Etikettarkiv: fires

Kvarteren Klensmeden, Manegen, Bastionen, Vattenkällan, Gamleport samt Kungsportsbron

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Episodes 37 to 41 stroll along the moat and the filled-in East Canal. There are reminders of the city’s military past in the shape of the former bastions, and of older types of entertainment like circuses and cinemas.

Episode 37: kv Klensmeden

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 1 and 3 May 2020

Here is another block that was split in two by a fire-break after 1792. The eastern half is today a shopping complex while the western part, especially along Östra Hamngatan, retains some of the old 19th century facades. Originally, all the houses were lower, though, no more than two storeys. In photos from the 1870s, the city looks so tiny.

There used to be many cinemas in Gothenburg and there was one in this block. With the advent of television and home videos, most of the cinemas went bankrupt and closed. In 1984 Cosmorama was turned into a regular theatre but that didn’t help and today it is a shop.

Next to it is the hulk of another Gothenburg stalwart, the Bräutigams bakery and coffee-shop. The house was built in 1911 and designed by Arvid Bjerke. The firm still exists but these days they only make sweets and chooclates, with a small outlet in Haga or seasonal pop-up booths. If you talk about the old coffee-shop, though, everyone will mention the live piano music for which it was famed, even when I was a kid.

Episode 38: kv Manegen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 3 May 2020

History is rich in this block. The paddock at Östra Larmgatan 16 was set up in 1824, on the ruins of the old city wall, It operated for half a century and was apparently often let to travelling circuses. Around 1880 the horsey enterprise had to move to another paddock in Lorensberg, because August Abrahamson bought the property and put up a fabulous office and warehouse building on it. That house, designed by Adrian Peterson, is still standing and the facade is much the same even if the businesses in it come and go.

The building for the clerks’ union was designed by Hans Hedlund and built by Joachim Dähn. It was used for trade-union and political activities and also had a hotel. When the union moved out in the late 1980s, the University took over and refurbished the house. They are also long gone, however, and today it is used by the Jensen highschool-chain. Highschools is a booming and lucrative business in Sweden.

And the corner house at Östra Larmgatan 18 with the big round balcony was built in 1856 by August Krüger as a residential building. In the 1920s it was re-designed with a meeting hall for the Royal Bachelors Club and on the bottom floor a restaurant that has since given the popular name to the whole block: Gamle Port.

Episode 39: kv Bastionen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 3 May 2020

The Palladium cinema closed in 2008, after 90 years and a plethora of blockbusters. I saw ”Raiders of the Lost Ark” here, laughed at Bruce Willis in ”Die Hard” when the sound system broke down (the scene with the screaming lady as the lift doors open to reveal the dead terrorist and ”now I have a machine gun ho-ho-ho” is very funny when completely silent), and goggled at the person cosplaying Gollum at the premiere of ”The Return of the King” in December 2003, among many, many other enjoyable cinema experiences (and some less enjoyable, like ”Sky Pirates” which we endured in the top floor annex Lilla Palladium).

The house itself was first put up in 1858. In 1917 it was rebuilt as a cinema, designed by Otto Dymling and P Nilsson. There were originally 1028 seats but during subsequent refurbishments, among other things for the Cinemascope screen in 1954, the number dwindled to just 700 when it closed.

Episode 40: kv Vattenkällan, kv Gamleport

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 22 March and 3-9 May 2020

The so-called Hennig House occupies all of the block called Old-gate, and it was built in 1846 from designs by Carl Georg Brunius. Textiles firm Johansson & Carlander (who also put their mark on the Sahlgren House at Norra Hamngatan) bought the house in 1885. The granite decorations were added in a 1920s refurbishment.

Centrumhuset occupies all of the block called The Water Well. It was designed by Nils Einar Eriksson and built in 1938 to house various businesses. And so it does to this day.

