The History

Based on Prof. Paul Zalewski, 2006

The Pagenhaus on Herrenhäuser Straße is a single-storey half-timbered building about 80 m long and 13.50 m wide, with a mansard roof and dormers. The panels between the timbers are now rendered in ochre yellow, with the posts picked out in brown. The house belongs to the GBH and contains apartments. Its history goes back to the 17th century.

From the first to the new Pagenhaus

As early as 1676/77, Duke Johann Friedrich had a Pagenhaus built in Herrenhausen, presumably by his building clerk Brand Westermann. As the court household and its servants grew, so did the need for space, and soon the building was too small. In 1707 it was demolished to make room for a larger new building to the south of it. For this, four buildings on the intended building site were purchased and re-erected elsewhere.

Who designed the new house is uncertain. Schuster, v. Alvensleben and Nöldeke name Brand Westermann, whereas Adam names Charles Louis Rémy de la Fosse, who had been called to Hanover as the new court architect in 1706. At the middle of the ridge sits a roof turret with an open lantern and two striking bells, which are said to have been moved here from Celle Palace in 1792.

Living at court in the 18th century

A plan by Böhme from 1725 shows how the house was originally used (Fig. 1). On the ground floor were several apartments and a large storeroom in which furniture from the palace that was not currently needed was stored for a time. The apartments housed the chamberlains, the court junkers and the fountain inspector. On the mansard floor a long central corridor led to the rooms of the kitchen staff and lackeys; at the east end were the rooms of the pages and their tutor.

In 1716, citrus growing needed additional space before the orangery was built. The large storeroom, which is well lit by the regular south windows, was given stoves and served in winter as the "Orangensaal" (orange hall), as an emergency orangery. After the new orangery was built, in 1733 an apartment for the court gardener was set up in it and the hall was divided into several smaller rooms. This state is recorded in E. Schuster's survey of 1869 (Fig. 2).

Alterations up to today

In 1940 the house was converted. The entrances were moved to the street side, since Herrenhäuser Straße now runs to the north of the building. The house was partly given a cellar and gutted, and on the upper floor apartments were created in place of the individual rooms. Since then it has consisted of three structurally separate sections, 6A, 6B and 6C, each with its own entrance and staircase. According to some residents, a further renovation took place in the 1970s. The last renovation in 1998, by the architect Reinhard Kraft, concerned only the facades, not the roof.

The fire of 1987 and the roof

During roof work in 1987, a smouldering fire broke out at one of the southern dormers of section 6C. It destroyed part of the roof structure (Fig. 3). After the fire only seven trusses remained there; the new ones essentially take up the earlier construction.

The upper roof storey served as a storage and drying room, presumably above all for flags and uniforms (Fig. 4). Today it presents itself as a simple collar-beam roof with a double standing purlin frame. The pairs of rafters with their collar beams are undoubtedly original, whereas the frame posts and frame purlins have been renewed. Conspicuous marks on the collar beams could mean that timbers from the first, demolished Pagenhaus were reused.