Etikettarkiv: fires

Kvarteren Geväret, Infanteristen, Grenadjären, Artilleristen, Landsknekten

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Episodes 233 to 237 look at houses from the 1850s to the 1980s, and pay respects to a much-loved TV show that has cemented Haga’s place in the hearts of Swedes of an older generation.

Episode 233: kv Geväret

District: Haga

Photo date: 10 April 2022

In Copenhagen there is a lively commercial street called Strøget to which all other commercial streets in the Nordic countries are compared. Here in Haga, Strøget is Haga Nygata and like all the other blocks along it this one has preserved the pretty 1880s landshövdingehus fronting the commercial area while the back was rebuilt in the 1980s. The new style is bland but inoffensive, sometimes the architects have even strived to make the facades blend into the historical surroundings. I have not been able to find any information about architects old or new except that it was Bostadsbolaget that commissioned the houses.

Episode 234: kv Infanteristen

District: Haga

Photo date: 13 March 2022

The masonry heater, or ”tile oven” as it is called in Swedish, was once a standard component of every Swedish home. It’s a really clever and efficient construction, and it looks pretty. Since they were all junked in the 1970s, pretty much everyone wants to get them back and production has started again. Of course, burning wood in cities is not optimal from a pollution point of view. In the old days there were many factories for tile ovens and one of them was located in this block. Like many others at the time, August Ringnér was also heavily into theatrics, of which CRA Fredberg writes far too much.

Half of this block was redeveloped in the 1980s but much history has been preserved: the ancient school, the former mission church on the commercial street, and some two-storey wooden houses along Husargatan, all owned and developed by Ringnér in the 1850s to 60s. The school was one of the very first in Gothenburg for children of lesser means, started by poor-house priest Johan Willin.

Episode 235: kv Grenadjären

District: Haga

Photo date: 13 March 2022

Many of the old houses in Haga, entire blocks even, had been torn down in the early 1970s and left as empty parking spaces. From my childhood, I remember a city full of empty gaps with old cars and former living room walls with wallpaper still dangling forlornly in the wind two or three storeys up an exposed firewall… Because of bureaucracy and foundation problems, redevelopment in Haga didn’t start until the mid 1980s. The zoning documents for the area describe the planning history and the subsidence headaches of the 1970s.

So almost this entire block was built up in the 1980s, except for one landshövdingehus from 1879 and the low old houses along Skanstorget. They are particularly interesting as a vanishingly rare example of the pre-landshövdingehus type of wooden houses that were built in the 1850s.

Episode 236: kv Artilleristen

District: Haga

Photo date: 23 April 2022

There is not much to say about this block that was completely rebuilt in the early 1980s. But before that, this was one of the very earliest developments in Haga, seen in a map from the 1690s. Recurring fires have devastated Haga since its beginnings and Fredberg writes about the big one that destroyed this block in 1859.

Episode 237: kv Landsknekten

District: Haga

Photo date: 23 April 2022

In the mid-1970s Swedish television decided to licence a popular British show from the 1960s. Having listened to the radio version of ”Steptoe and Son” I think our ”Albert och Herbert” was much better, with actually likeable characters. Even in the 1970s there were no more rag-and-bone-men in Sweden, certainly not horse-propelled ones, and there was not much left of Haga either, but there it is on grainy video: a few old landshövdingehus, two-storey wooden buildings and cobbled streets, and Skolgatan 15 where the father and son were supposed to live. Further up the street there actually was an old stable for horses but it burned down in 2015.

Again, almost the whole block consists of houses from the 1980s, except along Strøget where quaint remnants from the 1850s and 1880s have been left to entice shoppers. Presumably the 1859 house was built after the devastating fire of that year.

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 Vesta, Vulkan, Diana, Venus, Ceres, Merkur, Fyrkanten, Bobinen, Dymling

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Episodes 103 to 106 take a stroll around North Gårda where the only major decorations are on a tram shed from the 1980s.

Episode 103: kv Vesta, kv Vulkan, kv Diana

District: Gårda

Photo date: 23 December 2020

District Gårda is an industrial estate from the late 1800s, with residential areas in the south. Factories, schools, pollution, children, railway, more factories… and then in the 1960s the eastern half of the district was eradicated when the new motorway was laid out there. Many of the remaining houses were condemned because they were too close to the noisy, polluting and dangerous traffic. Some of the southernmost buildings were saved and even refurbished recently, but most of it has been completely redeveloped. The area looks nothing like old photographs!

