Etikettarkiv: Architecture

Kvarteren Valnöten, Mandeln, Persikan, Ollonet, Körsbäret, Päronet

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 224 to 227 trudge through 1970s housing estates to reach the very opposite of that era, a spectacular Jugend confection.

Episode 224: kv Valnöten, kv Mandeln, kv Persikan, kv Ollonet

District: Annedal

Photo date: 23 January 2022

The Annedal House is home to the heritage club Annedalspojkar and to a working class museum. It was built in 1876 as part of the charity housing estate in episode 220. The Annedal School next to it was originally built at the same time but the house we see today was designed by Carl Fahlström in 1883, with additions in 1893 and 1899.

In the early 1970s all the other old houses were replaced with the current buildings. Neither loud and persistent outcries nor de facto listings of valuable houses were heeded. The builders were several: Walter Lundborg Byggnadsaktiebolag, Alexandersson Byggnads AB, Gunnar Zetterberg Byggnads AB, Byggnadsfirma Ernst Rosén and Innerstadsbyggen i Göteborg AB. There is not much else to say.

Episode 225: Kv Körsbäret

District: Annedal

Photo date: 30 January 2022

Before the housing estate designed by Lund & Valentin was put up in the 1970s, Nilssonsberg was a cluster of rickety old buildings along really bad streets. It looked incredibly quaint and it was cheap to live there, but really, the new houses are much better. If also boring.

Last year I visited the fabrics shop housed in the wooden double-villa at Västergatan 1. It was just as fabulous inside as out. The Modernist curved corner house at Lilla Bergsgatan 1 was designed by Sven Steen and Vilhelm Mattson for F O Peterson. The low building was once a bank. On the slope above is a new little park that is not open to the public.

West Coast Trekkers used to rent Bio Capitol a decade or so ago, to meet and watch Star Trek. Like everything else, it has become too expensive for simple clubs. The building was designed by Nils Olsson in 1940. Next to it is another early 1940s house designed by Åke Wahlberg. Skanstorget was regulated in the 1880s, when the first stone houses in Cherry came up. What to make of the market square has long been debated but the current zoning plan is still the one drawn up in 1893.

Episode 226: kv Päronet part 1

District: Annedal

Photo date: 5 February 2022

The 1999 white paper on culturally significant architecture in Gothenburg gives some descriptions of these houses on page 230 and 231. At Västergatan 2 I stumbled across a tiny boutique with lovely fabrics so I had to go in and buy some clothes. Nils Einar Eriksson designed Västergatan 4 which was built in 1942. Strangely, there are some decorations on this Modernist facade.

Episode 227: kv Päronet part 2

District: Annedal

Photo date: 5 February 2022

We conclude district Annedal with shis splendid and well-loved Jugend confection designed by Louis Enders. It can be seen as another conclusion too, of the grand villas along Föreningsgatan.

Kvarteren Krikonet, Plommonet, Aprikosen, Bananen, Konstepidemin, Kastanjen, Hasselnöten

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 220 to 223 explore the remains of old Annedal – working class district and hospital area from the late 1800s.

Episode 220: kv Krikonet, kv Plommonet, kv Aprikosen, kv Bananen

District: Annedal

Photo date: 15 January 2022

District Annedal is one of those working class landshövdingehus areas that has acquired the sheen of a legendary golden age, when everything was good and true. And yes, looking at old photographs from before the transformation, it did look quite picturesque. Even some of the city officials thought so, and fought the other officials who won and razed almost the whole area in the early 1970s. But here just below the Landala Hill, a homogenous charity estate from the mid-1870s was spared. The northern part is more villa-like and was designed by Victor Adler. The southern part belongs to the Robert Dickson Foundation and was designed and built by P J Rapp.

Episode 221: Konstepidemin

District: Annedal

Photo date: 22 January 2022

Before embarking on this project, I had never been to the Art Epidemic. A couple of visits later I realise I have missed out on esthetic experiences! Not least architecturally, with buildings from the mid 1880s to the early 1920s. You can also pet a cat or converse with artists.

