Johannes Meiner (1867–1941) ran a photographic studio in Zurich’s Metropol House, working across all genres: portraits, architecture, urban views, advertising. His speciality was stereoscopy — a format whose square constraint, once reframed, fits naturally into the Karo. His plates document Zurich between approximately 1890 and 1920, and are today held at the Baugeschichtliches Archiv der Stadt ZĂĽrich, the institution in collaboration with which this selection was assembled by Ylva Meyer.
The Tonhalle was designed by the Viennese firm Fellner & Helmer — the same practice responsible for dozens of theatres and concert halls across Central Europe, including Zurich’s Opernhaus — and opened in 1895 on the Alpenquai, today’s General Guisan-Quai. Its resemblance to the Palais du TrocadĂ©ro of the 1878 Paris World Exhibition was deliberate enough to earn it the informal name “ZĂĽrcher TrocadĂ©ro.” What Meiner photographs is the lakefront pavilion: the ornate domed structure with its two towers, the element that gave the building its distinctive silhouette. Johannes Brahms, who maintained a close relationship with Zurich and the Tonhalle-Gesellschaft, was present at the opening.
In 1937 the pavilion was demolished to make way for the Kongresshaus, designed by the Zurich firm Haefeli Moser Steiger and inaugurated in 1939 for the Swiss national exhibition, the Landi. The two concert halls from 1895 survived, preserved and integrated into the new complex. What Meiner’s plate records — the dome, the towers, the lakefront facade in this form — was gone within three decades of the photograph being made.
The plate
Stereoscopic glass slide titled “Tonhalle, von oben mit Terrassen.” Selected from the Johannes Meiner holdings at the Baugeschichtliches Archiv der Stadt Zürich. Dated c. 1900–1910. Exact dating under verification. Piezography® Pro print on Awagami Bamboo Washi, 250 g/m² — made by the Awagami Factory in Tokushima, Japan, directed by the Fujimori family for eight generations, within a washi tradition in the Awa region dating to the 7th century. 30 × 30 cm. Edition of 200, Zürich.
