The Sporthotel Pontresina was completed in 1881. It is a three star hotel in the resort village of Pontresina, slightly less than two hours (depending on road/rail conditions) to the south of Chur in Graubünden, Switzerland.
The hotel comprises 140 beds in 82 rooms, with underground parking for 60 cars. During the summer season its focus is on hikers and mountain bikers, while winter season guests mostly come for the skiing and other winter sports.
Brief history The history of the hotel goes back to the boom in Swiss tourism during the second half of the nineteenth century. The founder of the hotel, Florian Stoppany, who came from a family of bakers and confectioners, acquired the "Maison Stiffler", a village guest house, and employed the architect Jakob Ragaz to expand it into the mid-sized Post Hotel Pontresina, which opened in 1881. The further expansion to a first class renaissance revival hotel took place in 1895.Isabelle Rucki: Hotels in Pontresina. Kantonale Denkmalpflege, Chur 1984/85, p. 106 From now on the clientele of what was now known as the Hotel Pontresina came increasingly from the German upper middle class. Following the installation of central heating, in 1906/07, for the first time, the hotel opened for a winter season.
In 1909 a company acquired the hotel from the Stoppany family, but the family remained closely involved. The First World War which broke out in 1914 marked the start of a long period of decline in the hotel's fortunes. Two World Wars and the years of austerity that followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929, combined with large and sudden fluctuations in currency exchange rates meant that there were many years between 1914 and the 1950s when the guests stayed away. Borrowings from the Cantonal Credit Institution ("Bündner Kreditgenossenschaft") and other financial support organisations failed to preserve the hotel's independence, and in the 1930s it fell into the hands of the Cantonal Bank. This was also the decade during which, in 1936, the hotel acquired its present (2015) name, becoming the "Sporthotel Pontresina".
The 1960s brought a new era of mass tourism, and during the middle of the decade the bank embarked on the hotel's first significant renovation programme in half a century, and the upgrade continued after 1972 when the hotel passed from the ownership of the bank to that of the municipality. Most of the rooms acquired en suite bathrooms, and the modernised conference and meeting rooms together with enhanced facilities for sports equipment storage and drying enabled the hotel to broaden its appeal and provided for a new start. In 2010 the municipality sold the hotel to a new company, "Sporthotel Pontresina AG", owned by the Pampel family.
Site The hotel is built on a well chosen site, in the centre of Pontresina, directly on the east side what was till 1963/65 the main through route linking St. Moritz with the Bernina Pass and Italy. (Since 1964 a replacement main road on the other side of the little valley has carried the through traffic, and the hotel itself is in a zone where traffic speeds are restricted to 30 km/h.)
Although the three little hamlets that comprised Pontresina have become contiguous, back in 1881 the site of the hotel was a large piece of open ground between the hamlets of Laret and St.Spiert, which provided space for expansion. Expansion directly beside the main street during the 1890s nevertheless involved the acquisition and replacement of neighbouring properties, and the floor-plan of the hotel was further complicated by the slope of the site.
Another advantage of the relatively large plot of land was the opportunity afforded for good views from the hotel and its garden towards the Roseg Valley and Glacier. Because Stoppany's plot extended to the opposite, western, side of the street, no one could block the view with new buildings. At the lower part of the plot it adjoined a road leading towards the Roseg Valley, and there was space in the hotel grounds for stables and a laundry, hidden by the fall of the land from the sight-line of hotel guests, despite their proximity to the main building. In the end the transport infrastructure won, however, with the opening on 1 July 1908 of the branch railway line, and the little street at the lower end of the plot acquired its present name, Station Street (Via da la Staziun / Bahnhofstrasse).
Chronology Background In 1850 Pontresina contained around 270 registered inhabitants, living from agriculture and welcoming the occasional traveller approaching the little used Bernina Pass. Early in the nineteenth century reconstruction/rediscovery of the Julier, Maloja and Albula Passes, which since the end of the Roman Empire had become mere bridle paths, marked a lessening of the isolation of the Engadin. The Swiss postal service was founded in 1848 and inaugurated a stagecoach service providing, for the first time, a regularly operated transport network. The development was associated with a tourism surge. Early beneficiaries were Tarasp and St. Moritz, two resorts able to boast spa facilities, and it was in these two resorts that the first new hotels in the Engadin region were built.
The first visitors mostly came because their doctors had recommended a health cure, but these were soon joined by more recreational travellers. From about 1850 there was a rapid growth in mountaineering as a leisure activity. Pioneering mountain tourists, many of whom came from England, favoured Pontresina over St. Moritz as a starting point for their Engadin climbing holidays. The first edition of 's "Piz Languard Und Die Bernina-gruppe Bei Pontresina, Oberengadin" appeared in 1858. In this early tour guide the parish priest for St. Moritz and Samedan described the hiking and mountaineering tours in a wide area around Pontresina. The local "Improvement Association" ("Verschönerungsverein") was founded in 1872 and by the 1890s had laid out a network of paths and riding tracks extending to more than 80 km (50 miles). The routes were given euphonous names such as "Schluchtenpromenade", "Thaispromenade" or "Flazpromenade" and their total cost was recorded as 35,151 Swiss francs.
