Etikettarkiv: Rasmussen

Architect, link in Ostindiska inuti

Kvarteren Torpa, Aranäs, Axevall, Karlsten, Tidö, Vasakyrkan

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Episodes 186 to 190 visit some public and residential buildings from the early 1900s and a couple of Modernist blocks near Götaplatsen.

Episode 186: kv Torpa

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 27 June 2021

The ”front” of Torpa is dominated by a cinema built in 1936, with a facade in yellow brick that was popular at the time. Göta was one of several cinemas along Avenyn, all of them closed and converted to clothes stores or eateries – except this one which was converted back to a cinema recently, and Roy in Aranäs. In Sweden, only one chain of cinemas remains, Filmstaden formerly known as SF, and they decided they wanted an art house too, just like Roy. Thus the miraculous resurrection, coupled with an eatery.

The ”back” of Torpa is 20 years older and built in National Romanticist red brick. The architect was Hjalmar Zetterström and Gustaf Larsson built it.

Episode 187: kv Aranäs

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 27 June 2021

Royal was a cinema that was closed, and then resurrected under the name Roy (to make use of the neon sign without infringing on the copyright of the former name; clever). It used to be a normal cinema but after the resurrection it became an art house, with narrower productions, live transmissions from the Met and other places, and a cinema space that could be rented. The Star Trek association used it for several years, to show episodes on a big screen and hang out with likeminded people. But then the cinema wanted to use all available time for their own screenings and we found other premises. Not entirely easy though, all meeting venues have become prohibitively expensive.

The Royal block was built between 1932 and 1939 and the architects were Erik Holmdal, D Pehrson and Nils Olsson. It is completely Modernist with minimal decorations. The yellow bricks are typical of the time and can be seen in full glory in the south end of Olivedal.

Episode 188: kv Axevall

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 27 June 2021

Axevall was built along with Torpa in the mid nineteen noughties, and designed by Zetterström, K S Hansson and Anders Persson. My father’s aunt lived in a large flat here for a while and we visited in circa 1990. It was big and National Romanticist inside too.

Episode 189: kv Karlsten, kv Tidö

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 27 June and 17 July 2021

The Regional Archives are a lot of fun to visit. For my work, I have sometimes searched for drawings and other information about tunnels etc, which you can look at at the annex on Hisingen. The original house here at Karlsten is far too small to house all the material in Gothenburg, but I once visited with my father when he was much into genealogy in the 1980s. At that time, you had to search by hand and eye, in actual physical ledgers or on spools of microfilm that could be lent to your local library. Nowadays I understand everything is digitised and interpreted by AI. No challenges anymore! The extension from 2010 was designed by the White bureau and among other things it houses a temporary exhibition area.

The Students’ Union house can be rented for events like weddings or science fiction conventions – if you are a student or academic, and if you can afford it.

Episode 190: kv Vasakyrkan

District: Lorensberg

Photo date: 17 July 2021

Until the late 1800s, early 1900s, the area around this church held several farms. Then new plans were laid out and several big public buildings were erected. A few forlorn outbuildings can be seen on old photos from the time but they too are long gone. One of the big buildings was this church, which is quite stupendous both inside and out. But I can’t find any information about the parish house. Can you?

Kvarteren Furan, Granen, Linden, Aspen, Sälgen

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Episodes 161 to 165 witness the sprouting of tenement buildings, schools and scandalettes in circa 1890.

Episode 161: kv Furan part 3

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 18 April 2021

What is a ”tomte”, plural ”tomtar”? In American, it is usually translated as ”elf”, especially for small tomtar that help Santa Claus or Father Christmas. ”Gnome” is another term used, commonly for the garden variety. But the more original type in Sweden is the farm tomte: a small entity looking after the farm and helping the family, if they behave courteously. They were a staple of children’s faritytales. Later, this kind of tomte became conflated with the Christmas character, Jultomten, who is basically Father Christmas/Santa Claus. But before Jultomten, the main yuletide creature was the Christmas Billygoat, still remembered as a Christmas ornament made of straw.

On the house fronting Vasagatan 11, Thorvald Rasmussen, brother of one of the architects, painted several tomtar being industrious, as well as other fairytale creatures. The house is a sort of German Neo-Renaissance Alpen-style, quite at odds with anything else in Gothenburg. When it was built, this was still an area with large villas and it fitted in quite well. Even the taller residential building behind it, built a few years earlier for the whole Hedlund family, didn’t clash as much with the genteel surroundings. But a few years later, the villas gave way to stone colossi…

From my tolkienist friends, I learn that the Odd Fellows are still going strong, as are all the other old orders too. One would have thought the social democratic system that has pervaded Swedish society since the 1930s would have stamped out such activities – but the social democratic party can, if you want to, be seen as a great big lodge itself!

Episode 162: kv Granen

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 1 May 2021

When I first started on this series in early 2020, it was just for my own personal enjoyment and maybe to show my hometown to some lexxian and tolkienist friends on social media. Just a bit of fun. I added some normal music, without narration. Boom! the youtube copyright algorithms struck! So I decided to make my own soundtracks, it being difficult to schedule recordings with friends who are actually good at making music. And I started narrating more intensely, to mask the bad soundtracks. Of course, the narration soon spiralled out of control, and for this long block I have included pretty much all the text I could find in ”Vasastaden-Lorensberg” and the block entry in the Old Gothenburg blog.

