Etikettarkiv: family history

Kvarteren Stenskvättan, Sidensvansen, Gärdsmygen, Domherren, Törnskatan

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Episodes 205 to 208 climb the Trollspisen hill from ancient family history, over 1920s Classicism and early to late Modernism, to end at current undefined styles.

Episode 205: kv Stenskvättan part 1

District: Heden (formerly Johanneberg)

Photo date: 15 August 2021

I have still not managed to sneak into the courtyard at Cederbourgsgatan 4, to see if any trees from the family seat still remain. The stone houses that were put up on the old cottages are too tall and impregnable to admit view. At the City Museum catalogue I can find architectural plans for the newer of the two houses on the plot. Also a newspaper clipping with my grandmother’s writing in the margin! Here is a model that her father made, with a possibly-Messman painting of the houses in the background:

No 85
12:e roten nr 85 Fredhem eller Hallekrogen


The original name Hallekrogen marks it as one of the Gallows Inns that once lined the road south towards Halland. The area had a very bad reputation, not just for the people taking a grog or three before an execution but mostly for the unruly farmers heading back south. And apparently the road was miserable too.

Episode 206: kv Stenskvättan – the Carlander Hospital

District: Heden (formerly Johanneberg)

Photo date: 15 August 2021

The Carlander hospital sits grandly at the top of a slope. Let’s hope the rock and joints are sturdy enough to allow all the tunnels that have been built right underneath it… It stands in the grounds of one of the many old farms in the area, of which the garden is a reminder. It has not yet been developed. Since the hospital was built in the 1920s, only an extension has been added at a place where an original wing was never built. The blueprints for the extension are signed by the White bureau.

Episode 207: kv Sidensvansen, kv Gärdsmygen, kv Domherren

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 13 August 2021

As we climb the street and the hill, we rise up through the architectural stratigraphy. 1920s Classicism gives way to clean Modernism, a 1960s hotel and student lodgings and at the top is late 2010s Neo-Modernism or whatever you want to call it.

The hotel and the adjoining student lodging were designed by Johan Tuvert in 1959. The new lodgings at the bottom of the street were built by Wallenstam. And the pumping station, now offices, was built in 1923 from designs by Eugen Thorburn, with a discreet extension from 1985. The late-2010s highrise called Jarlaplatsen was designed by the Erséus bureau for Skanska.

Episode 208: kv Törnskatan

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 29 July 2021

On top of the hill is a school, where I was caught by a thunderstorm when photographing it. Luckily there were galleries to hide in – also good for hiding shady businesses! Mandus Mandelius is a wonderful name, he should have designed more houses in Gothenburg just for the pleasure of saying his name.

In the 1920s and 1930s Gothenburg had grown so much it had to renew its critical infrastructure. Several water towers were built on the highest hills, like this one designed by Eugen Thorburn in 1924. There is another one near where I live, from 1930. Some of the water towers were converted to student lodgings in the late 1990s.

Kvarteren vid Trollspisberget och runt Liseberg

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Episodes 201 to 204 cover a suite of architectural styles from the early 1910s to the early 2020s, with a bit of natural design thrown in for good measure.

Episode 201: kv Entitan, kv Koltrasten, kv Blåmesen, kv Munkeboda, Trollspisen

District: Johanneberg (parts formerly in Lorensberg)

Photo date: 13 August 2021

The block called Munkeboda was originally part of district Lorensberg but got chucked into Johanneberg at the latest administrative reshuffle. Based on architecture and population, it really should still be part of Lorensberg, though, with a consulate, a posh villa by Johan Jarlén, now a school, and yet another lodge. It also has a brand new house designed by the Inobi bureau and put up during the last year. For the other blocks in this episode I refer to a general description of the area, page 126ff.

My grandmother wrote in her memoirs how they used to climb up the hill behind their house and in a crevice light a fire to make coffee. This same crevice gave the name to the hill and it still exists today! For the 1923 exhibition a path was cleared to the hill, for those boring persons who didn’t want to travel by funicular.

Some ten years ago I made a rock survey for a new zoning plan that wants to excavate half the Troll Stove hill and put up two tall houses in the new pit. But that would entail 30 metres high rock cuttings and it is placed right on top of sewers which would give inescapable ”aromas” in the new, expensive condos… The houses have yet to be built. The hill consists of mainly gabbro with various grain sizes. Very pretty.

Episode 202: kv Skokloster

District: Johanneberg (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 13 August 2021

Here is another block that is properly part of Lorensberg. The zones, districts and sub-districts are really confused here… Maybe it’s the ghosts of those who were executed here that play havoc with the minds of city officials? The ghosts didn’t seem to bother my grandmother and her ancestors who lived here for a century. But for the 1923 exhibition, a cable-car was drawn right over this block, which was yet to be built, and over their garden – and sometimes the gondolas stopped and the passengers had to be rescued. So she said.

