Kvarteren Vesta, Vulkan, Diana, Venus, Ceres, Merkur, Fyrkanten, Bobinen, Dymling

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Episodes 103 to 106 take a stroll around North Gårda where the only major decorations are on a tram shed from the 1980s.

Episode 103: kv Vesta, kv Vulkan, kv Diana

District: Gårda

Photo date: 23 December 2020

District Gårda is an industrial estate from the late 1800s, with residential areas in the south. Factories, schools, pollution, children, railway, more factories… and then in the 1960s the eastern half of the district was eradicated when the new motorway was laid out there. Many of the remaining houses were condemned because they were too close to the noisy, polluting and dangerous traffic. Some of the southernmost buildings were saved and even refurbished recently, but most of it has been completely redeveloped. The area looks nothing like old photographs!

The rusty skyscraper called Gårda Vesta was designed by White Arkitekter, still going strong with modern but boring materials. They meant the rust to symbolise the industrial heritage of this district, Gårda. Or perhaps they were just a little bit passé since that particular cladding seems to have fallen out of favour rapidly, after being very in for about five years.

The other blocks in this episode were also modern when they were built, from the 1960s onwards. At Diana, after this video was made a controversial artist was given free reign with a firewall and created a huge vagina mural. Recently, the whole modernist building was torn down and something else will take its place, I guess. Perhaps another skyscraper?

Episode 104: kv Venus, kv Ceres

District: Gårda

Photo date: 23 December 2020

Soon after I started working at Bergab, these modern houses were put up across the river. The foundation works were extensive: it took three combined piles to reach layers that were stiffer than mush! The low-lying area here under the hill to the east is made up of up to 80m or more thick glacial clays, overlain by marine clays and riverine sediments. Marine clays are notoriously tricky: add enough water, give it a little shake, and the solid ground turns into water. Just like ketchup. There’s a scary movie from a Norwegian landslide in thixotropic clays.

The tram museum is great! The depot was built in 1930 and the museum moved in in 1989. Next to it was the old bus garage that was torn down in 2001 to make way for residential houses. The garage was really ugly. At the museum you can not only look at the trams but also rent them. We did this for a science fiction convention some years ago, it was very popular.

Gothenburgers are inveterate punners. All major landmarks get inofficial names like fr’instance Hedendomen for the Catholic church (a pun on ”heathenry” and ”the cathedral next to Heden”). The lamellar house in this block was built for the electricity board in 1960, and was for some reason called Elysépalatset. It was of course immediately renamed El-o-lyse-palatset, ”the electricity and lighting palace”.

Episode 105: kv Merkur

District: Gårda

Photo date: 23 August 2020, 23 December 2020 and 20 March 2021

When every other town and city dismantled their trams in the 1950s and 60s, Gothenburg retained them. Now, every other town and city build new tramways, for some reason. Living in a city where trams have always been part of everyday infrastructure life, it seems much more convenient with buses that can move around obstacles like other vehicles ahead, or downed powerlines. But the trams do have their charm, I guess, and they are a big part of the spirit of Gothenburg.

Tram lines have expanded over the years, and the number of trams too. They all need to be serviced and in the mid-1980s the depot at Stampen was much too small and a new tram shed built across the creek, here at city block Mercury. The architects were Clas Dreijer and Bengt Wallin, working for the ABAKO office. They won the Kasper Salin award in 1985, an award for ”the best building of the year”. In one of my sources, ”Staden, platserna och husen” by Claes Caldenby et al, it says the guy leaning out of a window depicts Domenico Inganni who helped finalise the deocrations. But who were Graham and Åke, whose names are on one of the medallions?

Somewhere on the building there is a plaque commemorating the award but it is not visible from the outer perimeter fence. No trespassing! I mailed them asking for permission to enter and document the cartouches but never got a reply. So I had to stand on the other side of the motorway with the big camera! And again when the building at city block Eagle was finally finished!

Episode 106: kv Fyrkanten, kv Bobinen, kv Dymling

District: Gårda

Photo date: 14 March 2021

Fire stations were put up all over the city in the early 1900s but were then closed again around the 1970s to 80s, when big centralised stations like this one were built. And they no longer house only the fire brigade but all the rescue services. This central rescue services station was put up in 1988, with typical tile decorations on the facade. The architects were FFNS West, whom I had never heard of before because they have turned into Sweco, the big civil engneering company we often do business with.

The 1880s is when textiles became big in Gothenburg. In the marxist 1970s, all the talk was about the proletariat working in the shipyards and how socialism, even communism, was what made Gothenburg if not great then at least remarkable. In fact, the local industry was first based on timber and joinery and then came the textiles. Those workers were the ones who first unionised, but it didn’t take at first, apparently not until the temperance movement had done its thing.

At Åvägen 6 we see the remains of Gårda Fabriker, one of the original textile factories in Gårda. This one made underwear. The current buildings were put up in the early to mid 1900s, designed by Ernst Krüger and Carl Ritzén. Much rebuilding has been going on since the 1990s, and most of the entire area has faced a complete redevelopment from 1965, still ongoing. The Bobbin, for example, was built in 2007. It appears the site held a starch factory that burned down in 1945, and then Semrén+Månsson designed the current buildings.

Kvarteren Jankowitz, Warschava, Stora Bält, Lilla Bält, Halmstad, Lund samt Mosaiska begravningsplatsen

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Episodes 99 to 102 explore an area with a long history of public transport, and death. Plus school-children!

