Etikettarkiv: Enders

Architect, link in Kruthuset

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 Furan, Granen, Linden, Aspen, Sälgen

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 161 to 165 witness the sprouting of tenement buildings, schools and scandalettes in circa 1890.

Episode 161: kv Furan part 3

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 18 April 2021

What is a ”tomte”, plural ”tomtar”? In American, it is usually translated as ”elf”, especially for small tomtar that help Santa Claus or Father Christmas. ”Gnome” is another term used, commonly for the garden variety. But the more original type in Sweden is the farm tomte: a small entity looking after the farm and helping the family, if they behave courteously. They were a staple of children’s faritytales. Later, this kind of tomte became conflated with the Christmas character, Jultomten, who is basically Father Christmas/Santa Claus. But before Jultomten, the main yuletide creature was the Christmas Billygoat, still remembered as a Christmas ornament made of straw.

On the house fronting Vasagatan 11, Thorvald Rasmussen, brother of one of the architects, painted several tomtar being industrious, as well as other fairytale creatures. The house is a sort of German Neo-Renaissance Alpen-style, quite at odds with anything else in Gothenburg. When it was built, this was still an area with large villas and it fitted in quite well. Even the taller residential building behind it, built a few years earlier for the whole Hedlund family, didn’t clash as much with the genteel surroundings. But a few years later, the villas gave way to stone colossi…

From my tolkienist friends, I learn that the Odd Fellows are still going strong, as are all the other old orders too. One would have thought the social democratic system that has pervaded Swedish society since the 1930s would have stamped out such activities – but the social democratic party can, if you want to, be seen as a great big lodge itself!

Episode 162: kv Granen

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 1 May 2021

When I first started on this series in early 2020, it was just for my own personal enjoyment and maybe to show my hometown to some lexxian and tolkienist friends on social media. Just a bit of fun. I added some normal music, without narration. Boom! the youtube copyright algorithms struck! So I decided to make my own soundtracks, it being difficult to schedule recordings with friends who are actually good at making music. And I started narrating more intensely, to mask the bad soundtracks. Of course, the narration soon spiralled out of control, and for this long block I have included pretty much all the text I could find in ”Vasastaden-Lorensberg” and the block entry in the Old Gothenburg blog.

Regarding the farms that many of the new 1800s and 1900s blocks were put up on, there is an informative paper (in Swedish) that can be found in the city museum catalogue, with a map of the general area of this episode on page 29. There are many more potentially interesting papers in the catalogue, with the tag ”kulturmiljörapport”.

Episode 163: kv Linden

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 24 April 2021

When my grandmother went to school here in the late 1910s and early 1920s, all the big stone houses around it had already been built. She described her walk to school from the family cottage on the edge of town, passing horses, crossing still un-built areas and describing various characters along the way. But in 1889 the area was still semi-rural, with intense exploitation just around the corner.

The girls’ school itself is described by both CRA Fredberg and the Old Gothenburg site (and of course in ”Vasastaden-Lorensberg”, page 174).

Episode 164: kv Aspen

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 22 May 2021

Water pipes, bowls courts, farms, bandits, shops and tenants – the history of this block is quite rich! Once the farm, the inn and the shacks had gone, stone houses were put up around 1890. At the northern and western sides, the builders/designers were H & J Börjesson, Nathan Persson, Hedström & Svensson and C B Andersson. The rest of the block had to await new planning from Albert Lilienberg in 1910. The eastern part was built up along the steep street in 1912, from designs by Hjalmar Cornilsen and Zetterström & Jonsson. The south end wasn’t completed until the late 1910s. So we can study the architectural fashions over 30 years: French, German and Italian Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Gothic, Jugend, National Romanticism and the precursor to 1920s Classicism.

Episode 165: kv Sälgen

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 1 May 2021

CRA Fredberg devotes almost a whole chapter to this school. Apparently, there was a scandalette over the architectural contract, involving the Hedlund family: S A made sure his nephew Hans won it. Björner son of Hans designed the extensions that were added in 1912. As Björner also did with Hans’s library building in 1926. What a family saga!

Kvarteren Vik, Nyköpingshus, Rydboholm, Avenboken, Björken

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 141 to 145 slog around long and lavishly decorated upper-middle class facades at Vasaplatsen.

Episode 141: kv Vik

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 28 November 2020

The Baptist Tabernacle, the Ladies’ School for Girls, pastry chefs and a celebrated man of letters. This block has it all! Including a full narration about design history.