The rusty skyscraper called Gårda Vesta was designed by White Arkitekter, still going strong with modern but boring materials. They meant the rust to symbolise the industrial heritage of this district, Gårda. Or perhaps they were just a little bit passé since that particular cladding seems to have fallen out of favour rapidly, after being very in for about five years.

The other blocks in this episode were also modern when they were built, from the 1960s onwards. At Diana, after this video was made a controversial artist was given free reign with a firewall and created a huge vagina mural. Recently, the whole modernist building was torn down and something else will take its place, I guess. Perhaps another skyscraper?

Episode 104: kv Venus, kv Ceres

District: Gårda

Photo date: 23 December 2020

Soon after I started working at Bergab, these modern houses were put up across the river. The foundation works were extensive: it took three combined piles to reach layers that were stiffer than mush! The low-lying area here under the hill to the east is made up of up to 80m or more thick glacial clays, overlain by marine clays and riverine sediments. Marine clays are notoriously tricky: add enough water, give it a little shake, and the solid ground turns into water. Just like ketchup. There’s a scary movie from a Norwegian landslide in thixotropic clays.

The tram museum is great! The depot was built in 1930 and the museum moved in in 1989. Next to it was the old bus garage that was torn down in 2001 to make way for residential houses. The garage was really ugly. At the museum you can not only look at the trams but also rent them. We did this for a science fiction convention some years ago, it was very popular.

Gothenburgers are inveterate punners. All major landmarks get inofficial names like fr’instance Hedendomen for the Catholic church (a pun on ”heathenry” and ”the cathedral next to Heden”). The lamellar house in this block was built for the electricity board in 1960, and was for some reason called Elysépalatset. It was of course immediately renamed El-o-lyse-palatset, ”the electricity and lighting palace”.

Episode 105: kv Merkur

District: Gårda

Photo date: 23 August 2020, 23 December 2020 and 20 March 2021

When every other town and city dismantled their trams in the 1950s and 60s, Gothenburg retained them. Now, every other town and city build new tramways, for some reason. Living in a city where trams have always been part of everyday infrastructure life, it seems much more convenient with buses that can move around obstacles like other vehicles ahead, or downed powerlines. But the trams do have their charm, I guess, and they are a big part of the spirit of Gothenburg.

Tram lines have expanded over the years, and the number of trams too. They all need to be serviced and in the mid-1980s the depot at Stampen was much too small and a new tram shed built across the creek, here at city block Mercury. The architects were Clas Dreijer and Bengt Wallin, working for the ABAKO office. They won the Kasper Salin award in 1985, an award for ”the best building of the year”. In one of my sources, ”Staden, platserna och husen” by Claes Caldenby et al, it says the guy leaning out of a window depicts Domenico Inganni who helped finalise the deocrations. But who were Graham and Åke, whose names are on one of the medallions?

Somewhere on the building there is a plaque commemorating the award but it is not visible from the outer perimeter fence. No trespassing! I mailed them asking for permission to enter and document the cartouches but never got a reply. So I had to stand on the other side of the motorway with the big camera! And again when the building at city block Eagle was finally finished!

Episode 106: kv Fyrkanten, kv Bobinen, kv Dymling

District: Gårda

Photo date: 14 March 2021

Fire stations were put up all over the city in the early 1900s but were then closed again around the 1970s to 80s, when big centralised stations like this one were built. And they no longer house only the fire brigade but all the rescue services. This central rescue services station was put up in 1988, with typical tile decorations on the facade. The architects were FFNS West, whom I had never heard of before because they have turned into Sweco, the big civil engneering company we often do business with.

The 1880s is when textiles became big in Gothenburg. In the marxist 1970s, all the talk was about the proletariat working in the shipyards and how socialism, even communism, was what made Gothenburg if not great then at least remarkable. In fact, the local industry was first based on timber and joinery and then came the textiles. Those workers were the ones who first unionised, but it didn’t take at first, apparently not until the temperance movement had done its thing.

At Åvägen 6 we see the remains of Gårda Fabriker, one of the original textile factories in Gårda. This one made underwear. The current buildings were put up in the early to mid 1900s, designed by Ernst Krüger and Carl Ritzén. Much rebuilding has been going on since the 1990s, and most of the entire area has faced a complete redevelopment from 1965, still ongoing. The Bobbin, for example, was built in 2007. It appears the site held a starch factory that burned down in 1945, and then Semrén+Månsson designed the current buildings.

