Etikettarkiv: Fredberg

Local historian, https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Fredberg

Kvarteren Vik, Nyköpingshus, Rydboholm, Avenboken, Björken

Publicerad den av
Svara

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

Episode 141: kv Vik

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 28 November 2020

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

Episode 142: kv Nyköpingshus and Vasaplatsen

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 5 December 2020

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

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

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

Episode 143: kv Rydboholm

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 1 November 2020

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

Episode 144: kv Avenboken

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 19 December 2020

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

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

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

Episode 145: kv Björken

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 23 January 2021

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

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

Kvarteren Glimmingehus, Sturefors, Örup, Svaneholm, Kastellholm, Visborg

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 131 to 135 enter the stone house city west of Heden.

Episode 131: kv Glimmingehus, kv Sturefors

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 21 February 2021

What’s in a name? In this part of the city, that is a very valid question. When the area south of the moat was developed in the late-1860s onwards, the western and oldest part was called Vasastaden after our father-king Gustaf. The eastern part, where we are now, was called Lorensberg after a famous entertainment property next to Glimmingehus. These district names are still reflected in the ordnance survey map. But the city has changed its administrative zones several times and now most of the combined districts is called Vasastaden. A clue to the original zoning is the names of the blocks themselves: in Lorensberg they are named after castles, in Vasastaden after trees.

Glimmingehus was first built up in the late 1880s, but only the courthouse remains. It was designed by Hans Hedlund and built in 1887. It was used as a courthouse until 2010 when it was turned into a highschool. To the right of it was a girls’ school that looks fabulous on old photos but it was replaced by offices and parking garage in the 1960s. The paddock to the left of it was replaced in the 1930s. Until I started reading up on local history, I had no idea there had been paddocks in the middle of the city.

In Sturefors, all the grand 1880s houses were torn down in the 1960s, for some reason. Of the new houses from that swinging era, the southern end house from 1960 was designed by Helge Zimdal, Avenyn 32 by Per-Axel Björk was built in 1967, and the rest of the block from 1965 came from the pen of F Löfberg. And by the way, the Sturefors castle is in Östergötland and was built by the noble Sture family around the year 1600, says Wikipedia.

Episode 132: kv Örup

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 21 February 2021

In architectural circles of 130 years ago, this block was nicknamed ”Adrianopel”, after big-name architect Adrian Peterson who designed these houses along Avenyn. The builder was Nils Andersson & Co and the first houses went up in 1881. At that time, the dominant style was Neo-Renaissance with lavish, I mean really lavish, decorations all over the facades. Cartouches, festoons, faces, atlants, lions, cornucopias… It takes a long time to walk around blocks with preserved 1880s facades. And it’s better to have a camera with a proper zoom to capture all the tiny details along the roof.

Only the properties at the north end of the block were replaced in the 1960s razing mania. Lorensbergsgatan 1 was designed by Owe Svärd and built in 1964, and numbers 3-5 were replaced in the 1970s. These properties were first owned by the Malmsjö family, who ran a piano factory at the eastern end of Vasagatan. Johan Gustaf Malmsjö started the factory in 1847 and it ran on until 1962 when it moved to Arvika and production ceased in 1978.

Episode 133: kv Svaneholm

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 19 December 2020

Here is a block with styles spanning a century. The house at Kristinelundsgatan 16 is the oldest, designed by Belfrage & Franck and built in 1879. The house next to it was built four years later. In 1930, part of the vacant lot after the tobacco factory was filled with a house designed by Nernst Hanson, at the tail end of 1920s Classicism. And finally, at the north end of the block a modern office building designed by the Tengbom bureau was put up in 1977. Though the style seems to look towards the 1980s and Post-Modernism.

Episode 134: kv Kastellholm

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 14 November 2020

The winds of change have swept through this block several times. First the farms and plantations along Södra Vägen had to go when Malmsjö’s piano factory was established here in the mid-1800s. Then came the French quarter in 1875, in splendid French Neo-Renaissance style. The houses at Södra Vägen 7-11 were designed by Hanson & Löfmark and put up in 1903. After a respite of some 30 years, it was time for the next redevelopment: on the site of the demolished piano factory, at Södra Vägen 13, a tenement building by Gunnar Hoving was built in 1931, and in 1939 the corner houses along Avenyn were replaced by splendid Modernist buildings, the north one by A M Stark and the south one designed by Nils Olsson. Olsson’s house is the one with the cinema, which is forever imprinted in my memory as where I first saw ”Snow White”.