Episode 99: kv Jankowitz, kv Warschava

District: Stampen

Photo date: 6 September 2020

Polish names are confusing to other languages. Warzaw, Warschau, Varschawa… all kinds of spellings are supplied over the years. Anyway, one of my sources is a book celebrating 50 years of Gothenburg’s tram services, a delightful history describing the first private English company, the little tram-cars drawn by poor suffering horses up the hills (hats were supplied in the summer), ground and cable works during electrification in 1902, the city taking over the service, and the various lines which you had to buy separate tickets for. Most of lines are still in operation today, two have been dismantled due to cars and several new ones have been added.

And the trams needed servicing at depots: the first one was situated here, in a richly decorated building that included offices and workshops as well as the car shed itself. As the services and cars grew, so did the depot, adding a bus garage across the creek, and another depot out in Majorna. After the publication of the book in 1929, even more depots have been built and of course this first one was dismantled when it moved across the creek in 1986 to where it still is today.

Next to the tram shed the city built a rather large school. Yngve Rasmussen designed both houses and judging by old photographs they looked very similar. The school still stands even though it too has become too small and the kids are spread out in nearby buildings. Bergab operates in the building next door and we have a fine view of their study halls. At graduation, the noise can be quite deafening.

Episode 100: kv Stora Bält and Mosaiska begravningsplatsen

District: Stampen

Photo date: 6 September 2020

Stampgatan 15 is the home of Bergab. The company first started in a small office at Odinsgatan 22, spent some years up on the hill at St Pauligatan 33 and moved to the current address in 1994. Twenty years ago, a branch in Stockholm opened and it has since grown bigger than the Gothenburg head office. We work with engineering geology and groundwater. The house itself is not much to talk about: it was built in the 1960s for the tram service employees, has no decorations, and has quite poor foundations next to the flood-prone creek.

The Jewish cemetery is more interesting. It was located right next to the cemetery for the artillery garrison and for prisoners. This latter cemetery was later built over by round train sheds and roads. The Jewish cemetery was recently given an arboreal make-over so you can see it again. I have a fine view of it from my office window and in 2008-2009 took a picture of the view every morning. The moorish-style chapel was designed by P J Rapp and built in 1864.

Episode 101: kv Lilla Bält

District: Stampen

Photo date: 6 September 2020

The name of this property has changed a lot over the centuries, reflecting ownership and businesses. Before Stampen was built up the district used to be called Åkareheden (Drover’s Field) and the area around this block has long been called Svingeln, whatever that means (consensus on etymology has yet to be reached). The property itself has been called Sahlefelt’s Land in the early 1600s, Burggrevelyckan when a magistrate with this title rented it, Director Bauer’s Land in the early 1700s and Fredriksdal in the late 1700s, before the Fürstenbergs changed it to Oscarsdal. Funnily enough, a sports bar at Ranängsgatan calls itself ”Olivedal” which is the name of a completely different district!

Episode 102: kv Halmstad, kv Lund

District: Stampen

Photo date: 6 September 2020

Before public transport and the off-ramps from the nearby motorway demanded space, the street here was rather idyllic, with a women’s prison and small industries on the east side and train sheds, a farm and a public bath on the west side, two whole blocks called Narva and Klissow. At the end of the street, a little bridge ran over a reed-filled riverlet to district Olskroken. It’s really difiicult to picture nowadays. The big motorway connecting Malmö and Stockholm was built in the late 1960s, just where the little bridge was, and the whole area was given over to streets. The river itself was led into a culvert and disappeared under the motorway. Curious factoid: the motorway and its ramps and flyovers were designed in the early 1960s. In the middle of building work, there was a referendum that changed Sweden from a left-driving to a right-driving country. Meaning all the flyovers and ramps now seem wrongly designed!

Until a few years ago, the bus and tram stop called Svingeln was distributed all over the area here, because of the old road layout and the narrow section between the remaining buildings and the railway. But then the officials had a brain-wave and decided to make one unified stop, for easy and safe access when changing lines. So now, buses, trams, bikes, cars and pedestrians have to cross one another’s lanes several times and just a year after the re-development there was a fatal accident… Sheesh.

Neither of the houses in these blocks are decorated, so there isn’t much narration in the video. Both are managed by Higab which is the city’s property company. Their website lists information about the properties too: Gullbergsbrohemmet and Hantverkshuset. The former was originally designed by Bengt Wilhelm Carlberg, the city engineer, and consisted of two square buildings, still extant but with several additions over the centuries. The latter was built in the late 1960s, on land that consisted of an old river bed overlying marine and glacial clays. Not the best sort of foundation!

Kvarteren Brunnbäck, Stångebro, Breitenfeld, Chemnitz, Bangården samt Folkungabroarna och Gamla Kyrkogården

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Episodes 95 to 98 find very few decorations on facades from the 1760s to the 2010s.

Episode 95: kv Brunnbäck and Folkungabroarna

District: Stampen

Photo date: 12 July and 27 August 2020

These tram tracks are the newest that have been built in Gothenburg. They run from the block called Brunnbäck due south past Ullevi and Scandinavium to Korsvägen. Bergab helped in a very small measure with the site investigations – the clay is very deep here but there are some low outcrops of rock to the south. But during the 1923 exhibition, a temporary track was laid out near here that ran from the station to the exhibition area.

