Etikettarkiv: Carlberg

Architect, link in Domkyrkan

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 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 Domkyrkan, Varuhuset, Larmtrumman, Saluhallen, Blomsterkvasten samt Grönsakstorget

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Episodes 52 to 56 document decorations on the Gothenburg Cathedral, and the area south of it. The cathedral is also called Gustavi Cathedral, after the founding king Gustav II Adolf. South of it are many shops, along the in-filled West Canal.

Episode 52: kv Domkyrkan

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 30 May 2020

Work on the cathedral started just a few years after the foundation of the city and it was mostly destroyed in a fire in 1721. The restored church was destroyed in the fire of 1802 and the current building put up around 1815. It was designed by city architect Carl Wilhelm Carlberg and the outside, at least, is very much the same after 200 years. These days you can visit the tower, which I did in May 2022 during the Geek Pride Parade day. A very enthusiastic priest guided us around the bells, the joists, the hidden Dalek…

The area around the church used to be a cemetery until the Old Cemetery was established in Stampen around the time the new church was built. From the 17th century until the 1802 fire there also were houses along Västra Hamngatan and one of them was the ”gymnasium” — the contemporay trasnlation is ”highschool” but perhaps ”lyceum” might be more appropriate here. Whatever that is.

The well-house by Västra Hamngatan was built in 1816 and designed by Carlberg’s successor Jonas Hagberg. The water came from a spring many miles to the south and was sorely needed in this salty and polluted city. Tanneries, cattle, no sewage system, all built on marshy land… No wonder they drank so much beer in the old days.

Episode 53: kv Varuhuset

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 20 June 2020

The refurbishments on the modernist corner house at Västra Hamngatan and the 1970s house next to it have since been completed. Not many decorations to note in Intermission, though, not even the big exterior thermometer that used to adorn the Ströms house.

The Dahlgren House was built by John Lyon in 1805 and sold to the Royal Bachelors Club in 1807. They again sold it to wholesaler Dahlgren who lived there until his death 40 years later. In my days, I remember it as the Nyberg hardware store; they set up shop there in 1905. The Meeths House was built by F O Peterson in 1910, after clearing away the older buildings put up by the iron traders Ekman & Co. City renewal is not a modern thing!

My father’s mother’s father’s father’s mother’s daughter in a previos marriage (known as aunt Lina) had a small shop at Vallgatan 26, where she sold ”fripperies”. My grandmother described the shop in her memoirs: ”Den 30.11.1859 gavs tillstånd till ‘Myndiga Pigan Maria Carolina Gunnarsson att idka nipperhandel i Göteborg’. Det innebar troligen, att hon sålde sk galanterivaror, smycken och även begagnade kläder i kommission. I ett litet rum bakom affären kokade hon sitt kaffe i kakelugnen i en liten kopparpanna på trefot.”

Episode 54: kv Larmtrumman

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 20 June 2020

Not much to add to the narration in the video. My sources are all in books and the websites don’t mention this block at all, despite all the decorations. It’s all shops, shops, shops.

Episode 55: kv Saluhallen and Bazarbron

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 19 August 2020

Here is a postcard of the Bazaar Bridge in the 1900s. I have no real memories of the old market hall house that caused such uproar when it was demolished, but I have all the more memories of the cineplex. In the basement are toilets, smaller theatres and the remains of the bastions.

The house with the cupola, where the Chinese consulate resides since 2004, was built in 1850 and designed by Heinrich Kaufmann. One of all the many banks bought it in 1891 and redecorated it, with the cupola and gates as well as the interior. It is/was called the Eckerstein House after the bookshop that resided there from 1975 to 1991. It was the university bookshop with more hardcore books than the light entertainment mostly sold elsewhere. But if I look back, even minor bookshops had better and wider selections than the simple fare on offer today.

Episode 56: kv Blomsterkvasten and Grönsakstorget

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 9 May and 16 August 2020

The houses along Västra Hamngatan were built and designed by August Krüger. The street itself was created when the old West Canal was filled in in 1907. It had long been a rather neglected canal, despite the proximity to finance and bishop; it was only clad with stone in the 1850s and the stagnant water gave it the name Filth Canal. If you look at the stone wall along the moat, you can see where the old canal emerged, because the stones are different.

The Vegetable Square is laid out on a stretch of city wall between the bastions Johannes Dux and Carolus Dux. Until the 1830s there used to be a rope-walk running over what is now the square; it was set up in 1746, the time of the Eastindia merchantmen. There was also a garden here, so it probably seemed logical for the powers that were to locate the vegetable market here, when they decided to regulate open commerce in the 1870s. The meat market was directed to the King’s Square and the the fish market away from city hall, to Pustervik.

Kvarteren Bokhållaren, Frimuraren, Kommerserådet, Holländaren, Domprosten

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Episodes 47 to 51 document the facades of the former financial district in Gothenburg. My father’s father’s brother worked in one of the banks at Västra Hamngatan, but I can never remember which one because they all had very similar names!