Episode 203: kv Getebergsäng – inside Liseberg

District: Heden

Photo date: 16 August 2021

Liseberg was one of the many small farms that dotted the area until 1923 or thereabouts. A few of the farm buildings still exist but the gardens have long gone – except maybe here, if you count the funfair as a garden. In her memoirs, my grandmother writes how she visited the manor house once, before the funfair had transformed the idyllic park. She was visiting a school friend who was staying with her relative, the architect Eugen Thorburn.

The 1923 Anniversary Exhibition was a temporary affair, almost ephemeral. And it was a riot of design! Sigfrid Ericson and Arvid Bjerke were the main architects and they created something fairytale-like. All photos from the time are black-and-white but written memories all mention how colourful it was. It was a very ambitious undertaking, with a historical section on the Johanneberg hill and a modern technical section at what became Svenska Mässan. And annexed to that part was the Liseberg funfair, the only part of the venture that wasn’t a spectacular financial loss. So it was decided to keep it and it has generated profit ever since.

Structures at Liseberg come and go, either in planned redevelopment or in sudden fires. The Congress Hall went up in flames in 1973, and the brand new adventure lido that was meant to save the entire tourism sector in Gothenburg melted in a horrid fire a month ago. Wikipedia says the two entrance towers were designed by Axel Jonsson and put up in 1940, as a nod to the two towers from the original exhibition. The pink colour permeating the whole park is said to be the original colour from the exhibition.

Episode 204: kv Getebergsäng (outside Liseberg), kv Sandmusslan, kv Pilgrimsmusslan, kv Immeln, kv Spindeln

District: Heden, Krokslätt (parts formerly Bö and Skår)

Photo date: 16 August 2021

Some 30 years ago I had a job just south of Liseberg and used to walk, run and tram along Södra Vägen almost daily. The big wooden villas and small landshövdingehus that my grandmother knew from her childhood were still there – but just a few years later they had to go to make way for the science centre (designed by Gert Wingårdh) and the award-winning culture museum (designed by Cécile Brisac and Edgar Gonzalez). And for the last six years also for Västlänken. Only the modernist house next to the southern entrance to Liseberg remains, for now…

East of the Mölndal creek the funfair has taken over the city block called Pilgrimsmusslan, where there used to be factories and before that very cheap housing for industrial workers. One part of a larger estate was set off as a sports field and named Balders Hage. This is where the ÖIS football club was started. The factories produced everything from sweets to yarn to engines and some of them were closed only 30 years ago. The Wingårdh bureau also designed the Grand Curiosa Hotel and the lido that burned down earlier this year.

Kvarteren Taltrasten, Näktergalen, Tofsmesen, Göken, Grönsiskan, Lappmesen

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Episodes 196 to 200 enter district Johanneberg, a relatively young administrative unit from 1920. The northern or lower part was built up a hundred years ago to an older type of city plan.

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.

Kvarteren Tre Kronor, Rönnen, Platanen, Kärnan, Bohus

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Episodes 191 to 195 conclude district Vasastaden-Lorensberg with a slew of schools from the early 1900s.

Episode 191: kv Tre Kronor

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 25 July 2021

For a long time, the two biggest schools in Gothenburg were Schillerska and Hvitfeldtska – at least according to students and alumni. Now, of course, many more schools abound, but few of them have this kind of monumental presence. It was designed at the end of the National Romanticist era, and not quite as oppressive as for instance the Nordhem school. I myself didn’t go to any of these schools as I grew up in Partille just outside Gothenburg.

The nurses’ home was erected at the same time as the school, during raging world war and desperat shortages of food and everything. We will encounter Caroline Wijk again in later episodes of this series. She left monies and memories as far afield as Kungsladugård, and thus made sure the family name Wijk would live on in Gothenburg. But the family itself, like Ekman and so many of the others, is no longer the shining star it once was.

Episode 192: kv Rönnen

District: Lorensberg (formerly Vasastaden)

Photo date: 24 July 2021

This whole area once held several small farms or rural cottages that are now not even a memory. When CRA Fredberg wrote about them over a century ago there were still people alive who had seen them, he included, and there are a few photographs and paintings in books and the City Museum database. In this area there was Götaberg, Leontinedal, Brantdala, Ulricedal, Katrineström, Kristinelund, Lorensberg and a bit further afield the Executioner’s Cottage.

In 1910, Albert Lilienberg created a plan for the area where a new street with trams ran up to the workers’ area in Landala, between imposing modern tenement houses. This block is one of them, built when Jugend was the hottest thing on the architect’s style palette. Some of those architects were Zetterström & Jonsson and D W Stenfelt.