Along the canal clustered small houses, cottages and shacks that contained industries and manufacturies like cloth-making, dyeries, distilleries and breweries, Further along were tanneries, cigar-factories and soap-makers. Downstream from these industries, the local inhabitants took their drinking water right from the river…

There’s not much to say about the current buildings in the block. The street Baldersgatan was meant to continue across the Old Cemetery to the Weir, Baldersplatsen, where the slaughterhouse was moved in the early 1800s.

Episode 96: kv Stångebro and Gamla Kyrkogården

District: Stampen

Photo date: 4 September 2020

The S:t Mary Church was designed by Carl Wilhelm Carlberg and could have been designed today rather than 200 years ago, given its total lack of decorations. The Paupers’ House is also mostly devoid of decorations because that was the style when it was designed by Carlberg’s father Bengt. When new paupers’ institutions were built, first at Smedjegatan and then next to the railway station, this house became an old-age home. It was moved to a grand new house by Slottsskogen in 1896, as related in part 291 of this series.

The Old Cemetery was designed by the same Carl Carlberg. In the 1880s, a new cemetery was opened right next to where I live, the East Cemetery, and no new interments were made in the Stamp Cemetery – until the last decade or two, when the lawn between the old graves and the Paupers’ House has started filling with new urn burial graves. Where shall people tan and picnic now?

Episode 97: kv Breitenfeld

District: Stampen

Photo date: 28 August 2020

The whole block was built up in the early 1900s, but in the 1960s it was decided to tear down all the buildings on the east side, and in 1990 half the block on the west side was also replaced. Why? Were the old foundations that bad?

Episode 98: kv Chemnitz, kv Bangården

District: Stampen

Photo date: 29 August and 1 September 2020

At the north end of the Chemnitz block was apparently a small farm called Gummero (Lady’s Rest), to complement Gubbero (Gent’s Rest) across the creek to the north. The only place I’ve come across this name is at the Old Gothenburg site.

The Railway Yard as it looks today was designed by the White architects and completed in 2010. At Bergab, we could follow the construction work, and the repair works that were immediately started on the facades when principal building was completed and tenants had moved in. The businesses on the ground floor all have the new stylish interior design with raw concrete walls and fully exposed ducts in the ceilings. Yes, I think these houses are some of the worst-designed I’ve ever seen or heard about.

Kvarteren Gestilren, Herrevadsbro, Lena, Åsle, Lützen, Brännkyrka

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In episodes 90 to 94 we leave the original city and its defence works, to look at one of the first industrial districts and suburbs.

Episode 90: kv Gestilren

District: Stampen

Photo date: 23 August 2020

Our first block in the district called Stampen is also one of the most modern, with significant inustrial heritage, as narrated in the video. It needed quite a lot of narration, as these semi-modern houses have a surprising amount of decorations. Actually, given the time of construction (late 1980s), the amount of decoration is quite typical. In a reaction to the austere functionalism and economising of the 1960s and 1970s, some post-modern architects started added extraneous details like tiles, pillars, bay windows, pyramids and outright sculptures to their facades and roofs. There are a handful of these houses in Gothenburg, almost all of them public buildings like a tram deopt, a fire station or a parking garage.

Try as I might, the only information I can find about the modern buildings is an old zoning document that says the property was owned by Kullenbergs. The Old Gothenburg site relates the saga of this company that was very active during the 1970s and 80s and then went bust in the 1990s bubble. But what is this: in Intermission Part 3 is a photo of a hand with the name Lars Spaak! He made some of the railings, and the bronze pillar at Adler Salivus gata 11. On his website he also mentions architect Ylva Ljungström.

That site and Fredberg also have interesting things to say about the orphanage, with illustrations. The current building was designed by Adolf Edelsvärd.

Episode 91: kv Herrevadsbro

District: Stampen

Photo date: 23 August 2020

In high school I studied languages, latin even. But I didn’t know what career I wanted to pursue after graduation so in 1985 and 1986 I took complementary courses in maths, physics and typing at the Odin School. Even then it was old, even if it was modern when it was built. The architect was G A Falk. (The courses turned out to be very useful as I eventually became a geologist, and with the then-unknown internet, typing skillz have become essential.)

The water-course to the south, the Paupers’ Canal, is a man-made canal to supply water to the moat, and to allow barge access to the Mölndal River. Before it was dug, in the mid-1600s, one of the arms of the river ran right through this block. The district was for the most part a reedy marshland in the beginning. The river arm remained as a swampy backwater for almost two centuries. A fitting place for the knacker!

When I went to the school here, the land between it and the canal was un-built. The hotel at the west end of Gestilren had been built, and the rest of Gestilren was a construction site. The buses to Partille, where I lived then, had stopped by the old Pripps plank but had just been moved to the brand new arcade along the north side of the hotel. Now there are no bus stops along Odinsgatan as all bus routes have been moved away from it. Air quality along this road is notoriously bad and this was one of the remedial measures taken, others being outlawing the use of snow tires and restricting access. This latter measure is a direct reversal of policy as compared with the 1950s and 60s when major motorways and universal access for cars ruled!

Episode 92: kv Lena

District: Stampen

Photo date: 23 August 2020

The newspaper house is a fine example of modernism, or functionalism as it is called in Sweden. It was designed in 1933 by Ragnar Ossian Swensson, who some 20 years earlier was heavily into late-national romanticism, and 1920s classicism in that decade. A fashion-conscious gentleman!