Episode 222: kv Kastanjen

District: Annedal

Photo date: 22 January 2022

When I studied computational linguistics around 1990, our lecture halls were spread out over the city. Our main base of operations was Humanisten but we daily trudged over the hill to Chalmers to learn programming. For one course we went to the psychology department in the old Lyckholm brewery south of Liseberg. Soon after, they moved to this typically-early-1990s building. The BASF building has been completed and the conscription office is kept busy now that Sweden finally has joined Nato. It will take a long time before the Västlänken railway tunnel is finished though…

Episode 223: kv Hasselnöten

District: Annedal

Photo date: 22 January 2022

Some older public buildings line the street too. My mother went to the seminary when she was young, and always referred to it as a happy time. The current main building was designed by one G Hermansson in a Jugend-y style. Above it sits the Media House, designed by the Krook & Tjäder bureau in 2006.

The maternity hospital next to it has also been taken over by Campus Linné. It was designed by Axel Kumlien in 1900, with a 1906 extension by Otto Dymling and a students’ lodgings from 1921.

Kvarteren Järneken, Falken, Morkullan, Anden, Sångsvanen, Sothönan, Fiskmåsen, Brushanen, Hägern, Spoven, Berget

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 216 to 219 contemplate the pros and cons of tearing down a whole district of un-modern wooden houses with a strong sense of community, to build modern machines for living where the community spirit has been lost.

Episode 216: kv Järneken, kv Falken, kv Morkullan, kv Anden

District: Landala

Photo date: 22 August 2021

Landala was once a vibrant working class district, with much crime and poverty but a strong sense of community. At least, that is what the inhabitants said in surveys after they had been uprooted in the 1970s ”sanitation” efforts, and sat in their single, lonely flats with all the mod cons. Sure the old landshövdingehus and rustic cottages were picturesque, but cold and draughty with outhouses in the courtyards and only cold water if any. Current inhabitants in the machines for living say they are pleased enough to live there.

The razed area was distributed among seven private entrepreneurs as well as the city’s housing company. The new Landala Torg and the too-brutalist block south of if were designed by Lars Ågren, Ingemar Mattsson and the K-Konsult bureau.

The little chapel that looks forlorn between the Brutalist architecture and the merciless traffic on Aschebergsgatan was built in 1885 from designs by Carl Möller.

Episode 217: kv Sångsvanen

District: Landala

Photo date: 22 August 2021

At the south end of Landala are a couple of blocks that weren’t fully sanitized in the 1970s. The landshövdingehus were some of the last to be built here, in 1915, from designs by O M Holmén and Hjalmar Cornilsen among others. The geology department of the university was located in Sångsvanen until the 1990s: a sign in one of the windows declared this. At that time, I was studying computational linguistics at the Holterman Hospital, then home to the computer science department of Chalmers. The old syphilis hospital has since been further remodelled to become a hostel for Chalmers students.

Episode 218: kv Sothönan

District: Landala

Photo date: 22 August 2021

These eleven disc houses were designed by Sven Brolid – the Brutalism can sometimes be stifling. But the Robert Dickson Foundation always adds some kind of decoration to their facades. The ones in The Coot are quite fun. I work in the same house as the Foundation, maybe I should climb the stairs one day and ask them about their artists?

Episode 219: kv Fiskmåsen, kv Brushanen, kv Hägern, kv Spoven, kv Berget, the water tower castle

District: Landala

Photo date: 22 August 2021

The Brutalist architecture continues up the Landala Hill. These houses were designed by Jaak Lohk who, before joining a private entrepreneur, was one of the architects who developed the new zoning plan for the city in the late 1960s.

The northwest side of Landala is slightly less sanitized than the rest of the district. Here are a few remaining landshövdingehus, a preschool from 2010, and three buildings from earlier expansions of the city’s critical infrastructure. The first water reservoir was constructed in 1871, the little fairy castle (and underground reservoir) came in 1892, a time when Peterson was very busy building water stations and schools, and finally the Jugend pumping station in 1905.

