Reinlpark

The Reinlpark is a green square or park in Vienna’s 14th district, Penzing.The streets Reinlgasse, Goldschlagstraße, Märzstraße, and Gurkgasse surround it.The park is accessible by tram line 10 (“Märzstrasse”) and is a short walk from the Hütteldorfer Strasse subway station.Despite its good transportation connections, the general lack of undeveloped spaces in the surrounding quarter, and the architecture of some of the surrounding buildings, which is noteworthy for suburban conditions, the Reinlpark presents the image of a space on the urban outskirts characterized by vacant businesses and neglected in terms of design.

The area of the subsequent Reinlpark was left out for greening during the grid parceling as a result of Penzing’s absorption into Vienna in 1890/92.The park was ultimately laid out in 1902, presumably as a result of the establishment of a school south of the square in 1896.”Beserlparks” were typically created close to public buildings in the highly built-up Wilhelminian neighborhoods.Originally, the Reinlpark, like the nearby Reinlgasse, featured pretzel-like curving roads named for a past mayor of Penzing.During the reign of Red Vienna, a children’s outdoor pool was constructed in the park.It is now one of just eleven left and is only available for a few weeks each year.

The Reinlpark is located between the historic town centers of Penzing and Breitensee, in a region that was only developed between 1880 and 1930.The park’s 16 structures were constructed between 1896 and 1914. The school building in the south (Goldschlagstraße 137), a multi-story courtyard with towers in the corners and gabled extensions on the side fronts, is the square’s oldest structure.A closed ensemble of three late historicist apartment buildings from 1903/04 stands on the northern end of the square.The architectural centerpiece of the plaza, however, is a pair of late secessionist apartment buildings (Reinlgasse 24 and 26, Gurkgasse 35 and 37) erected between 1910 and 1914 to plans by the famous architect partnership Barak & Czada.The four apartment buildings are in good shape, but are not classified, in contrast to three stuccoed buildings in their immediate proximity on Reinlgasse.The degree of design is based on the inner-city bourgeois architecture.The Penzing preservation zone extends up Reinlstrasse and Gurkgasse to Meiselstrasse and includes the closed late Gründerzeit construction surrounding Reinlpark.

Although the Reinlpark square is the only undeveloped area in the otherwise monotonous Wilhelminian-era block perimeter development district between the suburban line, Hütteldorfer-, John-, and Linzerstrasse (2001: 13,247 inhabitants on around 0.5 km2, one of the highest densities in Vienna) and also houses a few central functions (school, parish church and mosque in Reinlgasse, green space, tram station), it only serves as a district center.The majority of the stores in the area are closed.Because a large portion of the park is occupied by a ball sports cage and a seasonal children’s outdoor pool, it can only partially fulfill the purpose as a green recreation place.Motor vehicles are parked in the region east of the park that provides an unimpeded view of the Gloriette from Schönbrunn.Since Vienna’s motorization, the streets around the plaza, which could still be utilized as an extension of the park when it was built out, have been taken over by stationary traffic.

The neighborhood around Reinlpark received some media interest in 2013, when a gourmet restaurant opened in a corner building to the south-east of the plaza, attracting visitors from Vienna’s “better” areas. The restaurant was managed by a developer who owns the home at Reinlgasse 20 as well as many properties in Penzing’s westernmost district. The restaurant, led by a prominent chef, was meant to improve the neighborhood by providing infrastructure for more expensive lifestyles. The operator interpreted the Mediterranean cuisine with an eastern twist as a tribute to the places of origin of the majority of the Reinlpark population. The choice of placement in this “un-area” (Falter) startled the local journalists, but they liked the cheaper costs that this allowed.