362 – Horse Stable from Luchsingen, Glarus, 1861

Next to a villa

The horse stable from Luchsingen was part of a larger whole: the villa “Hof” was built in Luchsingen between 1851 and 1858 and a few years later this “hoss palace” was added. A sumptuous estate without space for garaging coaches and stabling horses was at the time unthinkable – just as we today cannot imagine a house without a car garage.

More than just a stable

The long disused stable came to Ballenberg in 2014. It stands right across from the Chalet Schafroth from Burgdorf (361), which formerly enjoyed a complement of buildings large enough to allow a bourgeois lifestyle. The horse stable from Luchsingen is, however, more than just a stable and remise: it also served for storing feed for the animals, while the deep veranda suggests that it was once lived in.

Chalet-style architecture

The staff of the villa Hof did in fact live in the multipurpose building. There was even a hothouse addition which was also transported to the Ballenberg Open-Air Museum. The fretwork and the ochre paint are quite reminiscent of the chalet style – together with the apiary from Gwatt (383) and the pavilion from Sarnen (761) this building from Glarus encounters in the Open-Air Museum its contemporaries, which were also built in the romanticising architectural dialect of the popular “Swiss House style”.