Kontorhausviertel

This guide to the Kontorhausviertel in Hamburg traces Henry Sloman, a trader who made a fortune in Chile's saltpeter mines in the 1890s and came home to Hamburg in 1898 one of its richest men. It follows how that money built the ship-prow tower called Chilehaus, raised between 1921 and 1924 by architect Fritz Hoger, and the district of brick office blocks that grew up around it. Sloman ran five mining camps in the Atacama Desert, worked by around six thousand laborers, before a tax break brought him home for good.