Göteborgs-Posten was the city’s biggest newspaper until the internet killed that business some 20 years ago. The house here was built for the presses as well as the editorial offices, but in the 1970s bigger presses were needed and a new industrial building put up across the river. In the archives of the company I work for, Bergab, are documents from the site investigations for this buildings. Half a decade ago or so, that house was torn down as presses are no longer needed. Thousands of trees thank the internet for their lives!

The other house in this block is a formerly functionalist house like the ones around Odinsplatsen. It was completely redesigned some 20 years ago. Neither the 1930s nor the 2000s styles permit decorations.

Episode 93: kv Åsle

District: Stampen

Photo date: 23 August 2020

Before 1900, the north side of this street was un-built; in fact, until the railway was laid out on recently reclaimed land, this was all reedy marshland along a bay of the river. Louis Enders designed this workers’ tenement for the Pripps brewery in 1898. Apart from this block and the Jewish cemetary, all the other houses were built in the 1930s.

Episode 94: kv Lützen, kv Brännkyrka and Odinsplatsen

District: Stampen

Photo date: 23 August 2020

Odinsplatsen was planned in 1866 but the north side was only built up in the late 1930s. It was a centre for car salesmen, mechanics and garages. When the car salesmen moved out in the 1970s, bikers and strip-clubs moved in. Twenty years ago the entire area was rebuilt and/or gentrified.

The current buildings in the Brännkyrka block are from the 1960s and 1990s. The imposing facade along the Canal is completely different from the old paupers’ school that stood here until the 1960s. Johan Willin was a very charitable priest in the 1700s who started a free school for poor children, an institution that later morphed into the compulsory state school system instated in 1842.

Kvarteren Kajaken, Röda Bryggan, Regeringen, Kaponjären, Stora Teatern samt Kungsparken och Trädgårdsföreningen

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Episodes 85 to 87 cover the tiny district called Pustervik and episodes 88 and 89 take us back east, through leafy expanses built on the former outer defence works. There is also an Intermission with extra stuff picked up over the course of the project.

Intermission

District: Nordstaden, Inom Vallgraven

Photo date: 1 May 2020 to 27 Feburary 2021

This is a collection of stuff I missed the first time round – and a blooper! When taking an establishing shot of the Fountain Bridge I accidentally caught a man urinating, in full view of everyone passing by. The stream is clearly visible in the photo but I masked it as I’m sure Youtube won’t allow anything that tasteless.

Episode 85: kv Kajaken, kv Röda Bryggan

District: Pustervik

Photo date: 16 August and 5 September 2020

Pustervik is the name of an inlet under the Otterhällan hill, just where the moat passed into the Göta river. West of this inlet was the old harbour and ship-building district, with lots of jetties and piers sticking out in the river. On old maps, the riverfront looks fringed, or comb-like.

In this episode, I included one block that belongs to district Olivedal or Masthugget – but the land here is actually the reclaimed Pustervik inlet, so it is right and proper to include it in this section. The Kayak was built as a customs warehouse, the precursor to the Freeport built across the river a few years later. It was designed by Karl Samuelsson right along the Rosenlund Canal, which was dug out to straighten the southwest end of the crinkly moat.

The block called Red Bridge is chock-full of history that is recounted in my sources, both books and digitals. The current buildings are not much to talk about, though, as all but one are very recent, and bland. Järntorgsgatan 2 was razed after this video was made and a new ultra-modern structure put up. It is not quite finished yet so it will be the subject of future Intermission.

Episode 86: kv Regeringen

District: Pustervik

Photo date: 5 September 2020

After I’ve made an architectural walk I often share the surprises I’ve found. Sometimes it’s a friendly cat, other times a person who strikes up a conversation when I tell them what I’m doing (architectural safari!), but mostly it’s a detail I’ve never noticed before. Like on the church in this block. Wow! It was designed by Lars Ågren of the firm GAKO, designers of many of the suburban concrete housing estates of the era.

The other fun building in this block is the former cinema. It was designed by Malte Erichs and has been an entertainment venue for a century. I only saw a few movies at Prisma as it was a bit out of the way for me and across the street lay the biggest and best theatre in town, Draken. Just before the cinema closed, I saw ”Little Dorrit” with Alec Guinness here, as part of the Gothenburg Film Festival 1989. Two movies with almost no intermission, hard to keep my eyes open at the end…

Episode 87: kv Kaponjären

District: Pustervik

Photo date: 5 September 2020

Pustervik only contains three blocks, and this last one was long un-built because it had a trench running through it until 1865. Five years later, the small clump of buildings designed by Hans Jacob Strömberg were put up. East of them was an open space, long a parking area, now a major construction site. As I write this, the contractors for the train station under Haga Church have just been fired and the tunnel work halted for the foreseeable future. Everyone saw this coming, even when the Turkish consortium won the bidding several years ago…