It is now April of 2024 and I can not remember why I didn’t go out to do any photography between September 2021 and January 2022, when the story picks up in district Annedal. How short and fickle the memory is!

Kvarteren Syrenen, Poppeln, Pilträdet

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 213 to 215 cross the Ascheberg street and the tram tracks to district Landala – but first some blocks that were originally part of district Vasastaden.

Episode 213: kv Syrenen

District: Landala (formerly Vasastaden)

Photo date: 5 September 2021

The Lilac Tree and the Poplar were first envisaged as one single block, in Eugen Thorburn’s plan of 1904. West of them would be built stylish cottages. But then Albert Lilienberg changed everything to what we see today, much to Thorburn’s chagrin, as detailed on page 434ff. The stone houses along Aschebergsgatan were built first and a couple of years later came the posh landshövdingehus along Erik Dahlbergsgatan, all in rather heavy National Romanticist style. Some of the architects were Ernst Torulf and Johan Jarlén. When the corner at Kapellplatsen was finally built, after the chapel had been moved, the style had shifted towards 1920s Classicism. Nils Olsson designed this house.

Episode 214: kv Poppeln

District: Landala (formerly Vasastaden)

Photo date: 5 September 2021

Aschebergsgatan 33 with its weird animals was designed by Ernst Torulf in 1913. Otherwise, all the text for Syrenen also applies to Poppeln. The corner house at Föreningsgatan was also built in the early 1920s, but blends in better with the older buildings than Olsson’s house at Kapellplatsen.

Episode 215: kv Pilträdet

District: Landala (formerly Vasastaden)

Photo date: 29 August 2021

The National Romanticist landshövdingehus designed by Arvid Bjerke and R O Swensson were meant to segue into the existing landshövdingehus around Kapellplatsen. They were already some 20 years or older when the modern development started – and only this one example at Kapellplatsen 1 was allowed to remain when the next redevelopment boom started 50 years later.

Charles Felix Lindberg was one of several magnates who donated parts of their fortunes to the city in the late 1800s, early 1900s. The fund bearing his name is targeted towards beautifiying the city, with public art, parks, or rewarding beautiful architectural designs like here at Erik Dahlbergsgatan. Emily Wijk also belonged to the families who donated monies, and her foundation provides housing for a ”better class” of women who are in financial straits.

Kvarteren i Övre Johanneberg och Chalmers

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 209 to 212 explore two separate bodies of architecture: one seminal Modernist group of buildings on a hill, and one agglomeration of academia in a valley.

Episode 209: Övre Johanneberg

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 18 August 2021

In this Modernist dreamscape, every house is its own block: Hämplingen, Snöskatan, Strömstaren, Staren, Stjärtmesen, Lövsångaren, Berglärkan, Blåhaken, Sädesärlan, Steglitsan, Tornsvalan, Rödhaken, Flugsnapparen, Rörsångaren, Klippduvan, Ringtrasten, Alsiskan, Pilfinken and Snösparven.

If Albert Lilienberg was the frontman for 1920s Classicism in Gothenburg, his counterpart for Modernism was Uno Åhrén. As soon as he became planning director in 1927 he ushered in the new era, which really took off in the mid-1930s. Upper Johanneberg is one of the finest examples of early Modernism in Gothenburg. A quick search doesn’t say much about the architects themselves but Erik Friberger designed the lower houses west of Gibraltargatan, says the conservation paper on page 141.

Episode 210: kv Talltitan – Chalmers part 1

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 28 August 2021

If Poseidon and Gustav II Adolf are the physical icons of Gothenburg, Chalmers is their spiritual counterpart. It is a sprawling agglomeration of buildings that in the latest decades also has colonised the northern shore of Göta Älv. Chalmerists, i.e. the students, uphold the mercantile, engineering and clubs&orders ideals of the city’s past.

