Etikettarkiv: Inom Vallgraven

District

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

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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

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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 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 Artilleristallet, Biskopen, Gymnasiet, Sidenvävaren

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Episodes 62 to 65 stroll along Magasinsgatan to look at what the inner city used to be like. The artillery barracks have left their mark, and any number of shops, as well as the bishop and Gothenburg’s first school. All of them have disappeared long ago.

Episode 62: kv Artilleristallet

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

For further information about the houses in this block, see Gudrun Lönnroth’s book ”Hus för hus”. Web sources only say the stables were built in 1835, that the cab company moved in in 1898, and that it has recently been renovated to house bars, clubs and cafés. There are some additional photos in Intermission II.

Episode 63: kv Biskopen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

Again, the Lönnroth book has all the details. A quick web search comes up with a recent trademark filing for the name Carl G Platin Punch, so the brand seems to be relevant still, even if his grand house has long since been turned into other businesses.

The Bishop’s House was built for a trader named Bauch, who decorated the interior with paintings of Captain Cook’s expeditions to the South Seas. Presumably that was too light-weight a subject for a bishop so they were covered up and only re-discovered in 1929. The facade was also covered for a while, with neo-renaissance decorations added by Adrian Peterson iin 1889, and removed in the more austere age of 1938.

Episode 64: kv Gymnasiet

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

The original Gymnasium (Lyceum) was situated off the southwest corner of the cathedral. In 1923, as part of the celebration of the city’s 300th anniversary (put off two years due to after-effects of the Great War), the city adminstration was overhauled and all these block names created. They are also numbered which makes it easier to find them when looking at maps with property designations. Before, the city was divided into ”rotar” or ”sections” which is the translation of the aviation meaning of the same word. So a block was called ”number x in rote y”.

The Telegraph House was built in 1826 by Otto Dymling’s father and designed by Jonas Hagberg. It was a replacement for the Lyceum which burned down in the 1802 fire. Before that, this property held the dean’s house. When the Lyceum moved to the Old Latin school in 1862, it became an auction house, and then in 1892 the telegraph station. Isak Gustaf Clason re-designed the house for its new purpose. Twenty years later, the telegraph moved to a new, gigantic house further up the hill but the house was retained as a training and union venue. The LM Engström highschool bought this house and the Bishops’s House in 1999, and it is once again a ”gymnasium”.

Several other houses are from the 1930s, judging by the style. One of them is Kungsgatan 19 where you can visit the Science Fiction Bookstore, SF-bok, and its lovely Café Sirius. I spend far too much time and money there, every Sunday and twice a month for board meetings with Club Cosmos and bookclub meetings with Mithlond. And since they moved from their second venue in Paddock, they organise a Geek Pride Parade every Towel Day, or thereabouts. An opportunity to dress up and astond the general public as we march down Avenyn.

Episode 65: kv Sidenvävaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

Wikipedia has a lot to say about this block, which otherwise is rather boring, lots of shops. New houses to the north, some older ones retained to the south and east. The latter houses are listed.

The violet house at Kaserntorget 1 was designed by Nils Einar Eriksson and put up in 1956. It was built for a gents’ outfitters called Malmströms.

Vasabron, kvarteren Jungfrustigen, Gamla Latin, Engelska Kyrkan, Spruthuset

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Episodes 57 to 61 present various styles and architects that gave the city its look from the 1860s to the 1900s: neo-romanesque, neo-gothic and Jugend styles, by Gegerfelt, Edelsvärd, Peterson and Rasmussen. There is even a street here called Arkitektgatan.

Episode 57: Vasabron

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 9 May and 16 August 2020

When new plans were drawn up for the city’s expansion south, it was decreed that Magasinsgatan should be extended over the moat and up the hills to the newly established villa town there. The new district south of the moat was to be called Vasastaden and then, naturally, the bridge for the new road was named the Vasa Bridge.

It was finally built in 1907 and Yngve Rasmussen designed it, with fantastic beasts in the currently fashionable style Jugend (Art Nouveau).

Episode 58: kv Jungfrustigen and the Victoria Bridge

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 11 August 2020

The Social House was originally meant to be twice as big, in a full ellipse. Like many other ventures, though, it became far too expensive and only the one half was actually built. Perhaps the old Sahlgren Hospital would have stayed there longer if it had been bigger but probably not; the inner city is less conducive to care and recovery than the fresh winds of the countryside.