Episode 142: kv Nyköpingshus and Vasaplatsen

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 5 December 2020

Fredberg and ”Vasaplatsen-Lorensberg” (e.g. page 218) write much about the history and the architecture in this area.

As you venture further from the inner city and further in time from the 1880s, lions on facades start to thin out and eventually peter out entirely. In Vasastaden they look very similar, probably because many of the decorations were mass-produced elements that could be added onto any new house. So the facades look unique and spectacular but really they are all much the same. Like teenagers…

One of the victims of the terrible tram crash of 1992 was Åsa Walldén, who had just finished writing a 16-page pamphlet about architecture in Kungsladugård. I’ve made heavy use of it in part 384 ff of this series.

Episode 143: kv Rydboholm

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 1 November 2020

On the south edge of Kungsparken is a string of smaller blocks meant to resemble the so-called patrician villas that dotted the park before the stone city of Vasastaden-Lorensberg was planned and realised. Most of these small blocks are designed as one entity, but some consist of two properties. In this block, the western half was built by the H Börjesson company in 1897 and the eastern half by O A Burman. But the facades for both halves were designed by Carl Crispin Peterson, son of Adrian. The style is described as Tudor Neo-Gothic.

Episode 144: kv Avenboken

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 19 December 2020

On page 269 of ”Vasastaden-Lorensberg”, Staffan Sedenmalm writes about the so-called park blocks and the general design history of the area:

Under 1890-talets senare hälft fylldes äntligen den gapande luckan i stenstadsfronten mot parkbältet. Tio år efter tillkomsten av Wijkska villan – den enda privatbostaden i denna märkliga svit av nio kvarter – blev nämligen de fyra sista parkkvarteren, två på vardera sidan av Vasaplatsen, uppförda. Tre kvarter bebyggdes med två samgestaltade bostadshus vardera, två av kvarteren för olika byggherrar. Det blev en skarp kontrast mellan de äldre kvarterens aristokratiska arkitektur och de nya med ett borgerligare kynne. Mot 1870- och 80-talens nyrenässans, formad av mått- och formprinciper som övertagits från de gamla mästarnas läroböcker och översatt från två à tre palatsvåningar i naturlig sten till hyrespalatsens fyra våningar i stenimiterande putsornering, ställdes nu de fem våningar höga tegelborgarna med sin enklare vertikala indelning och en fasadbehandling som likställde våningarna i rang. Stil- och formmässigt fick liksom tidigare varje parkkvarter sin egen karaktär. Till detta bidrog tegelsorternas rikt varierade profilprogram och kulörer med möjligheter att kombinera samstämda toner. Ett verksamt uttrycksmedel i dessa tegelfasader, rikare på kulör än plastisk form, utgjorde järnbalkongernas organiskt sirliga konstsmide. Karaktäristiskt för 1890-talets parkkvarter blev de isärdragna fasaderna på kvarterens baksida – således exponerades bakgårdarnas påvra fasader mot Storgatan ovanför en stängselmur i fasadens arkitektur med en port till respektive gård. Såväl gårdsfasader som brandgavlar fick – med undantag av ett kvarter tillhörigt en inflytelserik organisation – en enkel beklädnad av grov spritputs.

Staffan Sedenmalm, ”Vasastaden-Lorensberg. KULTURMILJÖ AV RIKSINTRESSE I GÖTEBORG. Planering och byggande utanför vallgraven 1850-1900”, Länsstyrelsen Västra Götaland 2016:43

Episode 145: kv Björken

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 23 January 2021

Opposite city block Rydboholm is another equally long block that takes a very long time to explore and document. Several big-name architects and builders contributed to the splendid facades towards Vasaplatsen and Vasagatan, as listed in the narration and the block’s entry in the blog about Old Gothenburg.

In the very early 1980s I went to yoga classes in a flat at Vasaplatsen 3. It was really big, some six rooms (and a tiny bathroom) with plaster decorations around the ceilings and all. It must have been really expensive even at that time. Since then, almost all flats around Vasaplatsen seem to have been converted to offices and clinics and dentists’.

Kvarteren Gestilren, Herrevadsbro, Lena, Åsle, Lützen, Brännkyrka

Publicerad den av
Svara

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.

Kvarteren Arkaden, Värnamo, Perukmakaren, Vallen, Synagogan

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 33 to 36 explore the mercantile history of downtown Gothenburg, and encounter the builders and architects that will be name-checked again and again in the series. There is also a tiny bit of Jewish history.