Episode 88: Kungsparken, kv Stora Teatern

District: Vasastaden and Lorensberg

Photo date: 22 September 2020

Where the King’s Park is today, state fortification master Erik Dahlberg laid out the outer defence works in the late 1600s. You might think a city wall, bastions, a moat and several small fortresses might be enough, but then you don’t know the Dane in the 17th century. A formidable threat! Outside the moat was a cleared space where no enemy could hide, and no obstructions for cannon shots. It was called ”glacis”, a term we still use when describing some types of earth reinforcement along railways. In 1823, the glacis was turned into four lines of trees with bridle-paths and promenades between. Some years later, the rest of the park was planted and it has withstood exploitation for two hundred years. Unless you count the motorway that runs through it…

The King’s Park is full of outdoor art and at the east end is a whole house dedicated to art. The Grand Opry was designed by Bror Carl Malmberg and is apparently an early example of opera houses of that time, the mid 1800s. Fredberg has A LOT to say about this theatre, it gets quite tedious, frankly. Among the productions I saw there was ”Don Juan” in 1983, as directed by Etienne Glaser. It was rather weird: the set designs consisted solely of ropes delineating empty space on the stage. Glaser’s experiences with this production were later turned into a movie by his wife, ”Bröderna Mozart”. This was the movie our prime minister Olof Palme had been to when he was shot in 1986. Also, Glaser is one of two persons I have written a fan letter to (and he replied!); the other one is Kenneth Williams.

Episode 89: Trädgårdsföreningen

District: Heden

Photo date: 27 August 2020

Fredberg gives a vivid description of this area before the park known as The Garden Assocation was established: miasma from the nearby slaughterhouse, morasses in the old glacis, robbers, drunks and prostitues. Tired of these conditions, and of seeing boring houses all day long, the city magnates decided to turn the reasonably wholesame meadow here into a garden centre, for promenades but also as a teaching facility and a nursery (and to move the slaughterhouse to a safe distance). The idea was to spread greenery in the city and in the new areas being planned for exploitation.

The garden has always been a favourite for gothenburgers, even today. So many pretty flowers, a lovely café in the rose garden, exhibitions, the greenhouses, birds… Recently, a number of cormorants have starte lining the shore along the moat, looking for fish. In the olden days, the park was also a dating central, and a place to be seen and admired. It had a fountain around which the glitterati would circle, as depicted by artist Ivar Arosenius.

Kvarteren Luntantu, Carolus Rex, Arsenalen, Kasernen, Boktryckeriet, Fiskaren, Fiskhallen

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Episodes 80 to 84 explore Kungshöjd with its military history, both hidden and erased. Various styles are presented: national romanticism, 1920s classicism, brutalism and 18th century masonry.

Episode 80: kv Luntantu

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 20 August 2020

After the artillery garrison moved out to Kviberg in 1895, the top of the hill here was open for exploitation. Most of the houses were built around 1910, and so it was with this block too. The buildings were partly residential, partly businesses and workshops. Today, almost all of them are converted to housing associations. The house at Hvitfeldtsgatan 14 was built and possibly designed by A Westerlind in 1903. Hjalmar Zetterström designed the corner house at Kungsgatan-Luntantugatan which was built in 1908. When I passed it today I noticed the carpet seller who has resided there for maybe 50 years is gone, it’s just an ordinary interior design shop now.

Episode 81: kv Carolus Rex

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 20 August 2020

The inn Luntantu was situated at the corner house Kungsgatan 7, whatever the name might have meant. On the page where Fredberg discusses this, there is also a picture of the old optical telegraph on Otterhällan. I guess the inhabitants of Ankh-Morpork would call it ”clacks”. Kungsgatan 7 once housed a cinema — and today one of the tenants in the old Gårda Textiles shop is the regional film board!

The houses along Hvitfeldtsgatan were designed by Nils Olsson and Sten Branzell. Gudrun Lönnroth has much more to say about the terraced houses here. As for the bastion, it is again open to sightseeing tours, I passed one group today about to enter the old gunpowder room.

Episode 82: kv Arsenalen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 20 August 2020

When seen from afar, this block looks a bit like a castle or a fortress, which is the effect Eugen Thorburn, the main architect, strived for. The individual buildings were then designed by architects like Hans Hedlund, Arvid Bjerke and Gustaf Elliot. The current buildings stand on the site of the old arsenal belonging to the Göta Artillery Regiment whose barracks stood nearby. The old arsenal looked very much like the current buildings on top of the hill, if old pictures are truthful.

Episode 83: kv Kasernen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 16 August 2020

The chocolate house was built in 1903 and designed by G O Johansson. Today it is of course a housing association. Until the 1970s the whole block consisted of old houses like this, but then the south part was razed to make way for office boxes. The southernmost corner house is curently being rebuilt, possibly as a consequence of the Västlänken railway tunnel which is being constructed right underneath it.

Episode 84: kv Boktryckeriet, kv Fiskaren, kv Fiskhallen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 16 August 2020

In the mid 1800s there was a printing business here, run by Anders Lindgren. When the old house was razed in the 1970s, the new construction became one of the first assignments for the company I worked for: to inspect the new blasted rockface and design reinforcements to secure it from rockfalls. That is a description of pretty much everything we do as engineering geologists. Here is rock. Here is the cavern/slope/pit we want to excavate for our road/railway/utility/house. What’s the best way to go about it? And here is a completed construction: how do we maintain it safely?

