Villa Simson, Cultural heritage monument in Suhl, Germany
Villa Simson is a manor house in Suhl with a limestone base level, a terrace, and two recessed plastered upper floors topped by mansard and attic sections. The building sits on roughly 7,600 square meters of land with about 950 square meters of living space on the southern slope of Domberg mountain above the city center.
Built in 1911/12 to plans by Hermann Muthesius, the villa was the widow's seat of Jeanette Simson (1847–1926), widow of entrepreneur Gerson Simson (1845–1904), who had previously lived at Mühltorstraße 12 in Suhl. In 1935/36 the National Socialists "aryanised" the Simson works and the family's property; the family escaped via Switzerland to the USA. After the war the SED district leadership used the house as a guesthouse, followed briefly by use as a hotel.
The house was built as a widow's residence for Jeanette Simson, widow of entrepreneur Gerson Simson, who had lived with the family at Mühltorstraße 12 in Suhl. Its first upper floor held a two-storey hall and the dining room, rooms meant for receiving guests; a passenger lift served the five floors.
Villa Simson stands at Dombergweg 7 on the southern slope of the Domberg, above Suhl's centre; the partly less than ten-metre-wide house is framed by a small park that merges into forest at the rear. The building was gutted before its 2023 auction, so it is not open to visitors and can only be viewed from outside.
The 2007 plan approved by the city of Suhl, with eleven flats and a 19-space underground garage at an estimated two million euros, was never carried out. The villa was then offered for sale from April 2015 at 200,000 euros, and on 2 March 2023 the gutted building went under the hammer for 260,000 euros.
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