Prien house, Office building on the Jungfernstieg, Hamburg-Mitte, Germany

The Prien House is an eight-storey office building at Jungfernstieg 51, on the corner of Colonnaden near the Binnenalster in Hamburg. Its stone facade is made of sanded Kirchheimer Muschelkalk limestone, as required by the Binnenalster regulation that forbids brick facades. The strictly symmetrical main facade faces the Binnenalster and has a vertical three-part division; the top storey is surrounded by a railing-like grille and has two round windows and two flagpoles.

Between 1935 and 1936, entrepreneur Ludwig Prien commissioned architects Gottfried Schramm and Hermann Höger to build this structure for his textile business. The construction took place during a major transformation of Hamburg's urban landscape and remains an important example of that era's architecture.

The building's name, Alstereck, was originally displayed in block letters across the lower window rows of the Binnenalster facade; it was later removed. The top floor, with its round porthole windows, railing-like grille and two flagpoles, recalls shipbuilding and Hamburg's maritime tradition. Since 2006 the ground floor has housed the world's first NIVEA Haus.

The building stands at Jungfernstieg 51, at the corner of the Colonnaden, near the Binnenalster. The Jungfernstieg side has a recessed ground floor forming a public colonnade walkway; the Colonnaden side has none. The main facade faces the Binnenalster, while the longest street front runs along the Jungfernstieg.

The Binnenalster-Verordnung, the rule that shaped the facade, forbids brick facades at this spot, so the building was clad in sawn Kirchheimer Muschelkalk, a limestone rather than sandstone. The same rule governed other new buildings around the Binnenalster in the 1930s.