Episode 33: kv Arkaden

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 3 May 2020

We talk about destruction of the inner city and megalomaniac plans to put up hideous constructions where once stood quaint and pretty houses. It must have been just the same in 1898 when the 100-year-old houses in this block were torn down to make way for a fabulous new shopping centre, the Arcade.

The consul Gustaf Bolander together with some wealthy cronies had this wild idea and put it into action: to build a private street through a block with tall buildings and towering… well towers at the entrance. In the buildings should be shops and businesses, and a hotel. Being wealthy, they could put up the capital and hire architect Louis Enders to design the block.

In 1899 the eastern half was put up but the venture foundered and the western part was moved to Packhuskajen, with some modifications, and put up as the Hertzia House. And there we can still see what the former Arcade might have looked like, since the whole shebang was razed in 1972 and the current bland building put up instead. It does have an indoor street, though, and the clock pillar is supposed to echo the old towers. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Episode 34: kv Värnamo, kv Perukmakaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 3 May 2020

These were originally one block but after the devastating fire of 1792 it was decided to lay out a new street, Fredsgatan, as a future fire-break. Thus the block was split into two, Värnamo in the west and The Wig Maker in the east. All original buildings — well, original after 1792 — were destroyed in the blitz of the 1970s, for which no breaks had been emplaced.

Nordiska Kompaniet is a stupendous shopping mall in central Stockholm and this house here is the Gothenburg branch. But there was a department store in this block before NK moved in: Ferdinand Lundquist & Co. Mr Ferdinand started the shop in 1863 and in 1911 his sons took over. It started as a sort of interior design shop and expanded into a regular department store, taking over the whole block in the process. In 1967 it was sold to NK and then this box, typical of its time, was put up.

It is still the poshest and most expensive department store in Gothenburg. When I was a kid, I used to accompany my mother there and I remember there was a piano bar and a small stage in the restaurant on the top floor. The old vaults in the basement were more interesting but we didn’t go there often; I guess the clientele was less suitable for small children.

Episode 35: kv Vallen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 1 May 2020

Gothenburg was built as a fortified city, to protect the lucrative trade inside from the marauding Danes. So the city was surrounded by a wall, itself surrounded by a moat (still extant), plus an outer glacis and other defence works. The wall, originally earthen but later made of proper stone, was reinforced with several bastions. All sorts of 17th century defensive works were constructed too, ravelin, caponnier and submarine obstacles in the river.

In the first decade of the 19th century all this was hopelessly obsolete and an impediment to the city’s progress. The Crown allowed the city to tear down the walls and bastions, thus opening up the cramped city to lovely vistas and untrammeled expansion. It took some decades but here along the moat were finally put up these fine residential buildings.

The block name still recalls the old fortifications. Unlike many of the neighbouring blocks, houses here were mostly designed by P J Rapp or Gustaf Jährig. For the inner city, I used the excellent source ”Hus för hus i Göteborgs stadskärna” by Gudrun Lönnroth. It gives a short presentation of the buildings and historical tidbits associated with them.

Episode 36: kv Synagogan

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 1 May 2020

The posh houses along the moat continue, again designed by August Krüger. He was one of the biggest builders at the time, along with e.g. Rapp and Dähn, and then F O Peterson whose company is still very much active in Gothenburg. In Krüger’s time, many of the builders were also architects and designed their own constructions. But there were also regular architects, for example Carlberg, Gegerfeldt, Enders, Peterson and Hedlund. These names crop up all the time in my sources.

Until the end of the 18th century, pretty much everyone who wasn’t Lutheran was forbidden to live in Sweden. But then Jews were allowed to settle, officially, and they soon became an important and exuberant part of city life in Gothenburg. Not only as businessmen but as bringers of culture and wit to the lugubrious Swedes (and English, Scots and Germans).

In the 1850s, August Abrahamson bought this strech of waterfront with a mind to build a proper synagogue. The block was built as one design entity and is pretty much unchanged since those days. The synagogue is still in use but with an increasingly tight security perimeter around. We might have escaped Hitler but in these latter days, anti-semitism is on the rise again.

Kvarteren Vindragaren, Enigheten, Gamla Teatern, Kronhuset, Wadman, Kruthuset, Franska Tomten, Gamla Tullen

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 10 to 15 document splendid old houses and boring new ones. Behind the rich facades along the water-fronts, the backstreets in the old days were full of emigrants setting out for America, and of the lodgings and merchants taking their last money before they left the old country. It still looks rather cramped, despite massive re-devlopment in the early 1980s.

