Episode 16: kv Ostindiska Kompaniet

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 5 April 2020

The Swedish East India Company was first set up in 1731, to fetch tea, china and silk from the Far East without paying Dutch and English middlemen. Some ten years later the company directors decided to build a big warehouse for their luxury goods, and this block is it.

A hundred years later, much of the building became the City Museum. The museum was small enough to hold everything from weird animals to art. Later, the collections expanded and in 1923, the year of the big 300th anniversary exhibition, the arts and animals moved to separate museum buildings.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by Native Americans and the museum had a fabulous ethnographic section including artifacts from both North and South America. I especially remember the top floor with the big display boxes with models dressed in fantastic South American feather decorations. They were soon taken down, though, and now I wonder if the memory is real or a fantastic dream recollection like Randolph Carter’s city…

Episode 17: kv Ostindiska Kompaniet inuti

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 27 June 2020

For a small fee you can visit the museum and look at the inner courtyard. In the beginning it was an open yard with cobbles, where merchants could come and get their luxury goods. In the mid-1800s it was turned into a garden for the museum. And in 1890 it was closed in, when the Wilson Wing along the back of the block was added. The wing was designed by Hans Hedlund and the paintings were made by Yngve Rasmussen, who also decorated the Gnome House in Vasastaden.

The inside of the house is well-decorated too. But in this project I limit myself to the outside of houses and only those inside areas that are open to the public. I made an exception in this case because it is a funny little place.

Episode 18: kv Lilla Berget, kv Traktören

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 March and 5 April 2020

”Gothenburg’s Trade and Shipping Newspaper” started in 1832 and soon became the major newspaper in town. In the latter half of the 1800s it was dominated by S A Hedlund who was one of the biggest names in Gothenburg history, period. He and his nephew secured the services of one of Sweden’s best-loved poets, Viktor Rydberg. And during WWII, the paper was run by Torgny Segerstedt who was an active anti-Nazi. A grand legacy — and in the 1970s the paper went bankrupt and is now just a memory.

One of the reasons it died was the other major newspaper in town, Göteborgs-Posten, which had a less liberal and more conservative focus. In the 1930s, when its new production house next to the railway station was built, it had 500,000 readers, in the 1980s 600,000. The digital era put paid to their activities too but the ”paper” still exists, at least.

The house in this block was built in the late 1870s and housed offices and printing presses. Before that, the site consisted of a Small Hill with a nasty slum. Right next to the grand residences and official buildings!

Episode 19: kv Rådhuset — Sahlgrenska huset

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 March 2020

The block called City Hall consists of three separate houses, each richly decorated enough to warrant splitting the block into three episodes.

In 1717 the very wealthy and influential merchant Jacob Sahlgren bought the stone house that stood on this property, until 1746 when it was destroyed in one of the savage fires that used to sweep through the crowded wooden city. His widow Birgitta had this splendid new house built for her son Niclas Sahlgren. The upper floors were residential while the lower floors and cellars held offices and magazines for the trade.

In 1873 another very wealthy trader bought the house and he and his partner added their initials to the remodelled portal: CC for Christopher Carlander and JJ for Johannes Johansson. The city took over the building in 1905 and various services have had their offices here since.

Episode 20: kv Rådhuset — Christinae kyrka

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 March and 5 April 2020

The middle part of the City Hall block holds the so-called German Church. The congreation is just about as old as the city itself but the first building was destroyed in a fire in 1669, and the new building partially destroyed in the fire of 1746. The current building was put up on the 1660s foundations and was completed in the 1780s.

It actually had graves around it and inside it. The famous 1600s general Ascheberg had an addition built on the east side, to house his casket. It miraculously survived the fires. In the tower is a 1962 glockenspiel that you can barely hear over the traffic noise.

Episode 21: kv Rådhuset — själva Rådhuset

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 December 2019

The eastern end of the block holds City Hall itself. It consists of two parts, one from the late 1600s and an extension from the 1930s. I’ve never been inside, but the interior is said to be a marvel of modernism. The facade decorations on the extension are called The Four Winds and were made by artist Eric Grate.

City Hall is still in use, for the politicians and for civil marriage ceremonies. In the old days the basement held the Exchange as well as a beer-hall. The Exchange was moved in 1849 to its own spectacular building at the other end of the Gustav Adolf Square.