Maashaus (German: Maßhaus) is a spacious room taking the whole front part of a ground floor of a multi-storied Gothic or Renaissance town house.
It also worked to link together other parts of the house, since it held a staircase to the first floor above ground (where the owner lived) and to the basement, an archway or similar passage to the courtyard and so on.
Maashauses started to appear in the 13th century as a manifestation of the trend to sequester the living quarters of a burgers' house to the first floor.
What used to be a main living room of the house, the so-called smoke abode, kept only its public, trade and craft functions, which remained on the ground floor, because they required the proximity of the cellar, the courtyard and especially the street entrance.
The trade activities involved mainly the aforementioned serving of beer, which is related to the brewing rights (in the Middle Ages a vast majority of burgers' houses were granted this right), but other trade and crafts were performed there also.