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

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 Artilleristallet, Biskopen, Gymnasiet, Sidenvävaren

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

Episode 62: kv Artilleristallet

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

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

Episode 63: kv Biskopen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

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

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

Episode 64: kv Gymnasiet

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

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

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

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

Episode 65: kv Sidenvävaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

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

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

Kvarteren Klensmeden, Manegen, Bastionen, Vattenkällan, Gamleport samt Kungsportsbron

Episodes 37 to 41 stroll along the moat and the filled-in East Canal. There are reminders of the city’s military past in the shape of the former bastions, and of older types of entertainment like circuses and cinemas.

Episode 37: kv Klensmeden

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 1 and 3 May 2020

Here is another block that was split in two by a fire-break after 1792. The eastern half is today a shopping complex while the western part, especially along Östra Hamngatan, retains some of the old 19th century facades. Originally, all the houses were lower, though, no more than two storeys. In photos from the 1870s, the city looks so tiny.

There used to be many cinemas in Gothenburg and there was one in this block. With the advent of television and home videos, most of the cinemas went bankrupt and closed. In 1984 Cosmorama was turned into a regular theatre but that didn’t help and today it is a shop.

Next to it is the hulk of another Gothenburg stalwart, the Bräutigams bakery and coffee-shop. The house was built in 1911 and designed by Arvid Bjerke. The firm still exists but these days they only make sweets and chooclates, with a small outlet in Haga or seasonal pop-up booths. If you talk about the old coffee-shop, though, everyone will mention the live piano music for which it was famed, even when I was a kid.

Episode 38: kv Manegen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 3 May 2020

History is rich in this block. The paddock at Östra Larmgatan 16 was set up in 1824, on the ruins of the old city wall, It operated for half a century and was apparently often let to travelling circuses. Around 1880 the horsey enterprise had to move to another paddock in Lorensberg, because August Abrahamson bought the property and put up a fabulous office and warehouse building on it. That house, designed by Adrian Peterson, is still standing and the facade is much the same even if the businesses in it come and go.

The building for the clerks’ union was designed by Hans Hedlund and built by Joachim Dähn. It was used for trade-union and political activities and also had a hotel. When the union moved out in the late 1980s, the University took over and refurbished the house. They are also long gone, however, and today it is used by the Jensen highschool-chain. Highschools is a booming and lucrative business in Sweden.

And the corner house at Östra Larmgatan 18 with the big round balcony was built in 1856 by August Krüger as a residential building. In the 1920s it was re-designed with a meeting hall for the Royal Bachelors Club and on the bottom floor a restaurant that has since given the popular name to the whole block: Gamle Port.

Episode 39: kv Bastionen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 3 May 2020

The Palladium cinema closed in 2008, after 90 years and a plethora of blockbusters. I saw ”Raiders of the Lost Ark” here, laughed at Bruce Willis in ”Die Hard” when the sound system broke down (the scene with the screaming lady as the lift doors open to reveal the dead terrorist and ”now I have a machine gun ho-ho-ho” is very funny when completely silent), and goggled at the person cosplaying Gollum at the premiere of ”The Return of the King” in December 2003, among many, many other enjoyable cinema experiences (and some less enjoyable, like ”Sky Pirates” which we endured in the top floor annex Lilla Palladium).

The house itself was first put up in 1858. In 1917 it was rebuilt as a cinema, designed by Otto Dymling and P Nilsson. There were originally 1028 seats but during subsequent refurbishments, among other things for the Cinemascope screen in 1954, the number dwindled to just 700 when it closed.

Episode 40: kv Vattenkällan, kv Gamleport

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 22 March and 3-9 May 2020

The so-called Hennig House occupies all of the block called Old-gate, and it was built in 1846 from designs by Carl Georg Brunius. Textiles firm Johansson & Carlander (who also put their mark on the Sahlgren House at Norra Hamngatan) bought the house in 1885. The granite decorations were added in a 1920s refurbishment.

Centrumhuset occupies all of the block called The Water Well. It was designed by Nils Einar Eriksson and built in 1938 to house various businesses. And so it does to this day.

Between these two houses stands a statue of king Karl IX, father of Gustav II Adolf. He built the first town called Göteborg, on the north shore of river Göta Älv. The Danes promptly burned it down, though, and caused a lot of other mayhem in the first decade of the 17th century. The area between the houses also used to hold a water cistern and a loop of the East Canal that entered the moat between Old-gate and Bastion. You can see them in old photos and pictures, which also show the old houses in the Water Well block.

Episode 41: Kungsportsbron

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 22 March and 12 July 2020

In the 17th century, the city wall had three gates: the Old or Kings’s gate at this spot, the New or Queen’s gate in the east, and the Charles or Hållgård gate in the west. In Dahlberg’s drawings from those days, the gates look large and imposing, towering over the prancing dandies and dogs in the foreground. But looking at actual dimensions in reality, they must have been quite small, admitting one cart at a time.

This new Kingsgate Bridge from 1900 was designed by Eugen Thorburn. The granite is from Bohuslän and the grand candelabra were originally lit by gas. It must have geen really grand when it opened in 1901. Much better than the old wooden bridge a hundred years earlier and the narrow stone bridge it had just replaced.