Etikettarkiv: Hedlund H

Architect, link in Manegen

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 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.

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 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.