Episode 193: kv Platanen

District: Lorensberg (formerly Vasastaden)

Photo date: 24 July 2021

Landala was a working class district in the 1800s and for a long time had to do without church or school services. In 1892 they finally got the Landala school, designed by Adrian Peterson who was something of a specialist in school buildings at the time. Many of his public buildings look much like this one: red brick, arch-type details and some stonework frames.

Episode 194: kv Kärnan

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 25 July 2021

The Landala workers must have been very fruitful because only 10 years later they needed another school for their children. Peterson was still active in the school business and quickly pulled the plans for this one out of his hat. For the Götaberg School he has switched to yellow brick but otherwise it looks much like all his other schools.

Episode 195: kv Bohus

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 25 July 2021

Under these watchful faces my grandparents met and fell in love in the 1920s, a hundred years ago.. Charles Lindholm was one of the many architects educated at Chalmers in the late 1800s but instead of staying he went to Stockholm and made a career there. But first he designed this National Romanticist pile for his home city.

Kvarteren Ulriksdal, Hörningsholm, Tullgarn, Drottningholm, Sparreholm, Gripsholm, Nääs, Visingsborg

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Episodes 176 to 180 enter the area of the 1923 Anniversary Exhibition and Lilienberg-land.

Episode 176: kv Ulriksdal

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 13 June 2021

No architectural historian has devoted time and grants to this area yet so there is not much to add to the narration. The architects for this block and Drottningholm are given as Ernst Torulf, Hjalmar Zetterström, Tor Zetterström, Karl M Bengtsson, Arvid Bjerke, Ragnar Ossian Swensson, Nils Olsson and Erik Holmdal.

Episode 177: kv Hörningsholm, kv Tullgarn

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 6 June 2021

In the 1980s my mother studied art history at university and she wrote a paper on the City Theatre. I can’t remember much of it because at that time I was not at all interested in architecture or local history – so boring! Then suddenly, overnight almost, I became fascinated by both subjects. Maybe it’s an age thing.

Soon after this episode was completed, the old girls’ school and adjoining car park were razed and something else will be put up there. The zoning document suggests more performing arts space, and an entrance to the new train station at Korsvägen. Something for a later Intermission…

Episode 178: kv Drottningholm

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 13 June 2021

This block was only half-built when my grandmother passed it on her way to school, or to the family shop at Kungsportsplatsen. The south end of the block abutted the 1923 exhibition area.

Episode 179: kv Sparreholm, kv Gripsholm

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 20 and 22 June 2021

And now we enter the area where the city decided to hold its 300th anniversary exhibition, two years late in 1923. Johanneberg was built in the 1700s and had until recently been a working farm with big gardens and greenhouses but its time was up – and now the last vestiges of the grounds have been excavated away for a new train station. At least this part of Västlänken is still being built, unlike the middle station at Haga.

On the hill was the historical part of the exhibition, with wooden halls built for archeology, design, sports, crematoria (sic), crafts and victualling history, and lots of restaurants. In the middle was a big plaza topped by a strange memorial building. On this site now stands the 1984 part of the university building, and the university library stands on the former main restaurant. The original part of the library building was designed by Ärland Noreen in 1939 but it wasn’t built until 1951. The Coordinator bureau designed the 1982 extension. The yellow high-rise was designed by Jaan Allpere and Claes Melin. For the newest extension to the university building, designed by the KUB bureau, a new zoning plan was drawn up where you can read some of the text I wrote about the rock slopes in the area.

Episode 180: kv Nääs, kv Visingsborg

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 20 June 2021

With Nääs and Visingsborg we enter the Lorensberg villa area. Albert Lilienberg planned it in 1913 and it was realised by the up and coming set of architects that put their mark on Gothenburg in this and the next couple of decades. The houses were built for the poshest members of the bourgeoisie, and certainly not for plebes and commoners.

Axel Carlander was a very big man in Gothenburg at the time. He made lots of money but also worked tirelessly for the public good. Apart from this National Romanticist gem, he has left his name on a hospital overlooking the funfair Liseberg. The lodge in Nääs is still active and even has a well-designed web page.

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.

Kvarteren Johannes Dux, Kungstorget (Bazarlängan), Idogheten, Hernhutaren, Snusmalaren

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Episodes 42 to 46 explore the blocks along the west side of Östra Hamngatan. The enitre city centre is more or less listed which means that when old buildings are demolished to make way for new concrete boxes, the old facades must be retained, or at least copied onto the outside of the box. But this is a very recent decree, plans were once very much afoot to turn the entire city centre into concrete and motorways. I’ve seen some of the plans!

