I was enjoying Jennifer Wilson’s New Yorker piece (archived) on the various traumas of renting and buying (particularly in New York) when I got to this passage:
I imagined living in a society where people don’t need to own a home only to have something they can take out a mortgage on should calamity or college tuition strike. There, the flimsy divide between low- and middle-income workers wouldn’t be concretized through housing policy. In Vienna, for example, where income limits for government benefits are less stringent, eighty per cent of the population qualifies for social housing. (The Austrian city is famous for its Pawlatschen, “access balconies,” which open up onto a shared courtyard.)
Of course, I fixated on the Pawlatschen (you can see examples at the German Wikipedia article); it turns out the word Pawlatsche is borrowed from Czech pavlač, which is derived from the verb povléct ‘to cover,’ a prefixed descendant of Proto-Slavic *velťi ‘to drag’ (“Indo-European background unclear”). I thought that was interesting enough to share (and I envy the Viennese).
The spirit of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Vienna
lives on.
Einverstanden, Genosse!
I am surprised to hear that Vienna is “famous for Pawlatschen”, it is a style that I associate with Budapest or Brno. It is generally a Monarchy era working class housing style, so I’m not sure why the author wants to connect it to social housing. As the Wikipedia article notes, Vienna prohibited building them after 1881 so we have fewer examples than other KuK cities. Generally Viennese « Gemeindebau » , including the famous examples from the Rotes Wien era, have apartments accessible from interior stairwells not exterior balconies.
I have lived here for 14 years and have never lived in a building with Pawlatschen, and as far as I can recall have never even visited anyone living in a building with Pawlatschen, so you can transfer your envy towards the Hungarians. Whenever I have rented an Air BnB apartment in Budapest, the building would have a beautiful interior courtyard with balconies. I remember thinking “how come we don’t have these in Vienna?”
They are also fairy typical for old Lemberg / Lwow / L’viv, although I never heard any specific word for their courtyard balconies. They just say “entrance from the balcony”. Sometimes a bathroom has a separate entrance from the balcony!
The Czech word probably evolved from “awning” => “covered gallery” => courtyard balcony. In archaic Russian there is a similar word паволока, “a fancy fabric cover” and generally a textile used for such a purpose. It was an item of value and the chronicles occasionally measure values in it, say, a slave was worth 2 pavoloks:
И аще ускочить челядинъ от Руси, по не же приидуть въ страну царства нашего, и от святаго Мамы, и аще будеть и обрящеться, да поимуть и́, аще ли не обрящется, да на роту идут наши христеяне руси, а не христьянии — по закону своему, ти тогда взимають от нас цѣну свою, якоже уставлено есть преже, 2 паволоцѣ за челядинъ.
The article tends to confirm that New Yorkers who write for The New Yorker are frequently the most parochial and provincial of Americans – ignorant and incurious about the radically different ways other people live outside the city limits. With, in this case, the partial exception of the writer imagining she knows a little about living in Los Angeles and selected other locales because of course she has seen fictional movies and tv shows set there.
German wikipedia, FWIW, sez ‘Die engen, teils bereits als Element sozialen Wohnens konzipierten, im 20. Jahrhundert oft baufälligen Pawlatschenhäuser entwickelten sich zu Wohngebieten unterer Einkommensgruppen und umgangssprachlich wurde „Pawlatsche“ auch zum Synonym eines baufälligen Hauses.’ Google translate Englishes that as ‘The narrow, partly already designed as an element of social housing, often dilapidated Pawlatschen houses in the 20th century developed into residential areas for lower income groups and colloquially “Pawlatsche” also became a synonym for a dilapidated house.’
I have lived here for 14 years and have never lived in a building with Pawlatschen, and as far as I can recall have never even visited anyone living in a building with Pawlatschen, so you can transfer your envy towards the Hungarians.
Done! My grandson recently spent some time in Budapest, and the pictures he sent were gorgeous.
The Wikidata English name is “access balcony”, also used for the photo categories in wikimedia, except the subcategory Pawlatschen in Vienna,
… colloquially “Pawlatsche” also became a synonym for a dilapidated house.’
source: etymonline.com
In archaic Russian there is a similar word паволока, “a fancy fabric cover” and generally a textile used for such a purpose.
Thanks, it’s nice to know there’s a Russian cognate!
