Etikettarkiv: murder

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.

Gustav Adolfs torg, kvarteren Högvakten, Borgaren, Polismästaren, Göta Kanal

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The Facade Project started as a simple ramble and photo activity but after a couple of months I had enough material to start playing with it. Especially if the weather at the weekend was too foul to go out and I had to stay indoors during the pandemic.

Then I started making little videos of what I had found. In a previous Club Cosmos film competition I had discovered how to make Powerpoint videos, a simple and easily accessible way to produce material quickly. Eventually I accessorised my mobile phone with a selfie-stick (for higher altitude pictures) and a better microphone plus a sound-editing app. At work I use CAD so I could make my own background maps — using out-of-date underlays that don’t show the hectic transformation that is going on in Gothenburg these days — and at home I dabbled un-musically with various instruments to make soundtracks. That first slap from youtube copyright check stung! All my material is thus my own.

Which language should I use? I’m Swedish and the subject is a Swedish city with Swedish place names. But I have many English-speaking friends on FB, where I post links to the videos. And since pretty much all Swedes are reasonalby fluent in English, that’s the language I choose for the narration. It makes for some interesting translation problems sometimes…

And with that, here are the first five videos I made.

Episode 1: Gustav Adolfs torg

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 17 November 2019

For the very first video I chose what might be seen as the centre of the city: the square with the statue of our founder, king Gustav II Adolf. The square was laid out when the city was planned in ca 1620 and is surrounded by old official buildings.

In earlier days, it was the centre of official activities like royal visits and similar events. Nowadays, it holds fairs and manifestations, and of course the official christmas tree. On one side are three big flag-poles with intricate bronze reliefs. They show the history of the city up to the biplane era. In fact, they were not made for the 1923 anniversary exhibition, but were made in 1932 by one Herman Bergman.

These first videos are in the original format, with background maps from the Swedish Ordnance Survey and with annoying animations for every photo. In later videos the map is home-made and the animations fewer.

Episode 2: kv Högvakten

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 30 November 2019

Blocks in central Gothenburg were named a hundred years ago or earlier. In this district the names relate to the activities once exercised at the site. This block once held the city guard, next to the city hall. My old dictionary translates ”högvakt” as ”main guard” so that’s what I call this block in my English narration.

The Main Guard once had a cannon in front, for salutes, emergencies and fire alarms. It also held the central fire services. Guns were used for all sorts of things in the old days, apparently. And these days grenades are used to put out fires too.

In this block we also find one of the grand projects from the late 1850s, the Exchange. I once went to a function inside it: quite opulent! And if you go on a guided ghost tour, you’ll hear spooky stories about this building…

Episode 3: kv Borgaren

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 2 January 2020

Gothenburg was founded as a deliberate attempt to create a mercantile city. The king invited all sorts of merchants to settle here: Dutch, Germans, English, Scots — as well as Swedes. And until the mid-1900s, the city remained resolutely trades-oriented. (After that, the city image has been one of Marxism, football, proletariats and most recently, segregation and gangsters.)

In the old Sweden, society was divided into four parts: aristocray, clergy, burghers and farmers. Not peasants — free, land-owning farmers. Of these, the burghers were the most important in Gothenburg. And here is a block commemorating them! My dictionary perferred the word ”burgess” to ”burgher” so that’s what this episode is called.

The old wooden city was frequently destroyed by conflagrations, which is why so few old houses remain. In this block, there once stood the first (tiny) theatre, owned by wealthy merchant John Hall. He made a very large fortune, and his son by the same name managed to squander all of it and died a pauper. This was a favourite story among the old merchants: beware irresponsible prodigy!

Episode 4: kv Polismästaren

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 2 January 2020

The tiny house at the end of the block was once the main police station. One of the chores they had was to check all the prostitutes for syphilis, and one of the subjects was Elizabeth Stride. When she moved to London she was killed by Jack the Ripper!

The nick is of course the reason this block is called The Police Commissioner. But it’s a long time since the tiny house served the long arm of the law. For some time now it has held the city medical museum: gruesome displays of old instruments, huge kidney and bladder stones. The house is old and in need of renovation. It might open again in 2023.

These early episodes are short and without explanatory narration. Later episodes get more verbiose.

Episode 5: kv Göta Kanal

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 2 January 2020

Shipping was important in the old Gothenburg. There were shipping companies, outfitters, agents, wharves, transports and dockers. Once the river was dredged and proper quays erected, big ships could land right next to the city centre instead of out in the estuary. All that has disappeared, of course, due to shifts in economy and technology, and because ships have become impossibly large. Once again they have to land far out in the estuary and the goods transported inland by other means (trucks).

One of the means of transporting inland was by canal. The Göta Canal was built in the 1830s and it long had a regular shipping line of the same name. The western terminus was here in Gothenburg and the shipping company has given name to this block.

When companies erected houses for themselves in the old days, they often incorporated their logos in the facade. And when the company moved out, its memory still lingers, like here with the Johnson Line. In 1990 it merged with Silja Line and ceased to exist, except in this relief.