Schunk’s Glaspaleis, by Werner Mantz

a black and white 1936 print of a photo by werner mantz of schunk department store in heerlen, the netherlands, shows an eight story square building encased in large sheets of glass curtain wall, which leaves the internal concrete slab and flared column structure completely visible and unobstructed. the plaza in front of the store is framed with trees along the image's edges. for sale at grisebach, a german auction house, in dec 2024
Werner Mantz, photo of Schunck’s Glass Palace, Heerlen, NL, 1935-6, 169 x 227 mm, gelatin silver print, selling 15 Dec 2024 at Grisebach

Before seeing Werner Mantz’s photo of it, I had never heard of Shunck department store, which sits at the center of Heerlen, a coal mining town in the southern tail of the Netherlands near Maastricht (actually, it’s closer to Aachen, Germany). Commissioned in 1932 from unorthodox modernist Fritz Peutz, it has an extraordinary glass curtain wall separate from but surrounding its 8-story, beamless reinforced concrete structure, on three sides.

Deparment store owner Peter Schunck and Peutz were apparently inspired by the Van Nelle Factory (1925-31) near Rotterdam, which has a pioneering but less ambitious glass curtain wall. I’m not going to get into the dispute of who designed that one.

google streetview image from 2019 of schunk glass palace in heerlen, a color image of the all glass and steel skin of the eight story building with a red flag atop it, and a slightly larger tree in the right foreground. the building is now the town's cultural center and a music school.
Schunk Glaspaleis, Heerlen, NL, c 2019 via Google Streetview

Anyway, the building quickly became known as the Glaspaleis, and it was rescued from destruction in the 1990s, beautifully restored, and now functions as the town’s cultural center. The spot where Mantz was standing is now a McDonald’s. Nice work, everybody.

15 Dec 2024, Lot 1384, Werner Mantz, Glaspaleis, c. 1936, est EUR 700-900 [grisebach]