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.