Kvarteren Vindragaren, Enigheten, Gamla Teatern, Kronhuset, Wadman, Kruthuset, Franska Tomten, Gamla Tullen

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Episodes 10 to 15 document splendid old houses and boring new ones. Behind the rich facades along the water-fronts, the backstreets in the old days were full of emigrants setting out for America, and of the lodgings and merchants taking their last money before they left the old country. It still looks rather cramped, despite massive re-devlopment in the early 1980s.

Episode 11: kv Vindragaren, kv Enigheten, kv Gamla Teatern

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 March 2020

The block names reflect businesses once active in this area: Wine-puller (self-explanatory), Unity (a gentlemen’s club) and The Old Theatre (not actually in this block but nearby).

However, two of these blocks were re-developed in the 1980s and almost nothing of the old remains. One can possibly understand why: when the number of emigrants lessened, the cheap lodgings and eateries became full of drunks and disorderlies instead.

It’s rather typical that the city administration has commandeered an old building for its offices. Maybe the modern concrete boxes they advocated weren’t satisfactory after all? By the way, the silhouettes on the windows can also be found on the cylindrical lamp-shades at some of our bus and tram stops!

Episode 12: kv Kronhuset, kv Wadman

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 19 December 2019 and 8 March 2020

Kronhuset is one of the oldest houses in Gothenburg, along with the so-called Residence, a warehouse behind it, and of course the fortresses. The reason it remains is, being made of stone, it escaped the many devastating fires (unlike the first city hall) and housed a church for so many years it survived until it was fashionable to have old houses to show tourists.

It is surrounded by former workshops now full of tourist-friendly boutiques. Lerverk sells glass and ceramic art. When they first started in the early 1980s we bought several small animal figurines, very funny. Their shop has moved around a bit before ending up here — in one of them they used to have an amazingly detailed winter wonderland every December.

The block named after a now-forgotten poet, Wadman, runs along the foot of the steep hill. The shack the destitute poet briefly lived in was destroyed in the 1980s re-development and the site now holds a tiny playground, as seen in Intermission.

Episode 13: kv Kruthuset

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 8 March 2020

Gothenburg was first built as a fortified trading post, with massive defence works. Half the population or more were soldiers, housed with the civilians. One of the affiliated services was manufacturing and storing gun-powder, preferably somehwere off in case an accident occurred. Here under the hill, on the other side of a harbour basin full of masts, was suitably off and so this block was named the Powder House.

When the city expanded, the harbour basin was filled in, the quays extended, and a fabulous trading house erected in this block. The merchants JA Hertz & Co commissioned it and the German architect Louis Enders designed it. The style is called Jugend in Sweden and Art Nouveau in English-speaking countries.

The house is a bit inaccessible now, due to works for Västlänken all round and under it. It is very important to maintain groundwater levels when constructing in clays: lower the water table and subsidence will set in and crash goes your lovingly preserved 1901 masterpiece!

Episode 14: kv Franska Tomten

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 8 March 2020

The French Plot sounds like a movie script for a costume drama — and it might well be! When Sweden wanted a lucrative slave colony in the Caribbean in the 1780s, the king made a deal with the French: they got a free-trade agreement and depot area on this plot, and Sweden got St Barthélemy to make money for the Crown. The island was unsuitable for plantations, though, so the island became a free-port for the slave trade instead. The French depot ceased operations in the early 1800s, when the new king fell out with Napoleon. Instead, Gothenburg became a depot for the British.

Anyway, the French memory stuck and the area around the old mast-harbour was dubbed the French plot, and there was a French inn too, apparently. When the new quays were laid out in the 1860-70s, fancy stone buildings were erected along the water-front. In this block, the old post house was torn down in 1942 to make way for a modern HQ för shipping company Transatlatic. In the list here, I know my father served on numbers 202, 211 (which he helped to build) and 217 (I accompanied him on a voyage across the Atlantic in 1989).

The slave trade is reflected in the art adorning the facade and the lamp-post next to the house. I’m surprised it has been allowed to remain, in this era of cancel-culture.

Episode 15: kv Gamla Tullen

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 8 March 2020

The French Plot extended to this site too but in the other corner of the block was the old custums house so that’s what the city planners used for its name. The river-side is however dominated by the HQ for one of the biggest shipping companies in Gothenburg at the time, Broströms. The facade is richly decorated with nautical and martime reliefs, and the glass doors have etchings of the zodiac. Today the building holds law courts so it is rather iffy to photograph it. I managed to sneak by one day and catch some of the zodiac, as seen in Intermission.

The canal-side is also full of impressive trade-houses and residences for the major trading families of the time. CRA Fredberg relates the story of the Björnberg liquor riots, and other facts and rumours about the area. He was a journalist and published a 3-volume collection of articles about the old Gothenburg, as seen from the year 1920. It is full of photos and drawings and a rich source of material for this project. As long as you don’t quote verbatim: somewhat purple prose and not entirely fact-checked stories. And as long as you steer clear of the theatre which he spends far too much text on.

