Eisenstein Eisenstein designed a total of about 20 buildings in Riga. While Eisenstein designed buildings as early as 1897, these were in a rather typical and plain Historicist style and bear little resemblance with his later work, characterized by "exuberance and love of ornament". The work for which Eisenstein is most well-known are a set of buildings on and near Alberta iela built between 1901 and 1906. Together they form an architectural ensemble which Jeremy Howard has described in the following way: "As a whole the tenements create a distinctively stylised and energised ensemble, yet at the same time each building appears to compete with its neighbours in terms of modern decorative extravagance." Several of these houses were commissioned by Eisenstein's wealthy client A. Lebedinsky. The first of the buildings forming this loose ensemble is a tenement house on Elizabetes iela (Elisabeth Street) 33, built in a transitional style between Historicism and Art Nouveau in 1901. Already in this building, Eisenstein's characteristic use of pronounced stringcourses and rich sculptural decoration drawing from a Symbolist vocabulary of forms is present. These and other traits, such as Eisenstein's "dramatic sense of contrasts expressed in architectural, sculptural and decorative forms as well as in color, texture and scale" become even more pronounced in the somewhat later buildings on Alberta iela, for example the somewhat more vertically oriented house on number 8 (1903), the strikingly red- and cream-coloured building on number 6 (1903) and the building on Elizabetes iela 10b (1903) with its unusual giant female heads flanking the central bay. The facade of Elizabetes iela 10b was based on patterns and drawings published by two Leipzig-based architects, G. Wünschmann and H. Kozel. The building on Alberta iela 10a was originally designed by Eižens Laube but the facade was rebuilt in 1903 by Eisenstein, containing elements which may have been inspired by the Secession Building in Vienna by Joseph Maria Olbrich. The building on Alberta iela number 4 (1904), also commissioned by Lebedinsky, is more ornamentally restrained with a facade dominated by contrastic window shapes and several large sculptures, including two standing lions elevated above the roof on pedestals at the corners, Medusa heads and reliefs of lions or griffins flanking the entrance. It has been described as one of the most distinctive of Eisenstein's facades, together with the building on 2a. The building on Alberta iela 2a (in which the Russian-British philosopher Isaiah