Erected in 1928 in the style of New Objectivity, this was at the time of construction South Germany's tallest high-rise building and the first in Germany to be made of exposed concrete. Ernst Otto Osswald, its architect, described the structure as a "Zweckbau – a functional building whose rooms are economic, healthy and pleasant to use."
Despite many complaints on the part of Stuttgart's inhabitants about the austere-looking giant in what was then the rather conservatively Swabian medieval town centre, today the 61-metre-high Tagblatt Tower is one of the city's landmarks. It was built for the Stuttgarter Neues Tagblatt, a local newspaper. After the War, the Tagblatt Tower was home to the Stuttgarter Zeitung before the newspaper relocated to Stuttgart-Möhringen.
Today the Tower's 18 storeys contain offices and the cultural centre "Unterm Turm" ("Under the Tower"), whose tenants include the tri-Bühne theatre, the Junges Ensemble JES and the FITS Figurentheater Stuttgart (a puppet theatre).