Kvarteren Lilla Bommen, Ljusstöparen, Mätaren, Mjölnaren, Kvarnberget, Navigationsskolan, Stadskvarnen

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Episodes 6 to 10 continue in the old city. When it was first built, it was surrounded by a high wall with several bastions and an outer moat. The city itself was criss-crossed by Dutch-type canals with bars at the outlets into the river. The walls were torn down in the early 1800s and all but one canal were filled in in the early years of the 20th century.

Episode 6: kv Lilla Bommen

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 2 January 2020

What do you call the obstacle placed over the outlet of a canal, moat or river? Boom or bar? And don’t confuse this block with the sub-district just north of here, also called Little Boom/Bar.

The main feature in this block is the old Hasselblad headquarters. The camera company expanded until it owned the whole block. They became world famous when they made some of the cameras used in the Apollo program. The brand name still exists but the company itself has been bought and merged a couple of times. When they finally switched to digital they were way behind most of the other camera companies and also made some bad financial decisions. Their fancy new premises on Hisingen were immediately sold and now the Swedish State Television resides there.

This block reflects the company’s various stages of expansion and re-development.

Episode 7: kv Ljusstöparen, kv Mätaren

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 March 2020

The city within the walls was built around two hills, Kvarnberget and Otterhällan. The Mill-hill is the one north of the main canal and in this episode we look at two blocks along its north side.

The Candle-Maker and The Measurer front the St Erik Street, named after one of the old bastions. The area is currently under heavy construction, to make a new subterranean railroad link. The Gothenburg underground is characterised by hard crystalline rock and very thick layers of glacial clay, overlain by marine clays and riverine sediments. No soft rock or hard soil. This makes building work very ”interesting”, geotechnically speaking. The Turkish-Norwegian-Spanish consortium building part of the tunnel has their work cut out for them, trying to understand our sub-soil.

Episode 8: kv Mjölnaren, kv Kvarnberget

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 8 March 2020

The Mill-hill is quite steep and it has two blocks commemorating the wind-mills that once stood here: Mill-hill and The Miller. Apart from the steepness there isn’t much to tell about these residential buildings.

But underneath the hill it gets more interesting. After the bombing of Guernica, the fire-bombing of London, all German cities and almost all of Japan, and not least the advent of atomic weapons, the city council decided to make civil defence shelters in Kvarnberget and Otterhällan. After the Castle Bravo test in 1954 and the subsequent mad themonuclear arms race, it was felt pointless to build more shelters. But these days, with renewed conventional shelling of city centres, they might come into their own again.

In early geologic investigations for Västlänken, I got to visit the shelter under Kvarnberget in 2012. Awesome! in a chilling sort of way.

Episode 9: kv Navigationsskolan

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 8 March 2020

On top of Mill-hill is the old School of Navigation, where my father once studied to become a captain in the merchant navy.

The leading men in the city long wanted a school to train boys for a life at sea, but an official school was only opened in the 1840s. The current big building on top of Mill-hill was first built in 1862 and re-developed in 1915. An extension was added in 1952.

In 1994 the school was taken over by the Chalmers University of Technology and moved to new premises on Hisingen. The old building has since housed various civil engineering companies like ÅF (later Afry) and Serneke (current owners).

Episode 10: kv Stadskvarnen

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7-8 March 2020

Until the 1970s it was possible to rent cheap accomodation in the old houses in Gothenburg. In this block, The City Mill, we often visited one of my father’s colleagues when I was a kid. It was a very steep climp up the cobbled street, into a courtyard and up rickety stairs to a tiny garret. In the 1970s, much of the city was razed to make way for modern office blocks and housing estates made of concrete. Good-bye cheap garrets!

Ironically, those very concrete housing estate turned out to have been made very shoddily and are now the cheap lodgings decried by the current city planners. Not because they are mouldy and sub-standard but because they are cheap, meaning that they are the only flats immigrants and people on welfare can afford, further meaning that segregation increases and crime erupts. The solution: build new expensive condos and/or refurbish the old flats and raise rents two- to ten-fold, and force the segregated people to move. Or something, I don’t quite follow the reasoning here.

Gustav Adolfs torg, kvarteren Högvakten, Borgaren, Polismästaren, Göta Kanal

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The Facade Project started as a simple ramble and photo activity but after a couple of months I had enough material to start playing with it. Especially if the weather at the weekend was too foul to go out and I had to stay indoors during the pandemic.

Then I started making little videos of what I had found. In a previous Club Cosmos film competition I had discovered how to make Powerpoint videos, a simple and easily accessible way to produce material quickly. Eventually I accessorised my mobile phone with a selfie-stick (for higher altitude pictures) and a better microphone plus a sound-editing app. At work I use CAD so I could make my own background maps — using out-of-date underlays that don’t show the hectic transformation that is going on in Gothenburg these days — and at home I dabbled un-musically with various instruments to make soundtracks. That first slap from youtube copyright check stung! All my material is thus my own.