The fish market area used to be bigger. East of the tiny block Fisherman was a little house for the old navigation school, torn down in 1913. Since then it has been an open space with nothing much going on. The Fish Church was designed by Victor von Gegerfelt, but for all its conspicuousness it is surprisingly spare when it comes to decorations. There are no decorations at all inside. In fact there is nothing inside since it is no longer in use. It was listed in 2013 and in 2019 closed indefinitely for extensive refurbishment. Also, again: Västlänken righ underneath…

Kvarteren Hästbacken, Otterhällan m.fl., Branten, Bergväggen, Käppslängaren, Telegrafen

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Episodes 75 to 79 take a look at decorations from the times of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, as well as more non-existent decorations of our modern era. Also a whole bunch of ghost buildings that once stood on Otterhällan and its slopes.

Episode 75: kv Hästbacken

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 19 August 2020

The red-brick building for the Melin paper factory was designed by Arvid Bjerke, who was very popular at the time with his national romanticism. His brick and granite houses recur again and again in this series. And Fredberg mentions that nearby there was a champagne factory in deep cellar vaults!

Episode 76: kv Otterhällan, kv Telegrafisten, kv Kraftstationen, kv Ekelunden, kv Hästkvarnen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 16 August 2020

The old power station was actually situated on the property where the paper factory was later built. Electricity manufacture in Gothenburg started in the mid 1880s, to supply shops and the Grand Opry with fashionable light. The first electricity factories were located smack in the middle of downtown, with steam engines driving turbines and belching smoke from tall chimneys. It looks quite remarkable on old photos.

Otterhällan was once a jumble of wooden houses and shacks, all destroyed in the fire of 1804. The newer houses weren’t much better but in the early 1830s an optical telegraph station was built on top of the hill, and in the early 1900s there was a movie studio as well as a tall school among the low houses. You can see them too on old photos.

The hill was covered with an oak forest in the 1600s but it was soon cut down, or burned down in one of the many fires. Just imagine, inside the walled city the houses only went up to about Ekelundsgatan and above that was a forest, where pigs could roam. And a windmill or two on top plus a horse-powered mill below. One old thing that remains is the big fallout shelter (and parking garage) dug into the hill in the 1950s. In preliminary investigations for Västlänken, I got to inspect the rock caverns and see the innards of the shelter — very exciting, you don’t see things like that very often!

Episode 77: kv Branten, kv Bergväggen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 16 August 2020

The fabulous 1920s skyscraper Otterhall was designed by Harald Ericson and built by Karl Alberts. In the early days it had a restaurant at the top, and a bowling alley on the 8th floor. Amazing. North of the Otterhall complex is the relatively new extension for the city archives. The actual stacks are situated in a cavern that is connected to the fallout shelter. And underneath these caverns is the Göta road tunnel and the railway tunnel Västlänken currently being built.

The Ahlberg House at the north end of the cliff was first built in 1783 and then again after the 1804 fire destroyed all the houses here except the Residence. I had actually never been up here before I set out on this project, and there are many other houses and structures and areas I’ve never visited before. It’s a project that keeps on giving!

Episode 78: kv Käppslängaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 19 August 2020

The garrison hospital was built in 1755 but discontinued in 1895 when the garrison moved out from the city centre. It had room for 72 patients. In 1907 it was razed and this new residential building put up instead, designed by Hjalmar Zetterström. The ”old school” in this block was also razed, in 1934, and it had apparently hosed Gothenburg’s first radio station in 1923 or therabouts. Radio was one of the ultra-modern inventions showcased at the 1923 anniversary exhibition, along with Albert Einstein who gave his long-delayed Nobel lecture here.

When the old school was gone, the building called Queen Kristina’s hunting lodge was moved to this site, where it still remains. I’ve been to a couple of tolkienist parties here, it is full of atmosphere.

Episode 79: kv Telegrafen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 19 August 2020

The city has put up these informative plaques on buildings of especial interest. There are also private initiatives, for instance around Fredsgatan, in Haga or on a few houses owned by proud condo associations. The official plaques, with extra information, have been collected in a book called ”100 utmärkta hus i Göteborg”. The word utmärkt means both ”marked” and ”excellent” so it is a pun, for which Gothenburg is famous, nay notorious.

The telegraph or telephone station is a very prominent building, designed as it says on the plaque by Hans Hedlund (his son Björner designed the 1940s and 50s additions) and built by F O Peterson. Its predecessor on the site was the Burghers’ Barracks, so called because after the 1792 fires there were no more private houses for the soldiers to be lodged in and the private citizens really didn’t want to put up with housing them any longer: a barracks must be provided! This building was payed for by the burghers, designed by Carl Wilhelm Carlberg and finally put up in 1793 by soldiers and convicts from Fortress Älvsborg.

Kvarteren Residenset, Stora Bommen m.fl., Merkurius m.fl., Rosenlund m.fl., Surbrunnen

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Episodes 70 to 74 document decorations on the oldest house in Gothenburg and waxes nostalgic over no longer extant buildings, while looking forward to constructions not yet built.

Episode 70: kv Residenset

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 25 July 2020

Here is a block chock-full of history. The Residence was first put up in 1648 by builder Casper Wolter for governor Torstensson, who died before it was completed. The latest rebuild in the 1850s was designed by Victor von Gegerfelt. The blasting operations for the railway tunnel Västlänken hasn’t destroyed the house yet but it has caused considerable annoyance to the tenants in the residential building behind it!

The county administrative house was built in 1734 but burned down in the fire of 1804. It was restored but torn down again in 1923 to make way for the current house, in time for the city’s 300th anniversary. The architect was Sigge Cronstedt.

