Etikettarkiv: Heilborn

Architect, link in Malakiten & Exercisheden

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.

Kvarteren Beryllen, Smaragden, Diamanten, Malakiten and Exercisheden

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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!