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.