I didn’t even know the word. Not sure I’ve seen the thing (as opposed to possibly former ones subdivided by panels into one balcony per apartment).
Red Vienna keeps on keeping on even though the Reds (Social Democrats) no longer have a majority on their own. The city of Vienna remains the world’s biggest homeowner. The lack of an income limit for social, i.e. city-owned, housing is deliberate – this way, you can never be sure from someone’s address that they’re poor. AOC recently proposed to copy the whole thing for America.
After some Google Translate on the German Wikiparticle, I gather these things are reached by indoor stairs, often spiral. In the building I live in in New Mexico, the only access to the second floor is a Pawlatsche reached by an outdoor stair, up whose elaborate railing I grow morning glories, but I’m going to try Ipomoea lobata this summer. “Access balcony” seems a good term.
Note added in proof: The summer before last, we residents of this complex had a couple potluck dinners outdoors. If we do that again and have it on the balcony, and if people bring too much food as always, we could have a potluck potlatch on the Pawlatsche
Pawlatsch : access balcony
Norw. svalgang. Both the word and the building element has a long history. Da. svalegang looks like a folk etymology on svale “swallow (bird)”.
They are also dirt common in contemporary apartment buildings — i.e. this consulting structural engineer has come to know them very well.
There was some discussion of svalgang in the comments on swale.
I did remember that, but thought it was longer ago. Also (briefly) Svalastog.
Pawlatsche is stressed on the second syllable, which suggests to me it was borrowed into Viennese from Hungarian, or maybe Yiddish or even Rotwelsch. Wouldn’t a straight loan from Czech have produced a “Pawlatsch” with initial stress?
Hungarian is also initial-stress.
Hungarian words with a long second vowel are often borrowed into German with the long vowel stressed. I.e Hungarian pogácsa became German PoGAtsche, and the similarity in form is suggestive. The problem with my theory is that I don’t actually know what the Hungarian word is. May also be that “Powlatsche” got second syllable stress by analogy.
you can never be sure from someone’s address that they’re poor. AOC recently proposed to copy the whole thing for America.
Hah, that’s not going to fly in the US of A. What’s the point of having a fancy address if the peons don’t recognize what it means?
I’m sure they exist in the UK in working-class housing. I’ve seen many detective dramas in which police approach a suspect’s flat (apartment) by walking along a balcony.
@Kate Bunting: Those external balcony entrances are one of the things that make British council estates very visually distinct from American housing projects.
The fact that the second vowel is unreduced is probably enough to get it stressed. Viennese dialect doesn’t have vowel length anyway.
That said, I certainly can’t rule out analogy from Golatschen (second-syllable stress) < koláč (first-syllable stress because Czech).
(BTW, the third vowel is a legal fiction – it’s etymological nativization into Standard German so you can write the word.)
Nono, there are fancy addresses in Vienna; in large parts of some districts, every address is a villa. It’s the opposite that doesn’t exist.
…doesn’t have phonemic vowel length. Phonetically, it’s not only there, it’s coupled with stress (like in Russian), so it’s an even stronger reason for what Vanya said.
Those external balcony entrances are one of the things that make British council estates very visually distinct from American housing projects.
I’ve seen similar architecture in Germany, in buildings from the 50s and 60s, mostly dormitories or rental housing at the cheaper end of the market. They don’t have the charm of the Pawlatschen.
A similar sort of access-to-unit-via-upper-floor-balcony style is reasonably common in the U.S. for lower-price-point hotels/motels in parts of the country where the climate is such that the balcony-as-access-route is unlikely to be overwhelmed with snow/ice in the winter. I assume it’s cheaper construction than an internal corridor would be, and the plumbing for bathrooms/etc is all in the back of the units and thus using the same pipes that serve the other-side-of-the-building units right through the wall. I’m not sure of any reason why it wouldn’t be used for longer-term cheap rental properties – might be random historical contingency; might be different building-code requirements for rent-by-the-night structures versus rent-by-the-month structures and the varying incentives those code requirements create.
American two-story motels have them. But no courtyard, just a parking lot.
Oh! Yes. I’ve stayed in some.
A similar sort of access-to-unit-via-upper-floor-balcony style is reasonably common in the U.S. for lower-price-point hotels/motels in parts of the country where the climate is such that the balcony-as-access-route is unlikely to be overwhelmed with snow/ice in the winter.