Kvarteren Hästbacken, Otterhällan m.fl., Branten, Bergväggen, Käppslängaren, Telegrafen

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Episodes 75 to 79 take a look at decorations from the times of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, as well as more non-existent decorations of our modern era. Also a whole bunch of ghost buildings that once stood on Otterhällan and its slopes.

Episode 75: kv Hästbacken

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 19 August 2020

The red-brick building for the Melin paper factory was designed by Arvid Bjerke, who was very popular at the time with his national romanticism. His brick and granite houses recur again and again in this series. And Fredberg mentions that nearby there was a champagne factory in deep cellar vaults!

Episode 76: kv Otterhällan, kv Telegrafisten, kv Kraftstationen, kv Ekelunden, kv Hästkvarnen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 16 August 2020

The old power station was actually situated on the property where the paper factory was later built. Electricity manufacture in Gothenburg started in the mid 1880s, to supply shops and the Grand Opry with fashionable light. The first electricity factories were located smack in the middle of downtown, with steam engines driving turbines and belching smoke from tall chimneys. It looks quite remarkable on old photos.

Otterhällan was once a jumble of wooden houses and shacks, all destroyed in the fire of 1804. The newer houses weren’t much better but in the early 1830s an optical telegraph station was built on top of the hill, and in the early 1900s there was a movie studio as well as a tall school among the low houses. You can see them too on old photos.

The hill was covered with an oak forest in the 1600s but it was soon cut down, or burned down in one of the many fires. Just imagine, inside the walled city the houses only went up to about Ekelundsgatan and above that was a forest, where pigs could roam. And a windmill or two on top plus a horse-powered mill below. One old thing that remains is the big fallout shelter (and parking garage) dug into the hill in the 1950s. In preliminary investigations for Västlänken, I got to inspect the rock caverns and see the innards of the shelter — very exciting, you don’t see things like that very often!

Episode 77: kv Branten, kv Bergväggen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 16 August 2020

The fabulous 1920s skyscraper Otterhall was designed by Harald Ericson and built by Karl Alberts. In the early days it had a restaurant at the top, and a bowling alley on the 8th floor. Amazing. North of the Otterhall complex is the relatively new extension for the city archives. The actual stacks are situated in a cavern that is connected to the fallout shelter. And underneath these caverns is the Göta road tunnel and the railway tunnel Västlänken currently being built.

The Ahlberg House at the north end of the cliff was first built in 1783 and then again after the 1804 fire destroyed all the houses here except the Residence. I had actually never been up here before I set out on this project, and there are many other houses and structures and areas I’ve never visited before. It’s a project that keeps on giving!

Episode 78: kv Käppslängaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 19 August 2020

The garrison hospital was built in 1755 but discontinued in 1895 when the garrison moved out from the city centre. It had room for 72 patients. In 1907 it was razed and this new residential building put up instead, designed by Hjalmar Zetterström. The ”old school” in this block was also razed, in 1934, and it had apparently hosed Gothenburg’s first radio station in 1923 or therabouts. Radio was one of the ultra-modern inventions showcased at the 1923 anniversary exhibition, along with Albert Einstein who gave his long-delayed Nobel lecture here.

When the old school was gone, the building called Queen Kristina’s hunting lodge was moved to this site, where it still remains. I’ve been to a couple of tolkienist parties here, it is full of atmosphere.

Episode 79: kv Telegrafen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 19 August 2020

The city has put up these informative plaques on buildings of especial interest. There are also private initiatives, for instance around Fredsgatan, in Haga or on a few houses owned by proud condo associations. The official plaques, with extra information, have been collected in a book called ”100 utmärkta hus i Göteborg”. The word utmärkt means both ”marked” and ”excellent” so it is a pun, for which Gothenburg is famous, nay notorious.

The telegraph or telephone station is a very prominent building, designed as it says on the plaque by Hans Hedlund (his son Björner designed the 1940s and 50s additions) and built by F O Peterson. Its predecessor on the site was the Burghers’ Barracks, so called because after the 1792 fires there were no more private houses for the soldiers to be lodged in and the private citizens really didn’t want to put up with housing them any longer: a barracks must be provided! This building was payed for by the burghers, designed by Carl Wilhelm Carlberg and finally put up in 1793 by soldiers and convicts from Fortress Älvsborg.