Episode 11: kv Vindragaren, kv Enigheten, kv Gamla Teatern

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 March 2020

The block names reflect businesses once active in this area: Wine-puller (self-explanatory), Unity (a gentlemen’s club) and The Old Theatre (not actually in this block but nearby).

However, two of these blocks were re-developed in the 1980s and almost nothing of the old remains. One can possibly understand why: when the number of emigrants lessened, the cheap lodgings and eateries became full of drunks and disorderlies instead.

It’s rather typical that the city administration has commandeered an old building for its offices. Maybe the modern concrete boxes they advocated weren’t satisfactory after all? By the way, the silhouettes on the windows can also be found on the cylindrical lamp-shades at some of our bus and tram stops!

Episode 12: kv Kronhuset, kv Wadman

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 19 December 2019 and 8 March 2020

Kronhuset is one of the oldest houses in Gothenburg, along with the so-called Residence, a warehouse behind it, and of course the fortresses. The reason it remains is, being made of stone, it escaped the many devastating fires (unlike the first city hall) and housed a church for so many years it survived until it was fashionable to have old houses to show tourists.

It is surrounded by former workshops now full of tourist-friendly boutiques. Lerverk sells glass and ceramic art. When they first started in the early 1980s we bought several small animal figurines, very funny. Their shop has moved around a bit before ending up here — in one of them they used to have an amazingly detailed winter wonderland every December.

The block named after a now-forgotten poet, Wadman, runs along the foot of the steep hill. The shack the destitute poet briefly lived in was destroyed in the 1980s re-development and the site now holds a tiny playground, as seen in Intermission.

Episode 13: kv Kruthuset

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 8 March 2020

Gothenburg was first built as a fortified trading post, with massive defence works. Half the population or more were soldiers, housed with the civilians. One of the affiliated services was manufacturing and storing gun-powder, preferably somehwere off in case an accident occurred. Here under the hill, on the other side of a harbour basin full of masts, was suitably off and so this block was named the Powder House.

When the city expanded, the harbour basin was filled in, the quays extended, and a fabulous trading house erected in this block. The merchants JA Hertz & Co commissioned it and the German architect Louis Enders designed it. The style is called Jugend in Sweden and Art Nouveau in English-speaking countries.

The house is a bit inaccessible now, due to works for Västlänken all round and under it. It is very important to maintain groundwater levels when constructing in clays: lower the water table and subsidence will set in and crash goes your lovingly preserved 1901 masterpiece!

Episode 14: kv Franska Tomten

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 8 March 2020

The French Plot sounds like a movie script for a costume drama — and it might well be! When Sweden wanted a lucrative slave colony in the Caribbean in the 1780s, the king made a deal with the French: they got a free-trade agreement and depot area on this plot, and Sweden got St Barthélemy to make money for the Crown. The island was unsuitable for plantations, though, so the island became a free-port for the slave trade instead. The French depot ceased operations in the early 1800s, when the new king fell out with Napoleon. Instead, Gothenburg became a depot for the British.

Anyway, the French memory stuck and the area around the old mast-harbour was dubbed the French plot, and there was a French inn too, apparently. When the new quays were laid out in the 1860-70s, fancy stone buildings were erected along the water-front. In this block, the old post house was torn down in 1942 to make way for a modern HQ för shipping company Transatlatic. In the list here, I know my father served on numbers 202, 211 (which he helped to build) and 217 (I accompanied him on a voyage across the Atlantic in 1989).

The slave trade is reflected in the art adorning the facade and the lamp-post next to the house. I’m surprised it has been allowed to remain, in this era of cancel-culture.

Episode 15: kv Gamla Tullen

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 8 March 2020

The French Plot extended to this site too but in the other corner of the block was the old custums house so that’s what the city planners used for its name. The river-side is however dominated by the HQ for one of the biggest shipping companies in Gothenburg at the time, Broströms. The facade is richly decorated with nautical and martime reliefs, and the glass doors have etchings of the zodiac. Today the building holds law courts so it is rather iffy to photograph it. I managed to sneak by one day and catch some of the zodiac, as seen in Intermission.

The canal-side is also full of impressive trade-houses and residences for the major trading families of the time. CRA Fredberg relates the story of the Björnberg liquor riots, and other facts and rumours about the area. He was a journalist and published a 3-volume collection of articles about the old Gothenburg, as seen from the year 1920. It is full of photos and drawings and a rich source of material for this project. As long as you don’t quote verbatim: somewhat purple prose and not entirely fact-checked stories. And as long as you steer clear of the theatre which he spends far too much text on.