Draft:Heinrich Hürlimann

Hans Heinrich Hürlimann (1841-1910) was a Swiss real estate developer who undertook various hospitality developments throughout the city of Zurich, Switzerland. Most notably, he transformed the wooded suburban ridge of Zürichberg into an integrated leisure resort centred on the Dolder Grand Hotel. Trained as a cooper and lacking inherited capital, he financed successive ventures through joint-stock companies, making him a representative figure of late-19th-century bourgeois entrepreneurship in Switzerland.

Early life

Hürlimann was born in the rural municipality of Dürnten in the canton of Zurich and completed an apprenticeship as a cooper (Küfer).

Career

The Pfauenkomplex in 1903

Beginnings at Heimplatz

By 1879, he had moved to Zurich, where he started his business ventures by constructing the Gasthof zum Pfauen inn on Heimplatz square, inaugurating a business enterprise of combining restaurants with entertainment. In subsequent years, Hürlimann successively acquired all the properties between Hottingerstrasse, Rämistrasse and Zeltweg. Architects Alfred Chiodera and Theophil Tschudy were commissioned in 1888/89 to replace the original building with a block that combined a hotel, a beer garden, apartments and Hürlimann’s successful Volkstheater am Pfauen.

Dolder Waldhaus

Dolderbahn and Waldhaus projects

After acquiring several plots of land on Zürichberg hill, Hürlimann founded a corporation in 1893 to build a cable railway connecting the Römerhof tram terminus with the Zürichberg ridge. The Dolderbahn opened in 1895 and immediately generated sufficient profits to justify further expansion of the area as a recreational quarter. Hürlimann engaged Basel architect Jacques Gros to design the Waldhaus Dolder which served as both a restaurant and a mountain station for the Dolderbahn and opened in 1895.

Dolder Grand Hotel & Curhaus

Construction of the Dolder Grand Hotel in 1898

At the general meeting of Dolderbahn-AG in August 1896 shareholders endorsed Hürlimann’s proposal for a large seasonal hotel. Gros’s plans, executed between 1897 and 1899, adopted the then fashionable Swiss Heimatstil on an unprecedented scale for a Grand Hotel.

The Dolder Grand Hotel & Curhaus opened on May 10^th 1899 with 220 beds, reading and billiard rooms, covered verandas, two lifts and in-room telephones; summer double-room rates ranged from CHF 12–20.

The funicular terminus was integrated into the complex, ensuring seamless access from the city.

Later career and death

Hürlimann remained the dominant shareholder and managing director of the Dolder enterprises until his death in 1910; operational control then passed to successor boards while retaining the combined spa-sport model he had established.

Legacy

Although subsequent amenities—such as a golf course (1907), an open-air ice rink (1931) and a wave pool (1934)—were added after his death, the underlying concept of an urban Luftkurort integrating health, sport and Alpine views originated with Hürlimann.

Projects realized

Notable projects ordered by year of completion:

• Wirtschaft Zum Pfauen (1879–1880), beer-garden inn
• Pfauenkomplex (1888-1889), theater and apartment buildings
• Dolderbahn (1893-1895), funicular
• Waldhaus Dolder (1894-1895), restaurant-hotel
• Wildpark Dolder (1896), forest pavilion and trails
• Grand Hotel Dolder, (1897–1899), resort-hotel
• Dolder Golf Course (1905-1907), 9-hole golf course

See also

• Dolder Grand
• Dolder Waldhaus
• Schauspielhaus Zürich