The new dormer came from the Late Gothic Zachariasbad building on the Weinmarkt, which was being demolished. Like the upper floors of the Dürer house, the dormer too is half-timbered. It has a pitched roof that protrudes perpendicularly from the main roof.
The romantic tradition in the Dürer literature rendered it indispensable to reconstruct the dormer on the half-hipped roof. According to popular speculation, this is where Dürer did his work – even though that hypothesis had been rejected as improbable long before, since depending on the weather, the room would have been either too cold, or too hot, or too windy, and in any case too small.