The northeastern corner house was built in 1956, from designs by Erik Ahlsén, and long held the offices for the insurance company Folksam. Their logo spun on a spiral-shaped sign on the roof until just recently. Finally, the middle of the block along Avenyn was replaced with the current houses in 1969. Numbers 6 and 8 were designed by Johan Tuvert and numbers 10 and 12 by the Contekton bureau. Phew, so much name-checking!

The burger joint changed owners a couple of months after I photographed it, and was immediately repainted. So the winds of change still whistle briskly around the corners of this block.

Episode 135: kv Visborg

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date:11 October 2020

Until Sweden was pulled out of the dismal poverty that had been our lot until the early 1900s, vermin was a terrible problem. In 1934, just as politicians started flexing their muscles for raising the standard of living that became a mania of urban renewal thirty years later, the anti-vermin company Anticimex was started. Their first enemy was the horrible bed bug, today making an unwelcome comeback in Swedish homes and hotels.

Before city block Visborg was built, this was a farm called Mariefred, and it remained at the east end of the block as the western house was put up in the late 1870s. The western house was designed in elaborate Neo-Renaissance style by Carl Fahlström. The remaining farm was bought in 1910, when the eastern half of the block was built. The basement towards Avenyn has been restaurant premises for a hundred years. In 1971, Gothenburg’s first pizzeria opened here and we sometimes went there when I was a kid. Yum.

Kvarteren Turmalinen, Agaten, Ametisten, Karneolen

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 127 to 130 lecture a bit on mineralogy and continue the tour through Jugend, National Romanticism and 1920s Classicism.

Episode 127: kv Turmalinen

District: Heden

Photo date: 28 February 2021

National Romanticism was a Swedish style that was popular in the early 1900s. It wanted to emulate the styles from when Sweden was great, Gustaf Vasa’s 1500s and the mid-1600s, and also romanticised Sweden’s agrarian heritage. The result was imposing red-brick buildings with decorations in the form of brick patterns, granite sculptures and reliefs, and copper details. It was also popular to build wooden houses, often dark and heavy. A prime example of this style is the Masthugget Church. We see a bit of this on the east side of this block.

On the other side of the block is Södra Vägen 32 which was designed by Hjalmar Zetterström in lightest Jugend style. He also designed Skånegatan 31 a couple of years later, tilting towards National Romanticism. The other Jugend houses along Södra Vägen were created by builder O A Burman and the splendid backdrop to Korsvägen by Robert Anderson Arelius in 1911. Jugend was a continental style, often with a focus on crafts and botanic shapes. On the continent it can be quite extreme, Art Nouveau, while in Sweden it can verge towards National Romanticism as our kind of crafts are heavy and dark, not light and airy.

Episode 128: kv Agaten

District: Heden

Photo date: 21March 2021

We continue with lots of Jugend built around 1910. Berzeliigatan 11 was designed by Frans Frise while numbers 13 to 17 came from the pen of Hjalmar Zetterström. Södra Vägen 24, however, was designed by Hjalmar Cornilsen. Phew, so many names!

Episode 129: kv Ametisten

District: Heden

Photo date: 28 February 2021

The middle part of this block was built later than the ends towards Engelbrektsgatan and Berzeliigatan. By that time, Lilienberg’s plans had come into force and National Romanticism was in full swing – which is very much in evidence along Wadmansgatan and Hedåsgatan.

Episode 130: kv Karneolen

District: Heden

Photo date: 28 February 2021

The first houses south of Heden were built in the 1890s, with imposing facades towards the city. The corner house at Södra Vägen 2 was particularly grand, built by Abraham Pehrsson and designed by Hjalmar Cornilsen.

Fredberg writes about Vassnöden and the Jamaica Inn. The style is lively, a bit sentimental, and with the old Swedish grammar that all young fantasy writers fail so miserably at mastering.