The Wijk House was also designed by Gegerfelt, with additions by Adolf von Edelsvärd. It used to have a cupola on top of the tower but it was removed when the house was sold to the Svea Insurance Co in 1925. The Atlantica House was built after the 1804 fire and completely remodelled in 1917 from designs by Oswald Westerberg. The Atlantica and Wijk Houses were converted to hyper-expensive condos in 2010.

Episode 71: kv Stora Bommen, kv Stenpiren, kv Verkstaden, kv Redaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 25 July 2020

The river-front used to be bustling with activity: on- and off-loading ships and passenger ferries, trains transporting goods along the docks, cheap labour trying to earn a buck… Technological progress has thankfully put an end to all that, moving shipping activities and factories to the outer harbour. This area is now full of ghosts of long-gone buildings, like Göteborgs Mekaniska Verkstad, the round bath house, the shipping and banking offices… The land itself was reclaimed in the 1850s, replacing a reedy river-bank under an almost sheer cliff.

The Skeppsbrohuset in Big Boom was built in 1934. It was designed by Vilhelm Mattson and Sven Steen and built by F O Peterson & Sons. The western half of the block was designed by Lundin & Valentin and put up 30 years later. The whole shebang was re-clad in 2015, when the new Stone Pier and tram tracks were built too. The area and terminal were designed by Sweco.

In the 1960s it was decreed that motorways should be built around and through the city centre. This meant that the railway that ran along the river-front was replaced with two major thouroughfares and the blocks in their way were torn down, like The Workshop which is completely gone and The Shipowner with only one remaining house. It was built in 1911 and designed by Hans Hedlund and his son Björner who used the exciting new material called concrete. Sweden’s first Chinese restaurant opened here in 1959 and only closed in 2016 when the house was condemned. The marshlands and dredged silt making up the underground is not good for stability and the building was listing visibly.

Episode 72: kv Merkurius, kv Elektricitetsverket

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 16 August 2020

Behind the Mercury House, the new building has now been completed. It is, however, completely devoid of decorations. The rest of the block is still empty. The Mercury House itself was built on the ruins of the old Oscarsdal Brewery which operated here from 1815 to 1856. In 1897, the new house designed by Ernst Krüger was put up, as an office block for shipping businesses. It too was condemned in 2016, in need of foundation reinforcements.

The Electricity Plant was first built in 1902 to supply power to the tram network. The current plant was built in the 1950s. It is still in use to generate power and district heating but it is currently debated not if but when it is to be dismantled, amid all the exploitation going on in the immediate area. The Weigh House Bridge is for example closed due to construction work.

Episode 73: kv Karlsport, kv Esperantoplatsen, kv Rosenlund

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 16 August 2020

Fredberg describes the activities around the Charles or Hållgård Gate in the 1700s and early 1800s, when the customs officials tried to curb the residents’ enthusiasm for smuggling. This whole area was at that time occupied by the Hållgård Bastion and associated defence works, later ruins. In the 1850s it was turned into an industrial estate, with steam-powererd textile mills, bakeries and gasworks.

Episode 74: kv Surbrunnen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 25 July 2020

Would you believe it, a mineral well suddenly sprang up on the hillside north of the Charles Gate in the 1700s and immediately became the centre of a spa. It didn’t last long but gave its name to this nearby block. Before these Jugend tenements were put up in the 1890s, there were villas in leafy gardens opposite the run-down old customs house and bastion, and the rowdy barracks up the hill.

The Salinia house was built for the salt traders Hanson & Möhring, whose company still exists today (but not here). Stora Badhusgatan used to be a motorway until the Göta tunnel was built, and since then hotels have sprung up along it. Other details about the houses in this block can be found in Gudrun Lönnroth’s ”Hus för hus”.

Kvarteren Hyrkusken, Tre Remmare, Neptunus, Stadsmäklaren, Sparbanken, Alströmer

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Episodes 66 to 69 explore more banks along Västra Hamngatan as well as some of the older remaining houses in Gothenburg. When I studied Arabic at the Svea House, we were a very small class, sometimes it was just me and the teacher. One lesson, we went up to the roof right next to Mother Svea and her outstretched arm!

Episode 66: kv Hyrkusken, kv Tre Remmare, kv Neptunus

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 1 August 2020

Bengt Lidner was a poet in the late 1700s, most famous for the expression ”Lidnersk knäpp” which means suddenly becoming much cleverer than before. Apart from that, he is completely unfamiliar to me. He obviously wasn’t born in this very house, from the 1970s, and not even in the one before since his house burned down in the fire of 1804. It also destroyed the Auffort Hired Coaches business.

Fredberg has a lot to say about the original Three Jugs in the 1700s, and George Tod’s inn in the newbuilt house after the 1804 fire.

That fire also destroyed the army store house but a new house was built on the remaining foundations in 1850, from designs by Victor von Gegerfelt. In 1860 it was turned into an inn and a hotel called Christiania, which later moved to Nyeport and became Hotel Eggers. The hotel was extensively refurbished again in 1900, this time by F O Peterson, and the corner entrance with its decorations added in the 1920s. It must have been a popular place with so much building work going on, but in 1966 it was closed, almost demolished, and today contains offices.