The building was designed by renowned architect Victor von Gegerfelt, who also built himself a house next door. The new addition for the university’s educational sciences department was built in 2004 and was designed by the Nyréns firm.

During the riots in 2001, when protests against the visiting George W Bush went violent, I was out looking at the proceedings (away from the flying stones and bullets). The police effectively protected the inner city from the rioters outside by barring all the bridges across the moat, like the Victoria Bridge here. The old methods are still relevant in our connected times. The day before, protesters had gathered at Drottningtorget because Bush was housed in the red hotel in Slusskvarnen. When my bus passed, I saw one guy on top of a car mooning Bush!

Episode 59: kv Gamla Latin and the Rosenlund Bridge

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 11 August 2020

The Old Latin Highschool is now part of the Educational Sciences complex. It was built in 1857 in a style called neo-romanesque which became very popular with architects in the next decade. Many old public and residential buildings look just like it: yellow brick, rounded windows, lesenes dividing the facade into sections, brick crenelations under the roof… It was designed by city architect Hans Jakob Strömberg.

The building is still used as a school but it almost suffered the same fate as the old houses across the street, at least twice. There is a jazz club in the basement, Nefertiti, that is still in business despite the corona crisis and everything else. It is more than 50 years old now.

Episode 60: kv Engelska Kyrkan

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 11 August 2020

Across from the Old Latin is the contemporary English Church, designed by Adolf Wilhelm Edelsvärd in almost the exact same style, only he preferred the angled windows of the neo-gothics to the rounded romanesques. I once got a guided tour of the interior and it is quite cramped. The style is much the same indoors with many dark-brown wooden details.

Next to the church is the Melin House which looks like an annexe but is in fact a private property unaffiliated with the church. It was built in 1872 and designed by J A Westerberg. A member of the St Andrews congregation bought it in 1900 and donated it to the YWCA.

And here is the house Victor von Gegerfelt built for himself, just before building himself another and prettier house on the hill to the south. Unlike that one, which was sacrificed to rampant development in the 1890s, this house still stands, a villa right in the middle of a busy city centre. It was built in 1874 and remained a private residence for a series of magnates until 2001 when the city finally bought it. The Educational Dept might be using it for management or representation but when you pass it by it still looks like a private residence.

Episode 61: kv Spruthuset

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 11 August 2020

For a city deliberately founded as a trading post to bring in revenue for the Crown, it must have been natural to set up a school to train the future generations of merchants. So the trade school that was set up in Gothenburg in 1826 was the first one in Sweden. However, Fredberg points out that it was a foreigner who pushed for it, not a Swede. Oh the poor national pride…

After moving from one rented venue to the other for decades, in 1881 the boys moved to this new splendid building designed by Adrian Peterson. It was partially fincanced by monies from the Renström foundation, set up by magnate Sven Renström to support work in trade, health, education etc. His name lives on in many houses and institutions still extant today.

Apart from the school and the hose-house, there is also a preschool at this site today. Little do the toddlers and their keepers know that it is built on the ruins of a porno cinema…

Kvarteren Domkyrkan, Varuhuset, Larmtrumman, Saluhallen, Blomsterkvasten samt Grönsakstorget

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Episodes 52 to 56 document decorations on the Gothenburg Cathedral, and the area south of it. The cathedral is also called Gustavi Cathedral, after the founding king Gustav II Adolf. South of it are many shops, along the in-filled West Canal.

Episode 52: kv Domkyrkan

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 30 May 2020

Work on the cathedral started just a few years after the foundation of the city and it was mostly destroyed in a fire in 1721. The restored church was destroyed in the fire of 1802 and the current building put up around 1815. It was designed by city architect Carl Wilhelm Carlberg and the outside, at least, is very much the same after 200 years. These days you can visit the tower, which I did in May 2022 during the Geek Pride Parade day. A very enthusiastic priest guided us around the bells, the joists, the hidden Dalek…

The area around the church used to be a cemetery until the Old Cemetery was established in Stampen around the time the new church was built. From the 17th century until the 1802 fire there also were houses along Västra Hamngatan and one of them was the ”gymnasium” — the contemporay trasnlation is ”highschool” but perhaps ”lyceum” might be more appropriate here. Whatever that is.

The well-house by Västra Hamngatan was built in 1816 and designed by Carlberg’s successor Jonas Hagberg. The water came from a spring many miles to the south and was sorely needed in this salty and polluted city. Tanneries, cattle, no sewage system, all built on marshy land… No wonder they drank so much beer in the old days.

