Etikettarkiv: Haga

District

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 Sappören, Dragonen, Sabeln, Bajonetten, Laddstaken

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Episodes 228 to 232 enter the district called Haga, Gothenburg’s first suburb that was burnt down by the Danes in 1676 but made a strong comeback until most of it was demolished 300 years later.

Episode 228: kv Sappören

District: Haga

Photo date: 26 February 2022

Our first block in Haga sums up the architectural history of the district quite well. It was a working class suburb which meant cheap or ancient buildings like the ones at Husargatan 44 and 46 from the mid-1800s. In the 1960s the powers that be decided that all houses in Gothenburg older than 50 years and esepecially every single landshövdingehus needed to be demolished and replaced with concrete machines for living. But the man in the street disagreed and their was much protestation, to deaf ears. In the 1980s, it was again decided that some old houses should be spared and refurbished, while the modern houses being put up should have a less brutal esthetic.

The university building in this block is part of what is now called Campus Haga and is part of the social sciences department. They were very affronted when their new area in Haga was immediately, nay inevitably, dubbed ”Samvetet” by the local wits – ”social sciences” is called ”samhällsvetenskap” in Swedish, and ”samvete” is ”conscience”. Oh ye of little humour… The buildings were designed by Arkitektlaget and the Wallinder bureau and put up in the early 1990s.

Episode 229: kv Dragonen

District: Haga

Photo date: 26 February 2022

The Dragoon is much like The Sapper but instead of a mid-1850s cottage, the preserved houses are two 1880s landshövdingehus, from the first wave of that type of house. For the new university building, the architects strived to retain the monumental backdrop that the old brewery gave to Vasagatan. Well at least it is rather low; today the new house would have been at least ten storeys high and inescapable.

Episode 230: kv Sabeln

District: Haga

Photo date: 12 March 2022

Haga Nygata is the main (the only) shopping street in Haga and it is really quaint. All the cruise ship passengers come here in the summer, and so do many ordinary locals too. The café called Husaren was the first to sell really oversized cinnamon buns which lately have become something of a symbol for all the cafés in Haga.

Of the houses built in the late 1880s, the big stone building and the crinkly landshövdingehus along Haga Nygata and Sprängkullsgatan have been preserved. But the ”back” of the block was completely replaced in the 1980s.

Episode 231: kv Bajonetten

District: Haga

Photo date: 12 March 2022

Sprängkullsgatan once again lives up to its name, what with the blasting works going on for Västlänken right underneath Hagakyrkan. No wait, the work there was halted two years ago and it is just a barricaded area with a busy motorway running through it now. But we had fun trying to determine just how much Spräng had been made in the Kulle, and how much rock was left above the proposed railway tunnel. No drawings or surveys from the time still exist. (Hint: the result was ”almost no rock”.)

Among the elaborate landshövdingehus in this block stands one really ancient house with only two storeys and a somewhat fancier stone house for the Haga parish. The back of the block was completely replaced in the 1980s. The Eckerstein bookshop was one of the best in Gothenburg, which sold academic literature and non-mainstream works. Towards the end of its existence it resided in what is now the Chinese consulate.

Episode 232: kv Laddstaken

District: Haga

Photo date: 12 April 2022

Here is a block that reeks of history – if any block in Haga should be preserved it is this one. Luckily, only three quarters of the houses were demolished and replaced in the late 1980s.

Fredberg has much to write about the Hussars that gave Haga much of its air of… I hesitate to say horse manure. Flair, flamboyance, dash, rambunctiousness? When they were decommissioned in 1875, their barracks became a police station for the mounted police. In 1914 it too was moved, to a fancy new house in Masthugget.

He also has a few things to say about Concert du Boulevard and how weird the Salvation Army was to ordinary Swedes when they took over the premises in the mid-1880s. I find it quite hilarious that socialism didn’t take off in Gothenburg at that time, since our city became a Red Fortress in the 1960s and 70s and still has a hard time shaking off that image all these liberal decades later.

Kvarteren Boken, Alen, Husaren samt Hagakyrkan och Gamla Stadsbiblioteket

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Episodes 151 to 155 explore some of the many schools located in the west part of Vasastaden.

Episode 151: kv Boken

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 28 March 2021

Here is a block devoted to mind and spirit: two schools, two orders, a place of worship and a charitable foundation. The Hertz and Kjellberg houses, the oldest ones, were designed by Frans Jacob Heilborn and built by P J Rapp. Storgatan 1 was built by J J Lundström soon after. Along Bellmansgatan, the middle properties were bought up by Nils Andersson’s building company and the subsequent houses, including the Rudebeck school, were designed by Adrian Peterson in the early 1870s.

My cousin went to the Rudebeck school and it is still going strong. Back in the 1980s, so-called free schools were unusual and only for the very posh. In the 1990s and especially the noughties, Sweden decided to totally overhaul its education system and let the market forces run schools: freedom and competition should make everything better for everyone. So today free schools is the new norm and can be found in almost every block, especially in Vasastaden.

Episode 152: kv Alen

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 28 March 2021

This was once a two-in-one park block like the ones to the east of it. Adrian Peterson designed the western half in 1872 for A E Broddelius, and Victor von Gegerfelt copied the designs for the eastern half seven years later for builder Anders Johanson. The style was lavishly Neo-Renaissance, as the times dictated.

The western half of the block was demolished in 1939, to make way for the evangelical Smyrna church. They moved out in 2019, to a brand new building in Frihamnen.

Episode 153: Hagakyrkan

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 10 April 2021

For centuries, the inhabitants of district Haga had been fed up with not having a nearby church. Finally in the mid-1800s, monies were supplied by donations from wealthy magnates. One of them was director David Carnegie who had just hired architect Adolf Edelswärd to design a replica Scottish church at his factory community in Klippan west of Gothenburg. So he got the job of redesigning the Neo-Gothic Haga Church too, more or less simultaneously. Which came first, the Klippan or the Haga church?

Almost two years after this episode was made, work was stopped on the railway and station under the church. Everyone involved knew that a Turkish-Italian-Norwegian consortium was not ideal for major infrastructure construction in the west of Sweden, with thixotropic clays overlying crystalline bedrock. It’s not the normal soft sedimentary rocks and hard soils that the rest of the continent is used to! So Trafikverket cancelled their contract in January 2023 and has since tried to find new contractors. Maybe work will resume in the next few years? Meanwhile, design work for the station is ongoing and to say it is challenging would be a huge understatement.

Episode 154: Gamla Stadsbiblioteket

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 10 April 2021

The Social Sciences Library has been closed for several years because of the Västlänken works. It is unclear what will happen to the building in the future, as the works will continue for several years ahead, see above.

Episode 155: kv Husaren

District: Haga

Photo date: 17 April 2021

Until the early to mid 1900s, Gothenburg was primarily a trading city and it was important to have skilled merchants and financiers. Lower and middle economic schools existed (my grandparents met at one) but not higher education, at academic levels. Only in the late 1940s was this School of Economics realised, after substantial donations had been made.

The tall building along Vasagatan was designed by Sture Ljungqvist and Carl Nyrén and put up by Byggnads AB Olle Engkvist in 1950. East of this marble-clad body lay an L-shaped building with red-brick facade – but it was razed for Västlänken soon after having been pre-listed. The rest of the remaining buildings were put up in 1994 and 2009 from designs by the Erséus, Frenning & Sjögren bureau. Since 2020, the northeastern part of the block has been a building site and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future, due to Västlänken.