Until 1962, Chalmers ran its own architectural bureau, naturally headed by the current professor of architecture. Just after the war, this was Melchior Wernstedt who between 1949 and 1960 designed the Gustaf Dahlén Hall, the power central, the students’ union house, the high energy bunker and the library. He also oversaw the construction of the ship’s trial building in 1940. He was succeeded by Helge Zimdal who in 1968 designed the architecture and civil engineering blocks down in the valley. Jan Wallinder was professor of ”formlära” at the time and he designed the administration building and the Palmstedt hall by the campus entrance in 1961.

There was another growth spurt in the 1990s and again in recent years. The students’ union house received an extension designed by Gert Wingårdh in 2000 and the Johanneberg Science Park was built in the last five years. The northern red house acts as a link to the Zimdal buildings, much like the Park itself is a link between academia and industry. It was designed by the Tengbom bureau who also designed the parking garage next to it. The White bureau didn’t want to be upstaged so they designed the rounded southern buildings.

Episode 211: kv Talltitan – Chalmers part 2

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 28 August 2021

When Chalmers was still a private vocational school, it held an architectural competition for their new property in Gibraltar. The winners in 1921 were Arvid Fuhre, Hugo Jahnke, Conny Nyquist and Karl Samuelsson. They designed the first big physics building Origo and the smaller temple-like chemistry building next to it, in finest red-brick 1920s Classicism. Along the now-hidden main facade of the Origo building they placed medallions of famous Swedish scientists: Svante Arrhenius, Anders Ångström, Johan Carl Wilcke, Anders Celsius, Torbern Bergman, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Jöns Jacob Berzelius and Alfred Nobel.

The physics and chemistry departments soon needed a lot more space and Klas Anshelm designed the big brick buildings in 1960, since added to even further. The lecture halls and big red-brick buildings along Gibraltargatan were built in the late 1960s, early 1970s too.

The HSB Living Lab at the south end of the lab buildings is a temporary structure – what it says on the tin, a lab for living in a house. The plans are dated 2016 and the architect is Tengbom. So I guess they will soon pick up their lab and move it somewhere else. The Gibraltar Guest House is also a temporary structure, according the the current zoning plan. The lodgings along the ship’s trial were built in the early 2000s.

As a aside, I can add that my master’s thesis dealt with the gabbro underlying much of Chalmers. It was a lot of fun, mapping outcrops and taking samples, panning for zircons and going to Stockholm to zap them with the ion probe in the basement of the National Natural History Museum. Then I wrestled with Word for a semester and finally boiled down the results in my one academic paper printed in GFF. Where you need a membership to search for it.


Episode 212: kv Talltitan – Vasa Sjukhus

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 29 July 2021

The Chalmers campus has spread northwards too, down the hill towards the old asylum. In 1925, the only house here was the fantastically designed electrical substation by Conny Nyquist (page 140). Then came further physics and chemistry buildings in the 1970s, a microtech centre built by Skanska in the late 1990s and the student lodgings Chabo that was designed by the Wingårdh bureau and put up in 2005.

The Gibraltar Asylum, later hospital, was long feared and shunned as a final destination for the infirm and destitute. It was, however, a considerable improvement over the first asylums at Smedjegatan and Drottningtorget. The mentally ill were transferred to new premises in the 1930s and the hospital was in operation until 2000 when it was taken over by Chalmers and later various businesses.

Kvarteren Stenskvättan, Sidensvansen, Gärdsmygen, Domherren, Törnskatan

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 205 to 208 climb the Trollspisen hill from ancient family history, over 1920s Classicism and early to late Modernism, to end at current undefined styles.

Episode 205: kv Stenskvättan part 1

District: Heden (formerly Johanneberg)

Photo date: 15 August 2021

I have still not managed to sneak into the courtyard at Cederbourgsgatan 4, to see if any trees from the family seat still remain. The stone houses that were put up on the old cottages are too tall and impregnable to admit view. At the City Museum catalogue I can find architectural plans for the newer of the two houses on the plot. Also a newspaper clipping with my grandmother’s writing in the margin! Here is a model that her father made, with a possibly-Messman painting of the houses in the background:

No 85
12:e roten nr 85 Fredhem eller Hallekrogen


The original name Hallekrogen marks it as one of the Gallows Inns that once lined the road south towards Halland. The area had a very bad reputation, not just for the people taking a grog or three before an execution but mostly for the unruly farmers heading back south. And apparently the road was miserable too.