Episode 53: kv Varuhuset

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 20 June 2020

The refurbishments on the modernist corner house at Västra Hamngatan and the 1970s house next to it have since been completed. Not many decorations to note in Intermission, though, not even the big exterior thermometer that used to adorn the Ströms house.

The Dahlgren House was built by John Lyon in 1805 and sold to the Royal Bachelors Club in 1807. They again sold it to wholesaler Dahlgren who lived there until his death 40 years later. In my days, I remember it as the Nyberg hardware store; they set up shop there in 1905. The Meeths House was built by F O Peterson in 1910, after clearing away the older buildings put up by the iron traders Ekman & Co. City renewal is not a modern thing!

My father’s mother’s father’s father’s mother’s daughter in a previos marriage (known as aunt Lina) had a small shop at Vallgatan 26, where she sold ”fripperies”. My grandmother described the shop in her memoirs: ”Den 30.11.1859 gavs tillstånd till ‘Myndiga Pigan Maria Carolina Gunnarsson att idka nipperhandel i Göteborg’. Det innebar troligen, att hon sålde sk galanterivaror, smycken och även begagnade kläder i kommission. I ett litet rum bakom affären kokade hon sitt kaffe i kakelugnen i en liten kopparpanna på trefot.”

Episode 54: kv Larmtrumman

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 20 June 2020

Not much to add to the narration in the video. My sources are all in books and the websites don’t mention this block at all, despite all the decorations. It’s all shops, shops, shops.

Episode 55: kv Saluhallen and Bazarbron

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 19 August 2020

Here is a postcard of the Bazaar Bridge in the 1900s. I have no real memories of the old market hall house that caused such uproar when it was demolished, but I have all the more memories of the cineplex. In the basement are toilets, smaller theatres and the remains of the bastions.

The house with the cupola, where the Chinese consulate resides since 2004, was built in 1850 and designed by Heinrich Kaufmann. One of all the many banks bought it in 1891 and redecorated it, with the cupola and gates as well as the interior. It is/was called the Eckerstein House after the bookshop that resided there from 1975 to 1991. It was the university bookshop with more hardcore books than the light entertainment mostly sold elsewhere. But if I look back, even minor bookshops had better and wider selections than the simple fare on offer today.

Episode 56: kv Blomsterkvasten and Grönsakstorget

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 9 May and 16 August 2020

The houses along Västra Hamngatan were built and designed by August Krüger. The street itself was created when the old West Canal was filled in in 1907. It had long been a rather neglected canal, despite the proximity to finance and bishop; it was only clad with stone in the 1850s and the stagnant water gave it the name Filth Canal. If you look at the stone wall along the moat, you can see where the old canal emerged, because the stones are different.

The Vegetable Square is laid out on a stretch of city wall between the bastions Johannes Dux and Carolus Dux. Until the 1830s there used to be a rope-walk running over what is now the square; it was set up in 1746, the time of the Eastindia merchantmen. There was also a garden here, so it probably seemed logical for the powers that were to locate the vegetable market here, when they decided to regulate open commerce in the 1870s. The meat market was directed to the King’s Square and the the fish market away from city hall, to Pustervik.

Kvarteren Bokhållaren, Frimuraren, Kommerserådet, Holländaren, Domprosten

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Episodes 47 to 51 document the facades of the former financial district in Gothenburg. My father’s father’s brother worked in one of the banks at Västra Hamngatan, but I can never remember which one because they all had very similar names!

Episode 47: kv Bokhållaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 30 May 2020

I wonder what the Kiel shop looked like, before the house was turned into a bank with insanely rich facade decorations. Probably it was low and sober like the other bourgeois houses of the time, with shops and warehouses on the lower floors and living spaces upstairs, and only few facade decorations around windows and doors.

And I wonder what the first city looked like, the wooden one in the 17th century, beset by Danes and harsh weather, slowly growing more cramped inside the walls as more and more houses were built. The Old Gothenburg site doesn’t have much data on the houses in this district except lists of owners of the various properties. It just gives a hint about what sort of businesses operated here in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Wikipedia is more forthcoming (and so are library books but it’s more difficult to generate links to them). Shops, banks and insurance companies have put their marks on the old houses, sometimes violently, and in the last couple of decades many of the removed decorations have been replaced, because apparently most people enjoy decorations and find bland facades depressing. Who knew?