Kvarteren Rubinen, Opalen, Bergkristallen, Onyxen, Granaten

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 123 to 126 take a tour through architectural fashions from the 1890s to the 1990s.

Episode 123: kv Rubinen, kv Opalen

District: Heden

Photo date: 25 December 2020

As you can see by my WordPress signature, my alias in the Gothenburg Tolkien society is Ruby Gamgee. So city block Ruby feels right at home! It’s a little bit weird but also nice how much my alias has become part of my overall personality: before, my favourite colour was blue and now it’s ruby red. When I could create a coat of arms, my life suddenly filled with penguins. And above all: the many and very good friends I have made.

In city block Opal, the 1880s landshövdingehus were torn down in the 1960s to make way for modern buildings – a story that is true for every other district in Gothenburg too. The hotel by Henning Orlando was in perfect 1960s style until the topside extension was added in 2007. Now it just looks wonky. The other buildings in the block were designed by Lennart Kvarnström, and the Lund & Valentin bureau.

Episode 124: kv Bergkristallen

District: Heden

Photo date: 13 March 2021

Now we enter the area south of Heden, where tall stone houses sprang up in a tight cluster from the 1890s to the 1920s. The old farms, tobacco plantations and shacks had to go, to make way for the demands of a modern city – words that are still true today and probably were true even for the old Greeks.

My main source for this area, and indeed the next 50 or more episodes of this series, is an in-depth study of planning and architecture in Vasastaden-Lorensberg, made by Staffan Sedenmalm in 2016. Chock full of information! My other source is of course CRA Fredberg, and my grandmother’s memoirs; she grew up just south of here in the early 1900s.

Along Hedåsgatan, the middle part of the block has been pulled back a bit from the street, creating a more open space. This is a hallmark of the city plans drawn up by Albert Lilienberg, who was planning director in Gothenburg between 1907 and 1927. Lots more will be said about him in episodes 389ff of this series. Berzeliigatan 22 is a very light type of Jugend, almost Rococo, designed by Robert Andersson in 1903.

Episode 125: kv Onyxen

District: Heden

Photo date: 13 March 2021

The area south of Heden was mostly developed by builders who had worked their way up from wooden landshövdingehus. They included August Westerlind, Johan August Frise, Johan Peter A Rydgren, Hans A Kilander, C A Lund, J A Westerberg, Nathan Persson and Abraham Pehrsson. They mostly drew their buildings in-house and only the posher houses along the main thouroughfares were designed by proper architects, like Hjalmar Cornilsen, Frans Frise, Zetterstöm & Jonsson and Olof Holmén.

Sten Sturegatan 21 was built in 1905 by Carl Axel Gillberg. It is a Jugend-type house but a bit heavier than usual, almost Baroque.

Episode 126: kv Granaten

District: Heden

Photo date: 20 March 2021

The stone desert continues, as Fredberg would have put it. The houses along Skånegatan were built as the noughties Jugend had turned into the 1910s National Romanticism, and even into the 1920s Classicism. They are too humble to be worthy of separate comments in my sources, though. The odd fire or too-severe subsidence damage has caused some old buildings to be replaced in the 1990s. Some of the houses along Södra Vägen were designed by Olof Holmén and built in the noughties.

Kvarteren Beryllen, Smaragden, Diamanten, Malakiten and Exercisheden

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 119 to 122 survey the north part of district Heden, with private and public building styles spanning a century and more.

Episode 119: kv Beryllen

District: Heden

Photo date: 19 September 2020

During Gothenburg’s 400th anniversary celebrations last year, one event was the fact that the ”utility-historical collections” in Elyseum, Hans Hedlund’s Art Nouveau fortress of electricity, were open at a time when others than OPAs could visit. I jumped at the opportunity – and it was fabulous! Gas works, electricity production, district heating, cables and pipes, and a recreation of the first exhibition of electrical gadgets that you might use as a pioneering electricity consumer. Wow. If you want to go, the opening hours are 1000-1400 on Wednesdays. Or book a private showing.