Episode 206: kv Stenskvättan – the Carlander Hospital

District: Heden (formerly Johanneberg)

Photo date: 15 August 2021

The Carlander hospital sits grandly at the top of a slope. Let’s hope the rock and joints are sturdy enough to allow all the tunnels that have been built right underneath it… It stands in the grounds of one of the many old farms in the area, of which the garden is a reminder. It has not yet been developed. Since the hospital was built in the 1920s, only an extension has been added at a place where an original wing was never built. The blueprints for the extension are signed by the White bureau.

Episode 207: kv Sidensvansen, kv Gärdsmygen, kv Domherren

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 13 August 2021

As we climb the street and the hill, we rise up through the architectural stratigraphy. 1920s Classicism gives way to clean Modernism, a 1960s hotel and student lodgings and at the top is late 2010s Neo-Modernism or whatever you want to call it.

The hotel and the adjoining student lodging were designed by Johan Tuvert in 1959. The new lodgings at the bottom of the street were built by Wallenstam. And the pumping station, now offices, was built in 1923 from designs by Eugen Thorburn, with a discreet extension from 1985. The late-2010s highrise called Jarlaplatsen was designed by the Erséus bureau for Skanska.

Episode 208: kv Törnskatan

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 29 July 2021

On top of the hill is a school, where I was caught by a thunderstorm when photographing it. Luckily there were galleries to hide in – also good for hiding shady businesses! Mandus Mandelius is a wonderful name, he should have designed more houses in Gothenburg just for the pleasure of saying his name.

In the 1920s and 1930s Gothenburg had grown so much it had to renew its critical infrastructure. Several water towers were built on the highest hills, like this one designed by Eugen Thorburn in 1924. There is another one near where I live, from 1930. Some of the water towers were converted to student lodgings in the late 1990s.

Kvarteren vid Trollspisberget och runt Liseberg

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 201 to 204 cover a suite of architectural styles from the early 1910s to the early 2020s, with a bit of natural design thrown in for good measure.

Episode 201: kv Entitan, kv Koltrasten, kv Blåmesen, kv Munkeboda, Trollspisen

District: Johanneberg (parts formerly in Lorensberg)

Photo date: 13 August 2021

The block called Munkeboda was originally part of district Lorensberg but got chucked into Johanneberg at the latest administrative reshuffle. Based on architecture and population, it really should still be part of Lorensberg, though, with a consulate, a posh villa by Johan Jarlén, now a school, and yet another lodge. It also has a brand new house designed by the Inobi bureau and put up during the last year. For the other blocks in this episode I refer to a general description of the area, page 126ff.

My grandmother wrote in her memoirs how they used to climb up the hill behind their house and in a crevice light a fire to make coffee. This same crevice gave the name to the hill and it still exists today! For the 1923 exhibition a path was cleared to the hill, for those boring persons who didn’t want to travel by funicular.

Some ten years ago I made a rock survey for a new zoning plan that wants to excavate half the Troll Stove hill and put up two tall houses in the new pit. But that would entail 30 metres high rock cuttings and it is placed right on top of sewers which would give inescapable ”aromas” in the new, expensive condos… The houses have yet to be built. The hill consists of mainly gabbro with various grain sizes. Very pretty.

Episode 202: kv Skokloster

District: Johanneberg (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 13 August 2021

Here is another block that is properly part of Lorensberg. The zones, districts and sub-districts are really confused here… Maybe it’s the ghosts of those who were executed here that play havoc with the minds of city officials? The ghosts didn’t seem to bother my grandmother and her ancestors who lived here for a century. But for the 1923 exhibition, a cable-car was drawn right over this block, which was yet to be built, and over their garden – and sometimes the gondolas stopped and the passengers had to be rescued. So she said.