Also for apartments. These are fairly common in Southern California with or without a courtyard. A lot of them look like they were built back in the 50s and 60s.
I used to live in one. It was a three-sided courtyard with the entrances to the apartments facing towards it and a swimming pool right in the middle. A couple of staircases reached the long porch/balcony that stretched around the courtyard for the apartments on the second floor.
I recently stayed at a Hilton hotel with external balconies off which some of the rooms were placed. It was a high rise, about twenty stories, in a flattened W shape. Around the central open area, where the desk, shop, and restaurants were located on the lower floors, there were rooms with internal doors. However, the internal balconies (taking the shape of the central inverted V in the W shape) ended at doors out onto external balconies that formed the two external legs. I was surprised that I had to enter the lobby, take an elevator up, then go back outside to get to my room.
External access to climate-controlled internal areas—whether hotel rooms, apartments, or offices—is a common characteristic of brutalist architecture. I would assume that, like the British council estates, the midcentury dormitories and rental housing mentioned by Hans were mostly built in that style. There is a lot of bad brutalism out there, as well as some very good brutalism, but cheap housing naturally tends to fall into the former category. As an example of the latter, with external (although under a massive awning-like construction) walkways between the offices, I have previously mentioned the City Hall in Salem, Oregon.
The Hungarian for Pawlatsche must be gang:
gang on wikiszótár:
Gang on wikipédia:
(DeepL translations)
And apparently a cultural, entertainment and debate tv programme “Gang” was named after it.
My primary objection to brutaliam is that it always looks like it could do with a good wash. The peculiar shapes would often be bearable if they were *clean* peculiar shapes.
A first step might be to encourage residents not to cover pathways, surfaces and common areas with human and animal bodily fluids and other excreta, needles, takeaway cups and wrappers, bits of unfinished takeaways accidentally discarded by hardworking residents in their rush to get to the bookies, etc. Or a (probably non-local) scouting group could undertake a weekly cleanup, if the Council would stump up for their biohazard suits.
Now that’s interesting, because Gang is “aisle, corridor” in… German.
The façades of the federal buildings along the National Mall in DC don’t suffer from any of these problems. And yet, they’re just as ugly.
Yes, pure concrete facades are simply ugly, whatever you do architecture-wise.
Milan’s case di ringhiera (once working-class, now tony) are very similar. Funny that they should have sprung up in a city once ruled by Austria, although it no longer was by the time they were built.
I recently stayed at a Hilton hotel with external balconies off which some of the rooms were placed. It was a high rise, about twenty stories
I also recently attended a conference in a high-rise hotel with rooms placed along balconies around an open (though roofed) inner space and found it very disconcerting. It reminded me of the TV series Silo, but also conjured up images of suicides and drunken accidents.
And yet, they’re just as ugly.
Yes, my comment was mostly about Brett’s example of good brutalism, whose dirty looking bits are partly high in the air. It’s not that stone or brick or whatever doesn’t discolour, but it doesn’t often look stained in quite the same way.
Now that’s interesting, because Gang is “aisle, corridor” in… German.
Spoiler: The Hungarian word is borrowed from… German.
Yes, it’s just mildly funny because German doesn’t use that word for that thing and has instead borrowed one.
That’s actually possible because the word isn’t widely known.
Edit: “that” being the following comment, which was deleted and reposted.
Pawlatschen
case di ringhiera
This is a very interesting LH post! Thanks for talking about this topic. For those who might have missed it at the end of the German Wikipedia article that Hat links to, Kafka uses Pawlatsche in his Brief an den Vater (1919):
The German Wikipedia article also mentions use by Egon Kisch. Can this be the sum total of uses of this word in the notable literature of Austria-Hungary?
I might note that outside access balconies are simpler and cheaper than inside access corridors or separate staircases for each vertical rack of apartments, so whichever scale we’re looking at, the block with outside access is at the low end. With much money in the project, architects are quite good at making the balconies nice and charming, but it’s still the low end of much money.
Their charm in old backyards is not unrelated to the fact that the original inhabitants moved out to new projects characterized by charmless access balconies – and architects moved in.
Edit/afterthought: This discussion would have had AJP all over the architectural history – and quickly dispelling me of simple notions like this,