Between these two houses stands a statue of king Karl IX, father of Gustav II Adolf. He built the first town called Göteborg, on the north shore of river Göta Älv. The Danes promptly burned it down, though, and caused a lot of other mayhem in the first decade of the 17th century. The area between the houses also used to hold a water cistern and a loop of the East Canal that entered the moat between Old-gate and Bastion. You can see them in old photos and pictures, which also show the old houses in the Water Well block.

Episode 41: Kungsportsbron

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 22 March and 12 July 2020

In the 17th century, the city wall had three gates: the Old or Kings’s gate at this spot, the New or Queen’s gate in the east, and the Charles or Hållgård gate in the west. In Dahlberg’s drawings from those days, the gates look large and imposing, towering over the prancing dandies and dogs in the foreground. But looking at actual dimensions in reality, they must have been quite small, admitting one cart at a time.

This new Kingsgate Bridge from 1900 was designed by Eugen Thorburn. The granite is from Bohuslän and the grand candelabra were originally lit by gas. It must have geen really grand when it opened in 1901. Much better than the old wooden bridge a hundred years earlier and the narrow stone bridge it had just replaced.

Kvarteren Arkaden, Värnamo, Perukmakaren, Vallen, Synagogan

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

Episode 33: kv Arkaden

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 3 May 2020

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

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

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

Episode 34: kv Värnamo, kv Perukmakaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 3 May 2020

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

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

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

Episode 35: kv Vallen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 1 May 2020

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

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

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

Episode 36: kv Synagogan

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Vallgraven to Östra Hamngatan

Photo date: 1 May 2020

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

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

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

Kvarteren Ostindiska Kompaniet, Lilla Berget, Traktören, Rådhuset

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Episodes 16 to 21 deal with the splendid trading houses and official buildings along the Main Canal. In the old days, the view and general aura of the area were somewhat marred by the cheap bazaars under the church and the Fish Raft floating in the canal below the City Hall. Today the nuisances have shifted to combustion engines and enterprising seagulls.

Episode 16: kv Ostindiska Kompaniet

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 5 April 2020

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

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

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

Episode 17: kv Ostindiska Kompaniet inuti

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 27 June 2020

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

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

Episode 18: kv Lilla Berget, kv Traktören

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 March and 5 April 2020

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

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

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

Episode 19: kv Rådhuset — Sahlgrenska huset

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 March 2020

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

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

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

Episode 20: kv Rådhuset — Christinae kyrka

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 March and 5 April 2020

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

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

Episode 21: kv Rådhuset — själva Rådhuset

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 December 2019

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

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

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

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

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

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 March 2020

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

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

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

Episode 12: kv Kronhuset, kv Wadman

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 19 December 2019 and 8 March 2020

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

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

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

Episode 13: kv Kruthuset

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 8 March 2020

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

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

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

Episode 14: kv Franska Tomten

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 8 March 2020

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

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

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

Episode 15: kv Gamla Tullen

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 8 March 2020

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

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

Gustav Adolfs torg, kvarteren Högvakten, Borgaren, Polismästaren, Göta Kanal

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The Facade Project started as a simple ramble and photo activity but after a couple of months I had enough material to start playing with it. Especially if the weather at the weekend was too foul to go out and I had to stay indoors during the pandemic.

Then I started making little videos of what I had found. In a previous Club Cosmos film competition I had discovered how to make Powerpoint videos, a simple and easily accessible way to produce material quickly. Eventually I accessorised my mobile phone with a selfie-stick (for higher altitude pictures) and a better microphone plus a sound-editing app. At work I use CAD so I could make my own background maps — using out-of-date underlays that don’t show the hectic transformation that is going on in Gothenburg these days — and at home I dabbled un-musically with various instruments to make soundtracks. That first slap from youtube copyright check stung! All my material is thus my own.

Which language should I use? I’m Swedish and the subject is a Swedish city with Swedish place names. But I have many English-speaking friends on FB, where I post links to the videos. And since pretty much all Swedes are reasonalby fluent in English, that’s the language I choose for the narration. It makes for some interesting translation problems sometimes…

And with that, here are the first five videos I made.