Episode 47: kv Bokhållaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 30 May 2020

I wonder what the Kiel shop looked like, before the house was turned into a bank with insanely rich facade decorations. Probably it was low and sober like the other bourgeois houses of the time, with shops and warehouses on the lower floors and living spaces upstairs, and only few facade decorations around windows and doors.

And I wonder what the first city looked like, the wooden one in the 17th century, beset by Danes and harsh weather, slowly growing more cramped inside the walls as more and more houses were built. The Old Gothenburg site doesn’t have much data on the houses in this district except lists of owners of the various properties. It just gives a hint about what sort of businesses operated here in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Wikipedia is more forthcoming (and so are library books but it’s more difficult to generate links to them). Shops, banks and insurance companies have put their marks on the old houses, sometimes violently, and in the last couple of decades many of the removed decorations have been replaced, because apparently most people enjoy decorations and find bland facades depressing. Who knew?

Episode 48: kv Frimuraren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 17 May 2020

After the devastating fire of 1802, the old wooden structures along the Main Canal were replaced with stone buildings, with more or less uniform design. At the time, a sober, mostly decoration-free classicist style was popular and would, I guess, have been approved by modernists a century and a bit later and perhaps even by today’s minimalists.

Again Wikipedia is a good summary of sources that are physical books in the library. A summary of the summary: the Central Bank was designed by Viktor Adler in the neo-renaissance style of 1886, when it was built. In 1941, when functionalism or modernism was king, the facade decorations were removed, and again restored in 2001. The Freemason House was originally designed by Justius Fredrik Weinberg but remodelled in 1878 by Adrian Peterson, and again in 1916 by Ernst Torulf. The corner house towards Brunnsparken was built in 1978 and designed by Anders Tengbom and H Bengtsson. The attempt to blend in with the older buildings isn’t entirely successful…

Since the late 1700s, clubs and orders of various kinds were on the rise, also among the bourgeoisie. The orders were convivial associations with food, drink and merriment, but also had a social agenda with charities and helping brothers (no sisters!) in need. I know my father’s mother’s father and later his widow had great help from the Odd Fellows when things were tough.

Episode 49: kv Kommerserådet

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 17 and 24 May 2020

Banks and insurance companies tend to cluster together, much like a herd of nervous cows (I did not say sheep). Gothenburg’s first financial district was along the south side of the Main Canal, in the early and mid 1800s. The financiers looked out on the embankment, reinforced with stone cladding and with recently added bollards & chains to stop people falling into the water. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the banks and insurers clustered around the filled-in Västra Hamngatan, in increasingly tall and opulent financial palaces. And in the 1970s, they all moved to the brand new premises in Östra Nordstaden. Some of them might still be there, unless they have all moved to the cloud by now.

Summing up the next Wikipedia summary, the Chalmers House was designed by the first offical city architect, Carl Wilhelm Carlberg, who among many other projects also designed the current cathedral. The Skandia House on the corner was built in 1910 and designed by Gustaf Wickman. After the bank moved out in the 1970s it was turned into flats. The funny italianate renaissance house at Västra Hamngatan 4 was designed by Hjalmar Kumlien in 1891 and the top floor, added in 1920, by Ernst Krüger. Krüger also designed the Gothenburg Trading Bank in 1904, and the other banks east of it were designed by Arvid Fuhre and Conny Nyquist in 1921.

The pilastered house at Korsgatan 3 was probably designed by the Weinberg who designed the Freemason House. The apothecary shop operated at the site from 1658 to 1921, when it and the corner house to the left were bought by a bank and remodelled. The middle of the block consists of a large condo and office complex from 1980, after all the banks had moved to Östra Nordstaden. The facade by Rune Falk is utterly bland.

Episode 50: kv Holländaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 30 May 2020

The crumbling facade at Lilla Kyrkogatan 1 has since been restored, and a firm of architects has moved in. Lilla Kyrkogatan was accidentally laid out during a fire in 1757, when a fire-break was made in the original single, long block. Thus was born the blocks Dutchman and Dean.

Along Västra Hamngatan, number 8 was built for Gustaf Rudolf Prytz in 1816 and designed by city architect Jonas Hagberg. In 1886 the house was bought by the recently established sea-insurers Ocean, which merged and grew over the next century. One of the mergers was with Gauthiod, the sea-insurers that from 1900 occupied Västra Hamngatan 10.

Episode 51: kv Domprosten

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 30 May 2020

Buttericks has operated in this house since 1913, apparently. A hundred and ten years of selling whoopee-cushions, balloons and wigs! One of the charms of visiting it, apart from all the novelty gags, is the sheer age of the house. Wooden, cramped stairs, small rooms on the top floor, old counters… It’s like a visit to the Natural History Museum, which is like a museum-museum.

When I was a kid, one might go from shopping at Buttericks to the other side of the block and have ”pyttipanna” at Weises, at Drottninggatan 21. It was a narrow restaurant that seemed really old even back then, with dark brown furniture, old drawings by Albert Engström on the walls and staff that seemed ancient. And the best pyttipanna ever. The first Weises was a beer-hall at Södra Hamngatan 17, from 1893 to 1900. Then it re-opened at Drottninggatan in 1907 and from 1930 it was run by the Lanner family until it had to move out in 1993.