Etikettarkiv: Bergab

Geological consultants, link in Stora Bält

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.