Episode 67: kv Stadsmäklaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 1 August 2020

The apothecary shop Unicorn was first established at Södra Hamngatan 13 in 1642 and moved to this address at Kungsgatan in 1915. It was closed in 1975 and is today a coffee-shop with only the canopy above the entrance as a memory of the former business.

The Royal Bachelors Club was founded by Brits in 1769 and given royal patronage by king Gustaf III. They moved around a lot in the beginning: the Dahlgren House at Kungsgatan 41, this house at Västra Hamngatan, the Mühlenbock or Wilson house in Östra Nordstaden and finally their current bespoke building behind the Art Museum.

The Renström House has an informative article at the Old Gothenburg blog, except the block name in the first sentence is wrong. Fredberg describes the man himself as ” ugly as a monkey”. Lucky he was dead by then and couldn’t sue for defamation!

Episode 68: kv Sparbanken

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 1 August and 3 October 2020

The Savings Bank has contained banking and similar businesses for at least 200 years. The Leffler family ran brokerage firms here and eventually consolidated into banking. The current building was a bank from 1907 to some time in the 1980s when the gym moved in. Ernst Krüger designed parts of the building.

The White Architects bureau designed many of the prominent 1960s and 70s buildings in Gothenburg. But they have their offices in an old house, at Magasinsgatan 10. One of their recent projects was the Vesta skyscraper in Gårda.

Episode 69: kv Alströmer

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 1 August 2020

This block contains several listed buildings and is generously covered in Wikipedia, including sources. One of the Krüger sons, Georg, designed the corner house at Västra Hamngatan 1 and Nils Einar Eriksson redesigned it when the decorations started falling down!

The whole block, like most of this part of the city, was completely destroyed in the fire of 1804. Of all the new houses put up in the 1810s, only the two at the west end of Lilla Torget remain, and they were listed in 1980. James Dicksons decorations from 1864 were designed by Johan August Westerberg while the house at no 3 was designed by Michael Bälkow in 1811. Several re-builds have been made, including one designed by Gegerfelt.

The Svea House was designed by Adolf Emil Melander with additional designs by Hans Hedlund and Yngve Rasmussen. The offices were built in three stages: the front along Västra Hamngatan in the 1880s, the middle section along Drottninggatan in the 1890s and finally the back at Magasinsgatan 6 in the 1920s. This latter part was designed by Valdemar Bäckman.

Kvarteren Artilleristallet, Biskopen, Gymnasiet, Sidenvävaren

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Episodes 62 to 65 stroll along Magasinsgatan to look at what the inner city used to be like. The artillery barracks have left their mark, and any number of shops, as well as the bishop and Gothenburg’s first school. All of them have disappeared long ago.

Episode 62: kv Artilleristallet

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

For further information about the houses in this block, see Gudrun Lönnroth’s book ”Hus för hus”. Web sources only say the stables were built in 1835, that the cab company moved in in 1898, and that it has recently been renovated to house bars, clubs and cafés. There are some additional photos in Intermission II.

Episode 63: kv Biskopen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

Again, the Lönnroth book has all the details. A quick web search comes up with a recent trademark filing for the name Carl G Platin Punch, so the brand seems to be relevant still, even if his grand house has long since been turned into other businesses.

The Bishop’s House was built for a trader named Bauch, who decorated the interior with paintings of Captain Cook’s expeditions to the South Seas. Presumably that was too light-weight a subject for a bishop so they were covered up and only re-discovered in 1929. The facade was also covered for a while, with neo-renaissance decorations added by Adrian Peterson iin 1889, and removed in the more austere age of 1938.

Episode 64: kv Gymnasiet

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

The original Gymnasium (Lyceum) was situated off the southwest corner of the cathedral. In 1923, as part of the celebration of the city’s 300th anniversary (put off two years due to after-effects of the Great War), the city adminstration was overhauled and all these block names created. They are also numbered which makes it easier to find them when looking at maps with property designations. Before, the city was divided into ”rotar” or ”sections” which is the translation of the aviation meaning of the same word. So a block was called ”number x in rote y”.

The Telegraph House was built in 1826 by Otto Dymling’s father and designed by Jonas Hagberg. It was a replacement for the Lyceum which burned down in the 1802 fire. Before that, this property held the dean’s house. When the Lyceum moved to the Old Latin school in 1862, it became an auction house, and then in 1892 the telegraph station. Isak Gustaf Clason re-designed the house for its new purpose. Twenty years later, the telegraph moved to a new, gigantic house further up the hill but the house was retained as a training and union venue. The LM Engström highschool bought this house and the Bishops’s House in 1999, and it is once again a ”gymnasium”.

Several other houses are from the 1930s, judging by the style. One of them is Kungsgatan 19 where you can visit the Science Fiction Bookstore, SF-bok, and its lovely Café Sirius. I spend far too much time and money there, every Sunday and twice a month for board meetings with Club Cosmos and bookclub meetings with Mithlond. And since they moved from their second venue in Paddock, they organise a Geek Pride Parade every Towel Day, or thereabouts. An opportunity to dress up and astond the general public as we march down Avenyn.

Episode 65: kv Sidenvävaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

Wikipedia has a lot to say about this block, which otherwise is rather boring, lots of shops. New houses to the north, some older ones retained to the south and east. The latter houses are listed.

The violet house at Kaserntorget 1 was designed by Nils Einar Eriksson and put up in 1956. It was built for a gents’ outfitters called Malmströms.