Episode 203: kv Getebergsäng – inside Liseberg

District: Heden

Photo date: 16 August 2021

Liseberg was one of the many small farms that dotted the area until 1923 or thereabouts. A few of the farm buildings still exist but the gardens have long gone – except maybe here, if you count the funfair as a garden. In her memoirs, my grandmother writes how she visited the manor house once, before the funfair had transformed the idyllic park. She was visiting a school friend who was staying with her relative, the architect Eugen Thorburn.

The 1923 Anniversary Exhibition was a temporary affair, almost ephemeral. And it was a riot of design! Sigfrid Ericson and Arvid Bjerke were the main architects and they created something fairytale-like. All photos from the time are black-and-white but written memories all mention how colourful it was. It was a very ambitious undertaking, with a historical section on the Johanneberg hill and a modern technical section at what became Svenska Mässan. And annexed to that part was the Liseberg funfair, the only part of the venture that wasn’t a spectacular financial loss. So it was decided to keep it and it has generated profit ever since.

Structures at Liseberg come and go, either in planned redevelopment or in sudden fires. The Congress Hall went up in flames in 1973, and the brand new adventure lido that was meant to save the entire tourism sector in Gothenburg melted in a horrid fire a month ago. Wikipedia says the two entrance towers were designed by Axel Jonsson and put up in 1940, as a nod to the two towers from the original exhibition. The pink colour permeating the whole park is said to be the original colour from the exhibition.

Episode 204: kv Getebergsäng (outside Liseberg), kv Sandmusslan, kv Pilgrimsmusslan, kv Immeln, kv Spindeln

District: Heden, Krokslätt (parts formerly Bö and Skår)

Photo date: 16 August 2021

Some 30 years ago I had a job just south of Liseberg and used to walk, run and tram along Södra Vägen almost daily. The big wooden villas and small landshövdingehus that my grandmother knew from her childhood were still there – but just a few years later they had to go to make way for the science centre (designed by Gert Wingårdh) and the award-winning culture museum (designed by Cécile Brisac and Edgar Gonzalez). And for the last six years also for Västlänken. Only the modernist house next to the southern entrance to Liseberg remains, for now…

East of the Mölndal creek the funfair has taken over the city block called Pilgrimsmusslan, where there used to be factories and before that very cheap housing for industrial workers. One part of a larger estate was set off as a sports field and named Balders Hage. This is where the ÖIS football club was started. The factories produced everything from sweets to yarn to engines and some of them were closed only 30 years ago. The Wingårdh bureau also designed the Grand Curiosa Hotel and the lido that burned down earlier this year.

Kvarteren Taltrasten, Näktergalen, Tofsmesen, Göken, Grönsiskan, Lappmesen

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 196 to 200 enter district Johanneberg, a relatively young administrative unit from 1920. The northern or lower part was built up a hundred years ago to an older type of city plan.

Episode 196: kv Taltrasten

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 31 July 2021

The first plan for this part of the city was drawn up in 1901, revised in 1904 and 1917 and again in 1936. It was built up in the mid-1920s to late-1930s – and by that time the styles visualised in the plans had shifted from Jugend over National Romanticism to 1920s Classicism and finally crowned by glorious Modernism.

The lower or northern part of Johanneberg was built to Albert Lilienberg’s plan of 1917. This means curved streets and large enclosed courtyards without outhouses. So the flats in the tenement buildings, like in this block by Hugo Jahnke, were built with all the mod cons like a WC and a bathroom. Even working class landshövdingehus started to get amenities like this at the time, even though the bourgeoisie decried it as an unnecessary and immoral luxury.