Episode 120: kv Smaragden

District: Heden

Photo date: 19 September 2020

The architect Johan August Westerberg designed the splendid tenenment buildings for employees at the state railroads, while the 1892 house with the tower was designed by K Johansson. And you can read all about the 1891 industrial exhibition in CRA Fredberg’s third volume of stories about Gothenburg of yore.

Episode 121: kv Diamanten

District: Heden

Photo date: 6 September 2020

Oscar Dickson’s ”palace” at the west end of The Diamond was designed by William Allen Boulnois and built by local building firm P J Rapp, with imported English workers. Boulnois also designed Villa Överås in Örgryte, which we might visit in several years’ time if I continue with this architectural hobby.

It’s rather unusual to have two churches in one block. The Methodist church was designed by Karl Magnus Bengtsson, in a mixed Swedish-English 1920s style. And the 20 years older house it was added onto was designed by Oswald Westerberg, son of Johan August. The Roman Catholic church was built ten years later, from designs by Carl Rosell. It was adequate at the time but today it is always packed full on Sundays, many attendants have to stand throughout the 90-minute service.

Parkgatan 6 was built at the same time as church and designed by Gotthard Gillermo. The G D Kennedy house, by Gotthard Åhlander, is one of the last examples of charitable housing made possible by donations to the city by wealthy merchants and financiers. For a hundred years, that was a common and commendable practice, to share wealth and be remembered. From the 1930s, Sweden became a socialist state with the aim of lowering class barriers and sharing wealth, the so-called People’s Home, and donations were no longer needed to aid poor people. I guess it is time to take up that old practice again now.

Episode 122: kv Malakiten and Exercisheden

District: Heden

Photo date: 19 September and 11 October 2020

CRA Fredberg writes enthusiastically about the so-called Rifle Movement that flourished in Gothenburg for a few years in the 1860s. They marched about, held gun competitions, and built this sports hut at the edge of the military exercise field, Heden. The movement quickly faded into ancient history, but the house endures, with sports activities almost every week. The architect was Frans Jacob Heilborn.

The Sports House where the farm Katrinetorp (or the Flea Pit as it was apparently called) once stood, was built from scratch for the 1923 Anniversary Exhibition, from designs by the exhibition’s official architect Arvid Fuhre. The Exhibition was located not just at the main area around Korsvägen: here in Heden was the farming section, for instance, and over on Hisingen was ILUG, the first international airshow after the Great War, at a float-plane harbour and airfiled opened in 1923 and only closed when Landvetter Airport was built 50 years later.

Liseberg acquired the hotel at the south end of Heden in 1981, and about that time the bus stop house was built too. There have always been unrealised plans to fill Heden with more houses, preferably tightly clustering highrises which is de rigueur today. But it is a very useful open space, accommodating healthy athletics, events like the horse championships a few years back, and circuses!

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

Publicerad den av
Svara

In episodes 90 to 94 we leave the original city and its defence works, to look at one of the first industrial districts and suburbs.

Episode 90: kv Gestilren

District: Stampen

Photo date: 23 August 2020

Our first block in the district called Stampen is also one of the most modern, with significant inustrial heritage, as narrated in the video. It needed quite a lot of narration, as these semi-modern houses have a surprising amount of decorations. Actually, given the time of construction (late 1980s), the amount of decoration is quite typical. In a reaction to the austere functionalism and economising of the 1960s and 1970s, some post-modern architects started added extraneous details like tiles, pillars, bay windows, pyramids and outright sculptures to their facades and roofs. There are a handful of these houses in Gothenburg, almost all of them public buildings like a tram deopt, a fire station or a parking garage.

Try as I might, the only information I can find about the modern buildings is an old zoning document that says the property was owned by Kullenbergs. The Old Gothenburg site relates the saga of this company that was very active during the 1970s and 80s and then went bust in the 1990s bubble. But what is this: in Intermission Part 3 is a photo of a hand with the name Lars Spaak! He made some of the railings, and the bronze pillar at Adler Salivus gata 11. On his website he also mentions architect Ylva Ljungström.

That site and Fredberg also have interesting things to say about the orphanage, with illustrations. The current building was designed by Adolf Edelsvärd.