Which language should I use? I’m Swedish and the subject is a Swedish city with Swedish place names. But I have many English-speaking friends on FB, where I post links to the videos. And since pretty much all Swedes are reasonalby fluent in English, that’s the language I choose for the narration. It makes for some interesting translation problems sometimes…

And with that, here are the first five videos I made.

Episode 1: Gustav Adolfs torg

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 17 November 2019

For the very first video I chose what might be seen as the centre of the city: the square with the statue of our founder, king Gustav II Adolf. The square was laid out when the city was planned in ca 1620 and is surrounded by old official buildings.

In earlier days, it was the centre of official activities like royal visits and similar events. Nowadays, it holds fairs and manifestations, and of course the official christmas tree. On one side are three big flag-poles with intricate bronze reliefs. They show the history of the city up to the biplane era. In fact, they were not made for the 1923 anniversary exhibition, but were made in 1932 by one Herman Bergman.

These first videos are in the original format, with background maps from the Swedish Ordnance Survey and with annoying animations for every photo. In later videos the map is home-made and the animations fewer.

Episode 2: kv Högvakten

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 30 November 2019

Blocks in central Gothenburg were named a hundred years ago or earlier. In this district the names relate to the activities once exercised at the site. This block once held the city guard, next to the city hall. My old dictionary translates ”högvakt” as ”main guard” so that’s what I call this block in my English narration.

The Main Guard once had a cannon in front, for salutes, emergencies and fire alarms. It also held the central fire services. Guns were used for all sorts of things in the old days, apparently. And these days grenades are used to put out fires too.

In this block we also find one of the grand projects from the late 1850s, the Exchange. I once went to a function inside it: quite opulent! And if you go on a guided ghost tour, you’ll hear spooky stories about this building…

Episode 3: kv Borgaren

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 2 January 2020

Gothenburg was founded as a deliberate attempt to create a mercantile city. The king invited all sorts of merchants to settle here: Dutch, Germans, English, Scots — as well as Swedes. And until the mid-1900s, the city remained resolutely trades-oriented. (After that, the city image has been one of Marxism, football, proletariats and most recently, segregation and gangsters.)

In the old Sweden, society was divided into four parts: aristocray, clergy, burghers and farmers. Not peasants — free, land-owning farmers. Of these, the burghers were the most important in Gothenburg. And here is a block commemorating them! My dictionary perferred the word ”burgess” to ”burgher” so that’s what this episode is called.

The old wooden city was frequently destroyed by conflagrations, which is why so few old houses remain. In this block, there once stood the first (tiny) theatre, owned by wealthy merchant John Hall. He made a very large fortune, and his son by the same name managed to squander all of it and died a pauper. This was a favourite story among the old merchants: beware irresponsible prodigy!

Episode 4: kv Polismästaren

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 2 January 2020

The tiny house at the end of the block was once the main police station. One of the chores they had was to check all the prostitutes for syphilis, and one of the subjects was Elizabeth Stride. When she moved to London she was killed by Jack the Ripper!

The nick is of course the reason this block is called The Police Commissioner. But it’s a long time since the tiny house served the long arm of the law. For some time now it has held the city medical museum: gruesome displays of old instruments, huge kidney and bladder stones. The house is old and in need of renovation. It might open again in 2023.

These early episodes are short and without explanatory narration. Later episodes get more verbiose.

Episode 5: kv Göta Kanal

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 2 January 2020

Shipping was important in the old Gothenburg. There were shipping companies, outfitters, agents, wharves, transports and dockers. Once the river was dredged and proper quays erected, big ships could land right next to the city centre instead of out in the estuary. All that has disappeared, of course, due to shifts in economy and technology, and because ships have become impossibly large. Once again they have to land far out in the estuary and the goods transported inland by other means (trucks).

One of the means of transporting inland was by canal. The Göta Canal was built in the 1830s and it long had a regular shipping line of the same name. The western terminus was here in Gothenburg and the shipping company has given name to this block.

When companies erected houses for themselves in the old days, they often incorporated their logos in the facade. And when the company moved out, its memory still lingers, like here with the Johnson Line. In 1990 it merged with Silja Line and ceased to exist, except in this relief.

Architecture, geology and whatnot

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The Facade Project on youtube was started in 2020 and is still ongoing. The idea is to document every architectural decoration on every facade in every block in Gothenburg.

Since I am a geologist by trade, there is of course also a section on rocks. And tunnels, railroads and stuff I work with and find interesting

And the whatnot section deals with miscellany like shortfilms, science fiction fandom, tolkienism and other things that can’t be described as Architecture of Geology.

Enjoy!

Architecture
Geology
Whatnot