Once you have seen currents of people floating into the Städtische Bad Gänsehäufel* (Municipal Lido Gänsehäufel) at the Alte Donau (Old Danube) in summer you may not believe that this used to be the “coldest” part of Vienna in former times. The reason? Nature and patriotic innkeepers.
From 1882 to 1917 natural ice was extracted from the Old Danube. The ice was the only cooling substance for restaurants and butchers. So called ice choppers extracted the ice out of the frozen Danube and rafted it to ice cellars and ice caverns. What a job!
The Viennese Ice Firm built ice houses later in the district Old Danube and Kaiserwasser (Emperor’s Water). The Eiswerkstraße (Ice Firm Street, photo) tells it. The „Vereinigten Eisfabriken und Kühlhallen in Wien“ (United Ice Firms and Cold Storages in Vienna) founded as service for the food suppliers still exist today in the neighbour district – the Brigittenau. However without natural ice.
The Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition contributed to the “cold reputation” of that Viennese part too. On 30 August 1873 the team discovered under the command of professor Julius von Payer and Karl Weyprecht a group of islands in the Northern Arctic Sea the most Northern islands of Eurasia and named that place after emperor Franz Joseph I. This inspired the patriotic innkeeper Franz Magenstein to name his pub at the Old Danube “Zum Franz-Josefs-Land“. The Payer-Gasse (photo) tells it.
Ice extraction and ice conquest that is why that part had been something like Vienna’s historical cold pole.
* Städtisches Bad Gänsehäufel (Municipal Lido Gänsehäufel, in German) a place for about 30,000 people, we are in a cosmopolitan city, no lonely swimming!
More „correct“ Franz Josefs Land you can explore in the „Museum of Military History“ in the room „Seemacht Österreich” (Naval Power Austria, but not mentioned on the website).
Or as map, as text and as video .
Ice-Sources:
Museum of the District Leopoldstadt
Till 1938 the Franz Josefs Land was part of the Leopoldstadt, later it came to the newly founded 22. district Donaustadt.
Erster Wiener Wasserweg (First Viennes Water Way), City of Vienna Department 45 – Hydraulic Engineering.
Nice hiking tour (Alte Donau and Lobau, about 17 km, can be shortened, folder in German from Department MA 45).
Mit Anorak und Handschuhen in die Arbeit (Working with Anorak and Gloves).
Vereinigten Eisfabriken und Kühlhallen in Wien (United Ice Firms and Cold Storages in Vienna, in German)
July 2, 2008 at 8:36 pm
[...] the church Kaisermühlenkirche at the Schüttauplatz. A place from where one easily can walk to the ”coldest part of Vienna”. Where a special track commemorates the ice extraction out of the Old Danube and the name reminds [...]