Episode 48: kv Frimuraren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 17 May 2020

After the devastating fire of 1802, the old wooden structures along the Main Canal were replaced with stone buildings, with more or less uniform design. At the time, a sober, mostly decoration-free classicist style was popular and would, I guess, have been approved by modernists a century and a bit later and perhaps even by today’s minimalists.

Again Wikipedia is a good summary of sources that are physical books in the library. A summary of the summary: the Central Bank was designed by Viktor Adler in the neo-renaissance style of 1886, when it was built. In 1941, when functionalism or modernism was king, the facade decorations were removed, and again restored in 2001. The Freemason House was originally designed by Justius Fredrik Weinberg but remodelled in 1878 by Adrian Peterson, and again in 1916 by Ernst Torulf. The corner house towards Brunnsparken was built in 1978 and designed by Anders Tengbom and H Bengtsson. The attempt to blend in with the older buildings isn’t entirely successful…

Since the late 1700s, clubs and orders of various kinds were on the rise, also among the bourgeoisie. The orders were convivial associations with food, drink and merriment, but also had a social agenda with charities and helping brothers (no sisters!) in need. I know my father’s mother’s father and later his widow had great help from the Odd Fellows when things were tough.

Episode 49: kv Kommerserådet

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 17 and 24 May 2020

Banks and insurance companies tend to cluster together, much like a herd of nervous cows (I did not say sheep). Gothenburg’s first financial district was along the south side of the Main Canal, in the early and mid 1800s. The financiers looked out on the embankment, reinforced with stone cladding and with recently added bollards & chains to stop people falling into the water. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the banks and insurers clustered around the filled-in Västra Hamngatan, in increasingly tall and opulent financial palaces. And in the 1970s, they all moved to the brand new premises in Östra Nordstaden. Some of them might still be there, unless they have all moved to the cloud by now.

Summing up the next Wikipedia summary, the Chalmers House was designed by the first offical city architect, Carl Wilhelm Carlberg, who among many other projects also designed the current cathedral. The Skandia House on the corner was built in 1910 and designed by Gustaf Wickman. After the bank moved out in the 1970s it was turned into flats. The funny italianate renaissance house at Västra Hamngatan 4 was designed by Hjalmar Kumlien in 1891 and the top floor, added in 1920, by Ernst Krüger. Krüger also designed the Gothenburg Trading Bank in 1904, and the other banks east of it were designed by Arvid Fuhre and Conny Nyquist in 1921.

The pilastered house at Korsgatan 3 was probably designed by the Weinberg who designed the Freemason House. The apothecary shop operated at the site from 1658 to 1921, when it and the corner house to the left were bought by a bank and remodelled. The middle of the block consists of a large condo and office complex from 1980, after all the banks had moved to Östra Nordstaden. The facade by Rune Falk is utterly bland.

Episode 50: kv Holländaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 30 May 2020

The crumbling facade at Lilla Kyrkogatan 1 has since been restored, and a firm of architects has moved in. Lilla Kyrkogatan was accidentally laid out during a fire in 1757, when a fire-break was made in the original single, long block. Thus was born the blocks Dutchman and Dean.

Along Västra Hamngatan, number 8 was built for Gustaf Rudolf Prytz in 1816 and designed by city architect Jonas Hagberg. In 1886 the house was bought by the recently established sea-insurers Ocean, which merged and grew over the next century. One of the mergers was with Gauthiod, the sea-insurers that from 1900 occupied Västra Hamngatan 10.

Episode 51: kv Domprosten

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Östra to Västra Hamngatan

Photo date: 30 May 2020

Buttericks has operated in this house since 1913, apparently. A hundred and ten years of selling whoopee-cushions, balloons and wigs! One of the charms of visiting it, apart from all the novelty gags, is the sheer age of the house. Wooden, cramped stairs, small rooms on the top floor, old counters… It’s like a visit to the Natural History Museum, which is like a museum-museum.

When I was a kid, one might go from shopping at Buttericks to the other side of the block and have ”pyttipanna” at Weises, at Drottninggatan 21. It was a narrow restaurant that seemed really old even back then, with dark brown furniture, old drawings by Albert Engström on the walls and staff that seemed ancient. And the best pyttipanna ever. The first Weises was a beer-hall at Södra Hamngatan 17, from 1893 to 1900. Then it re-opened at Drottninggatan in 1907 and from 1930 it was run by the Lanner family until it had to move out in 1993.

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.