Episode 91: kv Herrevadsbro

District: Stampen

Photo date: 23 August 2020

In high school I studied languages, latin even. But I didn’t know what career I wanted to pursue after graduation so in 1985 and 1986 I took complementary courses in maths, physics and typing at the Odin School. Even then it was old, even if it was modern when it was built. The architect was G A Falk. (The courses turned out to be very useful as I eventually became a geologist, and with the then-unknown internet, typing skillz have become essential.)

The water-course to the south, the Paupers’ Canal, is a man-made canal to supply water to the moat, and to allow barge access to the Mölndal River. Before it was dug, in the mid-1600s, one of the arms of the river ran right through this block. The district was for the most part a reedy marshland in the beginning. The river arm remained as a swampy backwater for almost two centuries. A fitting place for the knacker!

When I went to the school here, the land between it and the canal was un-built. The hotel at the west end of Gestilren had been built, and the rest of Gestilren was a construction site. The buses to Partille, where I lived then, had stopped by the old Pripps plank but had just been moved to the brand new arcade along the north side of the hotel. Now there are no bus stops along Odinsgatan as all bus routes have been moved away from it. Air quality along this road is notoriously bad and this was one of the remedial measures taken, others being outlawing the use of snow tires and restricting access. This latter measure is a direct reversal of policy as compared with the 1950s and 60s when major motorways and universal access for cars ruled!

Episode 92: kv Lena

District: Stampen

Photo date: 23 August 2020

The newspaper house is a fine example of modernism, or functionalism as it is called in Sweden. It was designed in 1933 by Ragnar Ossian Swensson, who some 20 years earlier was heavily into late-national romanticism, and 1920s classicism in that decade. A fashion-conscious gentleman!

Göteborgs-Posten was the city’s biggest newspaper until the internet killed that business some 20 years ago. The house here was built for the presses as well as the editorial offices, but in the 1970s bigger presses were needed and a new industrial building put up across the river. In the archives of the company I work for, Bergab, are documents from the site investigations for this buildings. Half a decade ago or so, that house was torn down as presses are no longer needed. Thousands of trees thank the internet for their lives!

The other house in this block is a formerly functionalist house like the ones around Odinsplatsen. It was completely redesigned some 20 years ago. Neither the 1930s nor the 2000s styles permit decorations.

Episode 93: kv Åsle

District: Stampen

Photo date: 23 August 2020

Before 1900, the north side of this street was un-built; in fact, until the railway was laid out on recently reclaimed land, this was all reedy marshland along a bay of the river. Louis Enders designed this workers’ tenement for the Pripps brewery in 1898. Apart from this block and the Jewish cemetary, all the other houses were built in the 1930s.

Episode 94: kv Lützen, kv Brännkyrka and Odinsplatsen

District: Stampen

Photo date: 23 August 2020

Odinsplatsen was planned in 1866 but the north side was only built up in the late 1930s. It was a centre for car salesmen, mechanics and garages. When the car salesmen moved out in the 1970s, bikers and strip-clubs moved in. Twenty years ago the entire area was rebuilt and/or gentrified.

The current buildings in the Brännkyrka block are from the 1960s and 1990s. The imposing facade along the Canal is completely different from the old paupers’ school that stood here until the 1960s. Johan Willin was a very charitable priest in the 1700s who started a free school for poor children, an institution that later morphed into the compulsory state school system instated in 1842.

Kvarteren Kajaken, Röda Bryggan, Regeringen, Kaponjären, Stora Teatern samt Kungsparken och Trädgårdsföreningen

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 85 to 87 cover the tiny district called Pustervik and episodes 88 and 89 take us back east, through leafy expanses built on the former outer defence works. There is also an Intermission with extra stuff picked up over the course of the project.

Intermission

District: Nordstaden, Inom Vallgraven

Photo date: 1 May 2020 to 27 Feburary 2021

This is a collection of stuff I missed the first time round – and a blooper! When taking an establishing shot of the Fountain Bridge I accidentally caught a man urinating, in full view of everyone passing by. The stream is clearly visible in the photo but I masked it as I’m sure Youtube won’t allow anything that tasteless.