Kvarteren Residenset, Stora Bommen m.fl., Merkurius m.fl., Rosenlund m.fl., Surbrunnen

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Episodes 70 to 74 document decorations on the oldest house in Gothenburg and waxes nostalgic over no longer extant buildings, while looking forward to constructions not yet built.

Episode 70: kv Residenset

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 25 July 2020

Here is a block chock-full of history. The Residence was first put up in 1648 by builder Casper Wolter for governor Torstensson, who died before it was completed. The latest rebuild in the 1850s was designed by Victor von Gegerfelt. The blasting operations for the railway tunnel Västlänken hasn’t destroyed the house yet but it has caused considerable annoyance to the tenants in the residential building behind it!

The county administrative house was built in 1734 but burned down in the fire of 1804. It was restored but torn down again in 1923 to make way for the current house, in time for the city’s 300th anniversary. The architect was Sigge Cronstedt.

The Wijk House was also designed by Gegerfelt, with additions by Adolf von Edelsvärd. It used to have a cupola on top of the tower but it was removed when the house was sold to the Svea Insurance Co in 1925. The Atlantica House was built after the 1804 fire and completely remodelled in 1917 from designs by Oswald Westerberg. The Atlantica and Wijk Houses were converted to hyper-expensive condos in 2010.

Episode 71: kv Stora Bommen, kv Stenpiren, kv Verkstaden, kv Redaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 25 July 2020

The river-front used to be bustling with activity: on- and off-loading ships and passenger ferries, trains transporting goods along the docks, cheap labour trying to earn a buck… Technological progress has thankfully put an end to all that, moving shipping activities and factories to the outer harbour. This area is now full of ghosts of long-gone buildings, like Göteborgs Mekaniska Verkstad, the round bath house, the shipping and banking offices… The land itself was reclaimed in the 1850s, replacing a reedy river-bank under an almost sheer cliff.

The Skeppsbrohuset in Big Boom was built in 1934. It was designed by Vilhelm Mattson and Sven Steen and built by F O Peterson & Sons. The western half of the block was designed by Lundin & Valentin and put up 30 years later. The whole shebang was re-clad in 2015, when the new Stone Pier and tram tracks were built too. The area and terminal were designed by Sweco.

In the 1960s it was decreed that motorways should be built around and through the city centre. This meant that the railway that ran along the river-front was replaced with two major thouroughfares and the blocks in their way were torn down, like The Workshop which is completely gone and The Shipowner with only one remaining house. It was built in 1911 and designed by Hans Hedlund and his son Björner who used the exciting new material called concrete. Sweden’s first Chinese restaurant opened here in 1959 and only closed in 2016 when the house was condemned. The marshlands and dredged silt making up the underground is not good for stability and the building was listing visibly.

Episode 72: kv Merkurius, kv Elektricitetsverket

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 16 August 2020

Behind the Mercury House, the new building has now been completed. It is, however, completely devoid of decorations. The rest of the block is still empty. The Mercury House itself was built on the ruins of the old Oscarsdal Brewery which operated here from 1815 to 1856. In 1897, the new house designed by Ernst Krüger was put up, as an office block for shipping businesses. It too was condemned in 2016, in need of foundation reinforcements.

The Electricity Plant was first built in 1902 to supply power to the tram network. The current plant was built in the 1950s. It is still in use to generate power and district heating but it is currently debated not if but when it is to be dismantled, amid all the exploitation going on in the immediate area. The Weigh House Bridge is for example closed due to construction work.

Episode 73: kv Karlsport, kv Esperantoplatsen, kv Rosenlund

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 16 August 2020

Fredberg describes the activities around the Charles or Hållgård Gate in the 1700s and early 1800s, when the customs officials tried to curb the residents’ enthusiasm for smuggling. This whole area was at that time occupied by the Hållgård Bastion and associated defence works, later ruins. In the 1850s it was turned into an industrial estate, with steam-powererd textile mills, bakeries and gasworks.

Episode 74: kv Surbrunnen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 25 July 2020

Would you believe it, a mineral well suddenly sprang up on the hillside north of the Charles Gate in the 1700s and immediately became the centre of a spa. It didn’t last long but gave its name to this nearby block. Before these Jugend tenements were put up in the 1890s, there were villas in leafy gardens opposite the run-down old customs house and bastion, and the rowdy barracks up the hill.

