Episode 196: kv Taltrasten

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 31 July 2021

The first plan for this part of the city was drawn up in 1901, revised in 1904 and 1917 and again in 1936. It was built up in the mid-1920s to late-1930s – and by that time the styles visualised in the plans had shifted from Jugend over National Romanticism to 1920s Classicism and finally crowned by glorious Modernism.

The lower or northern part of Johanneberg was built to Albert Lilienberg’s plan of 1917. This means curved streets and large enclosed courtyards without outhouses. So the flats in the tenement buildings, like in this block by Hugo Jahnke, were built with all the mod cons like a WC and a bathroom. Even working class landshövdingehus started to get amenities like this at the time, even though the bourgeoisie decried it as an unnecessary and immoral luxury.

Episode 197: kv Näktergalen

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 26 July 2021

Taltrasten and Näktergalen were planned as non-identical twins, a portal to the upper parts of the hill. From the lower Viktor Rydbergsgatan, curved driveways lead up to almost Egyptian-type pylons, as to a grand manor house or castle of yore. Along the street are retaining walls and abutments for the overlying slopes – all carefully designed for sober beauty and monumentality. The architects were Harald Ericson and Ragnar Ossian Swensson.

Episode 198: kv Tofsmesen

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 31 July 2021

When my grandmother’s father suddenly died in 1931, her widowed mother moved to Teknologgatan from the rather pretty little villa in Skår where they were relocated after the city expropriated their century-old family cottage in 1926. During her time here, she would have seen this little block completed in the mid-1930s, and all the radical changes that were soon to come to the Johanneberg area.

Episode 199: kv Göken

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 1 August 2021

More houses should have informative plaques! That would make it much easier writing these narrations. In Majorna, the city’s management company Familjebostäder has put up several plaques relating the history of the landshövdingehus blocks they have preserved rather than torn down and replaced with concrete boxes.

Until all these stone houses were built, district Johanneberg was forested wilderness on the edge of the farms Gibraltar, Johanneberg and the Executioner’s. A creek ran down towards the west more or less along Vidblicksgatan. There is not much else to say about the Cuckoo, a typical late-1920s Classicism courtyard block. However, it’s rather big, and it has signed reliefs on the main facade. But would famous sculptor Carl Eldh really have stooped to such an insignificant assignment?

Episode 200: kv Grönsiskan, kv Lappmesen

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 1 August 2021

My possibly-gay great-uncle Helmer was a banker who lived in a long flat at Walleriusgatan 2. We visited him and his possible-partner many times and it was a flat full of beautiful ceramics and modernist paintings. I say full but it was in no way cluttered, the flat was as elegant as he himself. When he died, my uncle Martin sold some of the paintings he inherited to finance building projects at his country house, so it was ”real” art that uncle Helmer collected. Not bad for a lad born to a caretaker for tennis pavillions!

Grönsiskan sits at the edge of the old planning style with big enclosed courtyards and looks out on the open style that followed. The church also straddles the two eras, Classicism and Modernism, with basically no decorations except a few crosses. My great-uncle used to complain about the bells tolling straight into their flat.