Pfarrkirche Sandleiten, Parish church in Ottakring district, Vienna, Austria.
Pfarrkirche Sandleiten is a parish church located in Vienna's Ottakring district, designed to serve the adjacent large housing complex. The building employs a steel-concrete frame with a bell tower on its eastern side and features a distinctive round window displaying a Christogram above the entrance.
The church was built between 1935 and 1936 following designs by Josef Vytiska as a complement to what was then Europe's largest municipal housing settlement. It was conceived to support the social life of the new residential community.
The church is dedicated to St. Joseph the Worker, a name that reflects its role in the Sandleitenhof, Vienna's largest municipal housing complex of the interwar period. The fresco above the entrance, painted by Hans Andre, shows St. Joseph as protector of the distressed, a theme aimed at the working-class residents. The church was elevated to parish status in 1939.
The church is easily identified from the outside and conveniently located for access from the neighborhood. The entrance is reached by climbing several steps, which limits accessibility for those with mobility challenges.
The organ is a permanent loan from the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, not a piece owned by the church. It stood first in a lecture hall on Singerstraße 26, then from 1966 at Seilerstätte 26, where Anton Heiller taught on it. Around 2000 the university chose to keep the whole instrument rather than rebuild it, and placed it here, near Heiller's birth, home and death house at Heuberggasse 26.
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