Episode 1: Gustav Adolfs torg

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 17 November 2019

For the very first video I chose what might be seen as the centre of the city: the square with the statue of our founder, king Gustav II Adolf. The square was laid out when the city was planned in ca 1620 and is surrounded by old official buildings.

In earlier days, it was the centre of official activities like royal visits and similar events. Nowadays, it holds fairs and manifestations, and of course the official christmas tree. On one side are three big flag-poles with intricate bronze reliefs. They show the history of the city up to the biplane era. In fact, they were not made for the 1923 anniversary exhibition, but were made in 1932 by one Herman Bergman.

These first videos are in the original format, with background maps from the Swedish Ordnance Survey and with annoying animations for every photo. In later videos the map is home-made and the animations fewer.

Episode 2: kv Högvakten

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 30 November 2019

Blocks in central Gothenburg were named a hundred years ago or earlier. In this district the names relate to the activities once exercised at the site. This block once held the city guard, next to the city hall. My old dictionary translates ”högvakt” as ”main guard” so that’s what I call this block in my English narration.

The Main Guard once had a cannon in front, for salutes, emergencies and fire alarms. It also held the central fire services. Guns were used for all sorts of things in the old days, apparently. And these days grenades are used to put out fires too.

In this block we also find one of the grand projects from the late 1850s, the Exchange. I once went to a function inside it: quite opulent! And if you go on a guided ghost tour, you’ll hear spooky stories about this building…

Episode 3: kv Borgaren

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 2 January 2020

Gothenburg was founded as a deliberate attempt to create a mercantile city. The king invited all sorts of merchants to settle here: Dutch, Germans, English, Scots — as well as Swedes. And until the mid-1900s, the city remained resolutely trades-oriented. (After that, the city image has been one of Marxism, football, proletariats and most recently, segregation and gangsters.)

In the old Sweden, society was divided into four parts: aristocray, clergy, burghers and farmers. Not peasants — free, land-owning farmers. Of these, the burghers were the most important in Gothenburg. And here is a block commemorating them! My dictionary perferred the word ”burgess” to ”burgher” so that’s what this episode is called.

The old wooden city was frequently destroyed by conflagrations, which is why so few old houses remain. In this block, there once stood the first (tiny) theatre, owned by wealthy merchant John Hall. He made a very large fortune, and his son by the same name managed to squander all of it and died a pauper. This was a favourite story among the old merchants: beware irresponsible prodigy!

Episode 4: kv Polismästaren

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 2 January 2020

The tiny house at the end of the block was once the main police station. One of the chores they had was to check all the prostitutes for syphilis, and one of the subjects was Elizabeth Stride. When she moved to London she was killed by Jack the Ripper!

The nick is of course the reason this block is called The Police Commissioner. But it’s a long time since the tiny house served the long arm of the law. For some time now it has held the city medical museum: gruesome displays of old instruments, huge kidney and bladder stones. The house is old and in need of renovation. It might open again in 2023.

These early episodes are short and without explanatory narration. Later episodes get more verbiose.

Episode 5: kv Göta Kanal

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 2 January 2020

Shipping was important in the old Gothenburg. There were shipping companies, outfitters, agents, wharves, transports and dockers. Once the river was dredged and proper quays erected, big ships could land right next to the city centre instead of out in the estuary. All that has disappeared, of course, due to shifts in economy and technology, and because ships have become impossibly large. Once again they have to land far out in the estuary and the goods transported inland by other means (trucks).

One of the means of transporting inland was by canal. The Göta Canal was built in the 1830s and it long had a regular shipping line of the same name. The western terminus was here in Gothenburg and the shipping company has given name to this block.

When companies erected houses for themselves in the old days, they often incorporated their logos in the facade. And when the company moved out, its memory still lingers, like here with the Johnson Line. In 1990 it merged with Silja Line and ceased to exist, except in this relief.