Episode 85: kv Kajaken, kv Röda Bryggan

District: Pustervik

Photo date: 16 August and 5 September 2020

Pustervik is the name of an inlet under the Otterhällan hill, just where the moat passed into the Göta river. West of this inlet was the old harbour and ship-building district, with lots of jetties and piers sticking out in the river. On old maps, the riverfront looks fringed, or comb-like.

In this episode, I included one block that belongs to district Olivedal or Masthugget – but the land here is actually the reclaimed Pustervik inlet, so it is right and proper to include it in this section. The Kayak was built as a customs warehouse, the precursor to the Freeport built across the river a few years later. It was designed by Karl Samuelsson right along the Rosenlund Canal, which was dug out to straighten the southwest end of the crinkly moat.

The block called Red Bridge is chock-full of history that is recounted in my sources, both books and digitals. The current buildings are not much to talk about, though, as all but one are very recent, and bland. Järntorgsgatan 2 was razed after this video was made and a new ultra-modern structure put up. It is not quite finished yet so it will be the subject of future Intermission.

Episode 86: kv Regeringen

District: Pustervik

Photo date: 5 September 2020

After I’ve made an architectural walk I often share the surprises I’ve found. Sometimes it’s a friendly cat, other times a person who strikes up a conversation when I tell them what I’m doing (architectural safari!), but mostly it’s a detail I’ve never noticed before. Like on the church in this block. Wow! It was designed by Lars Ågren of the firm GAKO, designers of many of the suburban concrete housing estates of the era.

The other fun building in this block is the former cinema. It was designed by Malte Erichs and has been an entertainment venue for a century. I only saw a few movies at Prisma as it was a bit out of the way for me and across the street lay the biggest and best theatre in town, Draken. Just before the cinema closed, I saw ”Little Dorrit” with Alec Guinness here, as part of the Gothenburg Film Festival 1989. Two movies with almost no intermission, hard to keep my eyes open at the end…

Episode 87: kv Kaponjären

District: Pustervik

Photo date: 5 September 2020

Pustervik only contains three blocks, and this last one was long un-built because it had a trench running through it until 1865. Five years later, the small clump of buildings designed by Hans Jacob Strömberg were put up. East of them was an open space, long a parking area, now a major construction site. As I write this, the contractors for the train station under Haga Church have just been fired and the tunnel work halted for the foreseeable future. Everyone saw this coming, even when the Turkish consortium won the bidding several years ago…

Episode 88: Kungsparken, kv Stora Teatern

District: Vasastaden and Lorensberg

Photo date: 22 September 2020

Where the King’s Park is today, state fortification master Erik Dahlberg laid out the outer defence works in the late 1600s. You might think a city wall, bastions, a moat and several small fortresses might be enough, but then you don’t know the Dane in the 17th century. A formidable threat! Outside the moat was a cleared space where no enemy could hide, and no obstructions for cannon shots. It was called ”glacis”, a term we still use when describing some types of earth reinforcement along railways. In 1823, the glacis was turned into four lines of trees with bridle-paths and promenades between. Some years later, the rest of the park was planted and it has withstood exploitation for two hundred years. Unless you count the motorway that runs through it…

The King’s Park is full of outdoor art and at the east end is a whole house dedicated to art. The Grand Opry was designed by Bror Carl Malmberg and is apparently an early example of opera houses of that time, the mid 1800s. Fredberg has A LOT to say about this theatre, it gets quite tedious, frankly. Among the productions I saw there was ”Don Juan” in 1983, as directed by Etienne Glaser. It was rather weird: the set designs consisted solely of ropes delineating empty space on the stage. Glaser’s experiences with this production were later turned into a movie by his wife, ”Bröderna Mozart”. This was the movie our prime minister Olof Palme had been to when he was shot in 1986. Also, Glaser is one of two persons I have written a fan letter to (and he replied!); the other one is Kenneth Williams.

Episode 89: Trädgårdsföreningen

District: Heden

Photo date: 27 August 2020

Fredberg gives a vivid description of this area before the park known as The Garden Assocation was established: miasma from the nearby slaughterhouse, morasses in the old glacis, robbers, drunks and prostitues. Tired of these conditions, and of seeing boring houses all day long, the city magnates decided to turn the reasonably wholesame meadow here into a garden centre, for promenades but also as a teaching facility and a nursery (and to move the slaughterhouse to a safe distance). The idea was to spread greenery in the city and in the new areas being planned for exploitation.