Episode 42: kv Johannes Dux

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 9 May and 5 September 2020

This old block holds some personal history: it is where my grandmother’s father and grandfather had a shop in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It is even documented in the digital archives of the city museum.

The E.F. Kiel & Co shop sold so-called colonial goods — import foods other than meat, fish, eggs etc. The first premises were at Drottninggatan before moving to this spot in the early 1900s. After my great-grandfather suddenly died in 1934, it was again moved to Södra Vägen, where it ailed for some decades before my great-grandmother sold it. I still have a pad of notepaper that bears the company name.

The block consists mainly of cafës, bars and restaurants these days. Some decades ago it was also rather disreputable, with a working-class café, bohemian (i.e. cannabinoid) establishments and nightclubs. There was even a murder, apparently!

Episode 43: kv Bazarlängan Kungstorget

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 9 May and 19 August 2020

In the demolition-happy 1970s, plans were afoot to clear this area and build a hotel, or at least a giant garage in its place. Luckily, only the fringe buildings like the bazaars along the moat and the bigger bazaar Alliance to the west were razed. The former market-place became a parking area for some decades, before it became a venue for live performances and, yes, markets again.

The market hall is one of the quainter remnants of the old Gothenburg, along with the Fish Church and the Crown House. The redoubtable editor S A Hedlund goaded the city council to plan and finance it. Viktor Adler and Hans Hedlund designed it for August Krüger who built it, using the expertise of Alexander Keiller’s Göteborgs Mekaniska Verkstad. A veritable who’s who of old-time Gothenburg!

Episode 44: kv Idogheten

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 20 June 2020

Since the 17th century, this part of Gothenburg has been the busiest, with traders, workshops and more traders everywhere you looked. It is only in our times that the businesses have started closing, in favour of eateries, gyms and tenements. Technology and economics shift and change over the years, after all.

In this block there was a sugar factory, later turned into a market-hall designed by Eugen Thorburn, who presumably added the cop and robber at the west end. The east end of this house still holds one of few reamaining beer halls from a hundred and more years ago, Ölhallen 7:an. It was gutted by fire in 1996 but lovingly restored to original quaintness. The clientele is more upmarket than it used to be, though, what with all the tourists and guests at the new hotel next door.

Episode 45: kv Hernhutaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 20 June and 19 September 2020

It has taken a long time, but the rebuild in city block Moravian is finally completed. Like another house at Avenyn, one of the older houses in this block has been demolished and a new one put up instead — while the 1880s facade has been kept and glued onto the new building! What remains now is to go back and document the restored facade decorations.

Is everyone familiar with the Moravians? I wasn’t, in fact I don’t think I had ever heard of them before I researched this episode. In Swedish the name is variously spelled Herrnhut or Hernhut, something to remember when googling this block. Wikipedia says they are a German lutheran church whose heyday was in the mid-1700s, with special emphasis on the emotional experience of the Good News, sort of. The Gothenburg congregation still exists and even has a website. The house itself is from 1804, after the original house was destroyed in a large fire. Merchant Sven Linhult had bought the property in 1767 and bequeathed it to the Evangelicals.

In the 1802 fire, not only the Herrnhut house was destroyed but almost all houses in the vicinity, even the cathedral was damaged and the bishop and dean were made homeless. After a decade or so, the dean was installed in the new-built corner house with the big clock. The house was designed and built by Gottlieb Lindner. In 1857 it became the home of one of the most famous clergymen in Gothenburg, Peter Wieselgren, thus giving the name and the plaque. The clock has recently been removed, though.

Episode 46: kv Snusmalaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 14 June 2020

Lindström & Brattberg was a firm manufacturing snuff. They built their factory in 1820 on a property in the middle of this block. In 1914 it was demolished to make way for the new cinema called Victoria. The new picture house was designed by Sven Steen, the son of F O Peterson, and housed up to 900 viewers — at the time the largest cinema in Sweden. It was remodelled a number of times; possible the granite reliefs were added in the early 1930s when the entrance was given a make-over by architect Nils Olsson. It was a good cinema, I saw many movies here before it was turned into a clothes shop. It is currently empty, looking for new tenants.

The other cinema in this block, now an eatery and bar, was first opened in 1922, after the older house on the site had been torn down. The first tiny cinema was called Scala, but changed its name to Plaza in 1941 when Nils Olsson (again) remodelled the interior. The distinctively 1920s facade was retained. In 1968 the name was changed to Cinema, which is what I remember it as. One movie I saw here was ”After Hours” in 1986 I think it was.

Otherwise, clothes is a big theme in this block. Gillblads used to occupy the southwest end and my mother was a frequent shopper here, mostly for fabric. Today the clothes stores come and go but they are seldom replaced with other types, like eateries or novelty shops.