But in Latvia during the 1950s and 1960s, there was no money for indulging a change in tastes.”

The notorious housing shortages suffered in the Soviet Union also meant that what space was available had to be divided up and shared. The focus on functionality during the era of Art Nouveau, or Jugendstil, as the style was known in the Germanic countries where it originated, tended to put plumbing and sanitation at the center of each level, which made the lavish apartments well-suited to such division. They thus became the infamous Soviet kommunalki--communal flats where each room housed an entire family, and kitchens and bathrooms were shared by all on the floor.

Biruta Aergle, her mother and five school-age daughters crowd into two shabby rooms of one partitioned house at 5 Alberta St. Had they stayed in their faceless suburban high-rise instead of trading with an elderly couple who could no longer manage the Alberta flat’s five-story stairs, Aergle--long ago abandoned by a drunken husband--would not now be facing eviction.

Latvian owners and German investors hoping to renovate the devastated building put up in 1900 by a famed local architect, Friedrich Scheffel, have raised rent and utilities beyond Aergle’s means. The single mother who earns only $150 a month as a tram driver owes her landlord more than $800 and has until May to get out.

“We have no way of regulating the heat, with so many cracks and holes in the floors and ceiling,” says the distraught 38-year-old, who shares the building’s dilapidated top floor with three other families. “I could have kept up on the rent, but the utilities just overwhelmed me.”

As in many large cities readjusting to the constraints of capitalism, Riga has passed on the costs of vital public works improvements to the population. The working poor and pensioners are seldom able to absorb the rising utility prices.

In hammering out a property restitution program that would soften the blow for those without claim to another residence, the Latvian government set out a seven-year transition period during which rents can rise only marginally each year and only tenants with large arrears can be evicted.

Writer Andra Neiburga is on the other side of the restitution drama, having inherited two stately buildings that are now alive with sawing, drilling and pounding.

She, too, complains of flaws in the transition, because owners must pay the city for the costly utilities if their tenants cannot. Rent caps that can last through the year 2001 are also stifling income that the owners want for renovation.

“There are two sides in these property conflicts, and neither one is guilty,” said Neiburga, who has contractors working to restore common areas of her building on bustling Brivibas Street. “I don’t think residents of these buildings are victims of the owners but of a government that has done little to resolve the housing crisis.”

Some tenants take a pragmatic view of the social reshuffle spurred by restitution.

“What is happening is a natural process of differentiation,” said Aivars Ozolins, a journalist and longtime tenant of one Art Deco house. “If you can’t afford a nice house downtown, you’ll have to look for something else more affordable on the outskirts.”

While most interior work is held hostage by the occupancy standoffs, a few of Riga’s architectural monuments have benefited from refurbishing financed by foreign institutions in exchange for use of the buildings. One such restoration was completed two years ago at the Stockholm School of Economics.

The 1905 mansion built by Mihails Eizensteins--considered Riga’s premier Art Nouveau architect--has had its soot-stained exterior covered in cream and periwinkle colors and two floors restored to approximate their original grandeur. The $7-million project was jointly financed by American philanthropist George Soros and the school’s parent institution in exchange for a long-term lease from the city owners.

Another architectural treasure benefiting from foreign investment is an 1899 corner building designed by Rudolf Heinrich Zirkwitz that was freed of its former tenants by fire and flooding. When the descendants of the last owner could not afford the massive renovation needed, they sold it to the Latvian-German insurance enterprise Riga-Fenikss (Riga-Phoenix). The firm has lived up to its mythological moniker by re-creating the elegant building from its ruins.

Visitors to the building are treated to an inspiring reception in the ornate entrance, where bas-relief expressions of “biological romanticism” present flora and fauna in teal, mint and gold. Beveled windows, wrought-iron banisters and glazed tulip chandeliers once again grace the sprawling salons.

Most of the Art Nouveau buildings, however, remain in the throes of transition, with owners scouring banks and cultural preservation funds for money to rebuild.

Eso Anton Benjamins is one of 16 heirs hoping to renovate and rent out five turn-of-the-century apartment blocks bequeathed by his namesake grandfather, a publishing magnate. Benjamins, a naturalized American who moved from a suburb of Washington more than a year ago to keep an eye on his evolving inheritance, complains that owners are effectively forced to buy out poor and elderly tenants.

“It costs at least $5,000 to buy someone out” of his or her right to stay in the buildings until the transition period is over, said the 63-year-old Benjamins. “And then it is up to the owner to come up with money for the renovations.”

Housing loans and credits are still hard to come by in Latvia, which suffered a major bank collapse only two years ago and still lacks the savings base on which money is usually lent. And Benjamins acknowledges that few people in Latvia these days can afford rents high enough to cover the expense of thorough renovations.

One of Benjamins’ properties, a three-story neo-Renaissance mansion that housed the writers, composers and artists unions during the Soviet era, has been kept in good condition. “I’d really like to see some embassy here in the future,” Benjamins said as he showed visitors the mahogany staircases, Venetian crystal chandeliers and intricate stained-glass windows.

The Writers Union still oversees the house and gardens in the center of the city, while the Benjamins heirs sort out their differences over what should be done with it.

Benjamins is also embroiled in a fight over his grandfather’s seaside summer home in nearby Jurmala. The house is still occupied by the Russian ambassador to Latvia, and the local government has been trying to retain it through eminent domain to avoid inflicting yet another strain on already-rocky relations with Moscow.

While the restitution law makes no nationalist distinction in restoring property to original owners, the program has tended to displace more ethnic Russians than native Latvians; much of the ethnic Russian population--more than 30% of Latvia’s 2.6 million people--settled here only after the Soviets nationalized all homes and land.

International monitors report no deliberate harassment of Russians in the ongoing property tumult, but the latest report by the Latvian National Human Rights Office shows that nearly one-third of the 1,600 claimed abuses brought to its attention in the second half of 1996 involved housing issues.

“It is a very complicated business, trying to right the wrongs of history,” said lawyer Peteris Kirikovs, who represents owners in a bevy of property suits. “Our city was very rich at the turn of the century, and while we can restore the buildings, we cannot so easily recover the prosperity that brought these beautiful residences into being.”