The garden has always been a favourite for gothenburgers, even today. So many pretty flowers, a lovely café in the rose garden, exhibitions, the greenhouses, birds… Recently, a number of cormorants have starte lining the shore along the moat, looking for fish. In the olden days, the park was also a dating central, and a place to be seen and admired. It had a fountain around which the glitterati would circle, as depicted by artist Ivar Arosenius.

Kvarteren Luntantu, Carolus Rex, Arsenalen, Kasernen, Boktryckeriet, Fiskaren, Fiskhallen

Publicerad den av
Svara

Episodes 80 to 84 explore Kungshöjd with its military history, both hidden and erased. Various styles are presented: national romanticism, 1920s classicism, brutalism and 18th century masonry.

Episode 80: kv Luntantu

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 20 August 2020

After the artillery garrison moved out to Kviberg in 1895, the top of the hill here was open for exploitation. Most of the houses were built around 1910, and so it was with this block too. The buildings were partly residential, partly businesses and workshops. Today, almost all of them are converted to housing associations. The house at Hvitfeldtsgatan 14 was built and possibly designed by A Westerlind in 1903. Hjalmar Zetterström designed the corner house at Kungsgatan-Luntantugatan which was built in 1908. When I passed it today I noticed the carpet seller who has resided there for maybe 50 years is gone, it’s just an ordinary interior design shop now.

Episode 81: kv Carolus Rex

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 20 August 2020

The inn Luntantu was situated at the corner house Kungsgatan 7, whatever the name might have meant. On the page where Fredberg discusses this, there is also a picture of the old optical telegraph on Otterhällan. I guess the inhabitants of Ankh-Morpork would call it ”clacks”. Kungsgatan 7 once housed a cinema — and today one of the tenants in the old Gårda Textiles shop is the regional film board!

The houses along Hvitfeldtsgatan were designed by Nils Olsson and Sten Branzell. Gudrun Lönnroth has much more to say about the terraced houses here. As for the bastion, it is again open to sightseeing tours, I passed one group today about to enter the old gunpowder room.

Episode 82: kv Arsenalen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 20 August 2020

When seen from afar, this block looks a bit like a castle or a fortress, which is the effect Eugen Thorburn, the main architect, strived for. The individual buildings were then designed by architects like Hans Hedlund, Arvid Bjerke and Gustaf Elliot. The current buildings stand on the site of the old arsenal belonging to the Göta Artillery Regiment whose barracks stood nearby. The old arsenal looked very much like the current buildings on top of the hill, if old pictures are truthful.

Episode 83: kv Kasernen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 16 August 2020

The chocolate house was built in 1903 and designed by G O Johansson. Today it is of course a housing association. Until the 1970s the whole block consisted of old houses like this, but then the south part was razed to make way for office boxes. The southernmost corner house is curently being rebuilt, possibly as a consequence of the Västlänken railway tunnel which is being constructed right underneath it.

Episode 84: kv Boktryckeriet, kv Fiskaren, kv Fiskhallen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 16 August 2020

In the mid 1800s there was a printing business here, run by Anders Lindgren. When the old house was razed in the 1970s, the new construction became one of the first assignments for the company I worked for: to inspect the new blasted rockface and design reinforcements to secure it from rockfalls. That is a description of pretty much everything we do as engineering geologists. Here is rock. Here is the cavern/slope/pit we want to excavate for our road/railway/utility/house. What’s the best way to go about it? And here is a completed construction: how do we maintain it safely?

The fish market area used to be bigger. East of the tiny block Fisherman was a little house for the old navigation school, torn down in 1913. Since then it has been an open space with nothing much going on. The Fish Church was designed by Victor von Gegerfelt, but for all its conspicuousness it is surprisingly spare when it comes to decorations. There are no decorations at all inside. In fact there is nothing inside since it is no longer in use. It was listed in 2013 and in 2019 closed indefinitely for extensive refurbishment. Also, again: Västlänken righ underneath…

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

Publicerad den av
Svara

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

Publicerad den av
Svara

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.