Episode 197: kv Näktergalen

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 26 July 2021

Taltrasten and Näktergalen were planned as non-identical twins, a portal to the upper parts of the hill. From the lower Viktor Rydbergsgatan, curved driveways lead up to almost Egyptian-type pylons, as to a grand manor house or castle of yore. Along the street are retaining walls and abutments for the overlying slopes – all carefully designed for sober beauty and monumentality. The architects were Harald Ericson and Ragnar Ossian Swensson.

Episode 198: kv Tofsmesen

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 31 July 2021

When my grandmother’s father suddenly died in 1931, her widowed mother moved to Teknologgatan from the rather pretty little villa in Skår where they were relocated after the city expropriated their century-old family cottage in 1926. During her time here, she would have seen this little block completed in the mid-1930s, and all the radical changes that were soon to come to the Johanneberg area.

Episode 199: kv Göken

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 1 August 2021

More houses should have informative plaques! That would make it much easier writing these narrations. In Majorna, the city’s management company Familjebostäder has put up several plaques relating the history of the landshövdingehus blocks they have preserved rather than torn down and replaced with concrete boxes.

Until all these stone houses were built, district Johanneberg was forested wilderness on the edge of the farms Gibraltar, Johanneberg and the Executioner’s. A creek ran down towards the west more or less along Vidblicksgatan. There is not much else to say about the Cuckoo, a typical late-1920s Classicism courtyard block. However, it’s rather big, and it has signed reliefs on the main facade. But would famous sculptor Carl Eldh really have stooped to such an insignificant assignment?

Episode 200: kv Grönsiskan, kv Lappmesen

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 1 August 2021

My possibly-gay great-uncle Helmer was a banker who lived in a long flat at Walleriusgatan 2. We visited him and his possible-partner many times and it was a flat full of beautiful ceramics and modernist paintings. I say full but it was in no way cluttered, the flat was as elegant as he himself. When he died, my uncle Martin sold some of the paintings he inherited to finance building projects at his country house, so it was ”real” art that uncle Helmer collected. Not bad for a lad born to a caretaker for tennis pavillions!

Grönsiskan sits at the edge of the old planning style with big enclosed courtyards and looks out on the open style that followed. The church also straddles the two eras, Classicism and Modernism, with basically no decorations except a few crosses. My great-uncle used to complain about the bells tolling straight into their flat.

Kvarteren Tre Kronor, Rönnen, Platanen, Kärnan, Bohus

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 191 to 195 conclude district Vasastaden-Lorensberg with a slew of schools from the early 1900s.

Episode 191: kv Tre Kronor

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 25 July 2021

For a long time, the two biggest schools in Gothenburg were Schillerska and Hvitfeldtska – at least according to students and alumni. Now, of course, many more schools abound, but few of them have this kind of monumental presence. It was designed at the end of the National Romanticist era, and not quite as oppressive as for instance the Nordhem school. I myself didn’t go to any of these schools as I grew up in Partille just outside Gothenburg.

The nurses’ home was erected at the same time as the school, during raging world war and desperat shortages of food and everything. We will encounter Caroline Wijk again in later episodes of this series. She left monies and memories as far afield as Kungsladugård, and thus made sure the family name Wijk would live on in Gothenburg. But the family itself, like Ekman and so many of the others, is no longer the shining star it once was.

Episode 192: kv Rönnen

District: Lorensberg (formerly Vasastaden)

Photo date: 24 July 2021

This whole area once held several small farms or rural cottages that are now not even a memory. When CRA Fredberg wrote about them over a century ago there were still people alive who had seen them, he included, and there are a few photographs and paintings in books and the City Museum database. In this area there was Götaberg, Leontinedal, Brantdala, Ulricedal, Katrineström, Kristinelund, Lorensberg and a bit further afield the Executioner’s Cottage.

In 1910, Albert Lilienberg created a plan for the area where a new street with trams ran up to the workers’ area in Landala, between imposing modern tenement houses. This block is one of them, built when Jugend was the hottest thing on the architect’s style palette. Some of those architects were Zetterström & Jonsson and D W Stenfelt.

