Vienna's Ringstrasse district, erected between 1860 and 1890 amidst the sedate structures of the old imperial capital, was conceived during an era of marked political liberalism, in part as a monument to the working classes. In this carefully plotted redevelopment, planners concentrated a complex of boldly designed building---museums, theaters, government buildings---and expensive apartments for the newly affluent middle Classes. Conspicuously missing from this model city-within-a-city, however, was any place designed specifically for use by the industrial workers to whom it was nominally dedicated.

Not surprisingly, then, the Ringstrasse was from the beginning a subject of controversy. Historian Heinrich Friedjung viewed the redevelopment as proof that power had finally passed from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie. His contemporary, architect Adolph Loos, saw the Rinestrasse not as a symbol of a fuller life for the ascendant middle classes, but as a false front, screening the hypocrisy of a society whose dedication to its working classes was only superficial.