Visitors were accommodated in simple guest houses such as the "Wirtschaft zur Krone" (which subsequently morphed into the "Grand Hotel Kronenhof"), and often also in rented rooms in the homes of private individuals. From 1870 sustained demand for accommodation led to a hotels building boom, and by 1890 a number of hotels lined the main street (Via Maistra), as they do today.
Hotel Pontresina and Post (1881)
Most of the many hotels in Pontresina were either constructed as purpose-built or else the result of a change of use for an existing house. The Sporthotel Pontresina's structure results from a more convoluted and iterative series of steps. The hotel that opened in 1881 still, in most respects, comprised at its heart the old "Maison Stiffler" guest house, which itself dated back only to 1866, but the architect brothers Ragaz also integrated into the overall building the previously separate photographic shop acquired from the photographer, named Alex Flury.Michael Caviezel: Das Engadin in Wort und Bild. Tanner, Samedan 1893, pp. 178, 183, 316. On the ground floor of the former photographic shop the hotelier Stoppany installed Pontresina's (second) post station, to generate customers for the hotel and its restaurant.
The architects designed a new unifying facade for the combined buildings and added an extra floor on the top of what had been the Maison Stiffler, resulting in a four-storey building. With the traditional "Post Hotel" ("Hotel Post") nomenclature and an increased number of relatively basic rooms this part of the hotel provided a suitable overnight halt for stage coach passengers and other guests with simple requirements.
The fourth floor extension on the main building applied a simplified reading of the Renaissance Revival style, its flat roof topped off with a large "Hotel Pontresina" sign. Its significantly greater height caused it to tower above the less flamboyantly restyled building beside it. The embellishment elements of the five-section front facade were mostly formed of wood, sheet metal and zinc castings, coated in stone coloured paint. The ground floor contained the reception area and the restaurant, which was open to passing trade as well as to hotel guests not wishing to spend time and money on a bit meal (so eating "à la carte"). At the back of the building the ground floor also incorporated the kitchens for the restaurant and hotel. Upstairs, the more expensive guest rooms were on the first and second floors, benefitting from the large windows conferred by the remodelled facade on the building's western (front) face, which provided views over the road towards the Roseg valley and glacier. The two corner rooms were particularly coveted, thanks to the small balconies emerging from the bevelled corner shape of the building. The more modest top floor rooms were provided for guests with less demanding requirements and for the servants accompanying some of the more affluent guests. The 1881 extension left the hotel with a capacity of around 66 beds.Frederick de Beauchamp Strickland: The Engadin. A Guide to the district. Sampson Low and Co., London 1891, p. 222.
On the western face of the building, close to the mountainside, the grand dining room was positioned above the kitchen on the first floor. Its height encompassed both the first and second floors. Guests eating here benefitted from a multi-course menu, albeit without being able to select individually the dishes they wished to be served. Most guests dined at the long banquet style table (the "Table d’hôte"). Main meals were served at fixed times - 13.00 and 19.30 - and guests were politely but firmly informed that when they arrived late they would miss out on those courses that had already been served. ("Herrschaften, die verspätet ankommen, werden mit laufender Platte servier'".Avis an die Gäste, verwahrt in der Dokumentensammlung Sporthotel Pontresina im Schweizerischen Wirtschaftsarchiv (SWA) in Basel, Signatur H + I E 65.) For a supplementary payment of 1 Swiss franc (lunch) or 2 Swiss francs (dinner) guests could elect to be served not at the shared long table but at separately assigned small tables.
The original painted ceiling of the grand dining room is today hidden behind a painted plaster ceiling. Separated and hidden, in a hidden mezzanine gallery, was the storage location for the hotel silver, plates and dishes, together with heated hotplates and centre pieces for the tables and other elements appropriate to the quality of the guests and their formal meals at the "Table d’hôte". Above the dining room, on the fourth floor, there were more of the modest hotel rooms, similar to those on the fourth floor at the front of the building.
Individual private guest bathrooms, even in the most exclusive hotels, were not usual in Europe in the 1880s. Each floor had a grouping of washrooms and wcs, more than sufficient for the number of bedrooms, beside the main staircase. If a guest wished to take a bath a zinc bathtub would be produced and placed in the guest's bedroom, and filled with water by hotel staff using jugs, in a manner that would have reflected the arrangements in the homes of the more affluent guests. Although there was at this stage no plumbed water supply to the guest bedrooms, for basic personal ablution, urination and defecation, rooms were provided with their own jugs, basins and night chamber pots. The hotel still retains a few porcelain examples, inscribed with the prestigious names of their manufacturers Brown-Westhead, Moore & Co and Villeroy & Boch.
Electric lighting was already installed by 1891. Guests prepared to pay a supplement were even able to specify electric lighting for their bedrooms in place of the more conventional (and dimmer) candle lighting.