The Salinia house was built for the salt traders Hanson & Möhring, whose company still exists today (but not here). Stora Badhusgatan used to be a motorway until the Göta tunnel was built, and since then hotels have sprung up along it. Other details about the houses in this block can be found in Gudrun Lönnroth’s ”Hus för hus”.

Kvarteren Hyrkusken, Tre Remmare, Neptunus, Stadsmäklaren, Sparbanken, Alströmer

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Episodes 66 to 69 explore more banks along Västra Hamngatan as well as some of the older remaining houses in Gothenburg. When I studied Arabic at the Svea House, we were a very small class, sometimes it was just me and the teacher. One lesson, we went up to the roof right next to Mother Svea and her outstretched arm!

Episode 66: kv Hyrkusken, kv Tre Remmare, kv Neptunus

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 1 August 2020

Bengt Lidner was a poet in the late 1700s, most famous for the expression ”Lidnersk knäpp” which means suddenly becoming much cleverer than before. Apart from that, he is completely unfamiliar to me. He obviously wasn’t born in this very house, from the 1970s, and not even in the one before since his house burned down in the fire of 1804. It also destroyed the Auffort Hired Coaches business.

Fredberg has a lot to say about the original Three Jugs in the 1700s, and George Tod’s inn in the newbuilt house after the 1804 fire.

That fire also destroyed the army store house but a new house was built on the remaining foundations in 1850, from designs by Victor von Gegerfelt. In 1860 it was turned into an inn and a hotel called Christiania, which later moved to Nyeport and became Hotel Eggers. The hotel was extensively refurbished again in 1900, this time by F O Peterson, and the corner entrance with its decorations added in the 1920s. It must have been a popular place with so much building work going on, but in 1966 it was closed, almost demolished, and today contains offices.

Episode 67: kv Stadsmäklaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 1 August 2020

The apothecary shop Unicorn was first established at Södra Hamngatan 13 in 1642 and moved to this address at Kungsgatan in 1915. It was closed in 1975 and is today a coffee-shop with only the canopy above the entrance as a memory of the former business.

The Royal Bachelors Club was founded by Brits in 1769 and given royal patronage by king Gustaf III. They moved around a lot in the beginning: the Dahlgren House at Kungsgatan 41, this house at Västra Hamngatan, the Mühlenbock or Wilson house in Östra Nordstaden and finally their current bespoke building behind the Art Museum.

The Renström House has an informative article at the Old Gothenburg blog, except the block name in the first sentence is wrong. Fredberg describes the man himself as ” ugly as a monkey”. Lucky he was dead by then and couldn’t sue for defamation!

Episode 68: kv Sparbanken

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 1 August and 3 October 2020

The Savings Bank has contained banking and similar businesses for at least 200 years. The Leffler family ran brokerage firms here and eventually consolidated into banking. The current building was a bank from 1907 to some time in the 1980s when the gym moved in. Ernst Krüger designed parts of the building.

The White Architects bureau designed many of the prominent 1960s and 70s buildings in Gothenburg. But they have their offices in an old house, at Magasinsgatan 10. One of their recent projects was the Vesta skyscraper in Gårda.

Episode 69: kv Alströmer

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 1 August 2020

This block contains several listed buildings and is generously covered in Wikipedia, including sources. One of the Krüger sons, Georg, designed the corner house at Västra Hamngatan 1 and Nils Einar Eriksson redesigned it when the decorations started falling down!

The whole block, like most of this part of the city, was completely destroyed in the fire of 1804. Of all the new houses put up in the 1810s, only the two at the west end of Lilla Torget remain, and they were listed in 1980. James Dicksons decorations from 1864 were designed by Johan August Westerberg while the house at no 3 was designed by Michael Bälkow in 1811. Several re-builds have been made, including one designed by Gegerfelt.

The Svea House was designed by Adolf Emil Melander with additional designs by Hans Hedlund and Yngve Rasmussen. The offices were built in three stages: the front along Västra Hamngatan in the 1880s, the middle section along Drottninggatan in the 1890s and finally the back at Magasinsgatan 6 in the 1920s. This latter part was designed by Valdemar Bäckman.

Kvarteren Artilleristallet, Biskopen, Gymnasiet, Sidenvävaren

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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 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.