Episode 193: kv Platanen

District: Lorensberg (formerly Vasastaden)

Photo date: 24 July 2021

Landala was a working class district in the 1800s and for a long time had to do without church or school services. In 1892 they finally got the Landala school, designed by Adrian Peterson who was something of a specialist in school buildings at the time. Many of his public buildings look much like this one: red brick, arch-type details and some stonework frames.

Episode 194: kv Kärnan

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 25 July 2021

The Landala workers must have been very fruitful because only 10 years later they needed another school for their children. Peterson was still active in the school business and quickly pulled the plans for this one out of his hat. For the Götaberg School he has switched to yellow brick but otherwise it looks much like all his other schools.

Episode 195: kv Bohus

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 25 July 2021

Under these watchful faces my grandparents met and fell in love in the 1920s, a hundred years ago.. Charles Lindholm was one of the many architects educated at Chalmers in the late 1800s but instead of staying he went to Stockholm and made a career there. But first he designed this National Romanticist pile for his home city.

Kvarteren Torpa, Aranäs, Axevall, Karlsten, Tidö, Vasakyrkan

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 186 to 190 visit some public and residential buildings from the early 1900s and a couple of Modernist blocks near Götaplatsen.

Episode 186: kv Torpa

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 27 June 2021

The ”front” of Torpa is dominated by a cinema built in 1936, with a facade in yellow brick that was popular at the time. Göta was one of several cinemas along Avenyn, all of them closed and converted to clothes stores or eateries – except this one which was converted back to a cinema recently, and Roy in Aranäs. In Sweden, only one chain of cinemas remains, Filmstaden formerly known as SF, and they decided they wanted an art house too, just like Roy. Thus the miraculous resurrection, coupled with an eatery.

The ”back” of Torpa is 20 years older and built in National Romanticist red brick. The architect was Hjalmar Zetterström and Gustaf Larsson built it.

Episode 187: kv Aranäs

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 27 June 2021

Royal was a cinema that was closed, and then resurrected under the name Roy (to make use of the neon sign without infringing on the copyright of the former name; clever). It used to be a normal cinema but after the resurrection it became an art house, with narrower productions, live transmissions from the Met and other places, and a cinema space that could be rented. The Star Trek association used it for several years, to show episodes on a big screen and hang out with likeminded people. But then the cinema wanted to use all available time for their own screenings and we found other premises. Not entirely easy though, all meeting venues have become prohibitively expensive.

The Royal block was built between 1932 and 1939 and the architects were Erik Holmdal, D Pehrson and Nils Olsson. It is completely Modernist with minimal decorations. The yellow bricks are typical of the time and can be seen in full glory in the south end of Olivedal.

Episode 188: kv Axevall

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 27 June 2021

Axevall was built along with Torpa in the mid nineteen noughties, and designed by Zetterström, K S Hansson and Anders Persson. My father’s aunt lived in a large flat here for a while and we visited in circa 1990. It was big and National Romanticist inside too.

Episode 189: kv Karlsten, kv Tidö

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 27 June and 17 July 2021

The Regional Archives are a lot of fun to visit. For my work, I have sometimes searched for drawings and other information about tunnels etc, which you can look at at the annex on Hisingen. The original house here at Karlsten is far too small to house all the material in Gothenburg, but I once visited with my father when he was much into genealogy in the 1980s. At that time, you had to search by hand and eye, in actual physical ledgers or on spools of microfilm that could be lent to your local library. Nowadays I understand everything is digitised and interpreted by AI. No challenges anymore! The extension from 2010 was designed by the White bureau and among other things it houses a temporary exhibition area.

The Students’ Union house can be rented for events like weddings or science fiction conventions – if you are a student or academic, and if you can afford it.

Episode 190: kv Vasakyrkan

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 17 July 2021

Until the late 1800s, early 1900s, the area around this church held several farms. Then new plans were laid out and several big public buildings were erected. A few forlorn outbuildings can be seen on old photos from the time but they too are long gone. One of the big buildings was this church, which is quite stupendous both inside and out. But I can’t find any information about the parish house. Can you?