Regarding the farms that many of the new 1800s and 1900s blocks were put up on, there is an informative paper (in Swedish) that can be found in the city museum catalogue, with a map of the general area of this episode on page 29. There are many more potentially interesting papers in the catalogue, with the tag ”kulturmiljörapport”.

Episode 163: kv Linden

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 24 April 2021

When my grandmother went to school here in the late 1910s and early 1920s, all the big stone houses around it had already been built. She described her walk to school from the family cottage on the edge of town, passing horses, crossing still un-built areas and describing various characters along the way. But in 1889 the area was still semi-rural, with intense exploitation just around the corner.

The girls’ school itself is described by both CRA Fredberg and the Old Gothenburg site (and of course in ”Vasastaden-Lorensberg”, page 174).

Episode 164: kv Aspen

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 22 May 2021

Water pipes, bowls courts, farms, bandits, shops and tenants – the history of this block is quite rich! Once the farm, the inn and the shacks had gone, stone houses were put up around 1890. At the northern and western sides, the builders/designers were H & J Börjesson, Nathan Persson, Hedström & Svensson and C B Andersson. The rest of the block had to await new planning from Albert Lilienberg in 1910. The eastern part was built up along the steep street in 1912, from designs by Hjalmar Cornilsen and Zetterström & Jonsson. The south end wasn’t completed until the late 1910s. So we can study the architectural fashions over 30 years: French, German and Italian Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Gothic, Jugend, National Romanticism and the precursor to 1920s Classicism.

Episode 165: kv Sälgen

District: Vasastaden

Photo date: 1 May 2021

CRA Fredberg devotes almost a whole chapter to this school. Apparently, there was a scandalette over the architectural contract, involving the Hedlund family: S A made sure his nephew Hans won it. Björner son of Hans designed the extensions that were added in 1912. As Björner also did with Hans’s library building in 1926. What a family saga!

Kvarteren Jankowitz, Warschava, Stora Bält, Lilla Bält, Halmstad, Lund samt Mosaiska begravningsplatsen

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Episodes 99 to 102 explore an area with a long history of public transport, and death. Plus school-children!

Episode 99: kv Jankowitz, kv Warschava

District: Stampen

Photo date: 6 September 2020

Polish names are confusing to other languages. Warzaw, Warschau, Varschawa… all kinds of spellings are supplied over the years. Anyway, one of my sources is a book celebrating 50 years of Gothenburg’s tram services, a delightful history describing the first private English company, the little tram-cars drawn by poor suffering horses up the hills (hats were supplied in the summer), ground and cable works during electrification in 1902, the city taking over the service, and the various lines which you had to buy separate tickets for. Most of lines are still in operation today, two have been dismantled due to cars and several new ones have been added.

And the trams needed servicing at depots: the first one was situated here, in a richly decorated building that included offices and workshops as well as the car shed itself. As the services and cars grew, so did the depot, adding a bus garage across the creek, and another depot out in Majorna. After the publication of the book in 1929, even more depots have been built and of course this first one was dismantled when it moved across the creek in 1986 to where it still is today.

Next to the tram shed the city built a rather large school. Yngve Rasmussen designed both houses and judging by old photographs they looked very similar. The school still stands even though it too has become too small and the kids are spread out in nearby buildings. Bergab operates in the building next door and we have a fine view of their study halls. At graduation, the noise can be quite deafening.

Episode 100: kv Stora Bält and Mosaiska begravningsplatsen

District: Stampen

Photo date: 6 September 2020

Stampgatan 15 is the home of Bergab. The company first started in a small office at Odinsgatan 22, spent some years up on the hill at St Pauligatan 33 and moved to the current address in 1994. Twenty years ago, a branch in Stockholm opened and it has since grown bigger than the Gothenburg head office. We work with engineering geology and groundwater. The house itself is not much to talk about: it was built in the 1960s for the tram service employees, has no decorations, and has quite poor foundations next to the flood-prone creek.

The Jewish cemetery is more interesting. It was located right next to the cemetery for the artillery garrison and for prisoners. This latter cemetery was later built over by round train sheds and roads. The Jewish cemetery was recently given an arboreal make-over so you can see it again. I have a fine view of it from my office window and in 2008-2009 took a picture of the view every morning. The moorish-style chapel was designed by P J Rapp and built in 1864.

Episode 101: kv Lilla Bält

District: Stampen

Photo date: 6 September 2020

The name of this property has changed a lot over the centuries, reflecting ownership and businesses. Before Stampen was built up the district used to be called Åkareheden (Drover’s Field) and the area around this block has long been called Svingeln, whatever that means (consensus on etymology has yet to be reached). The property itself has been called Sahlefelt’s Land in the early 1600s, Burggrevelyckan when a magistrate with this title rented it, Director Bauer’s Land in the early 1700s and Fredriksdal in the late 1700s, before the Fürstenbergs changed it to Oscarsdal. Funnily enough, a sports bar at Ranängsgatan calls itself ”Olivedal” which is the name of a completely different district!

Episode 102: kv Halmstad, kv Lund

District: Stampen

Photo date: 6 September 2020

Before public transport and the off-ramps from the nearby motorway demanded space, the street here was rather idyllic, with a women’s prison and small industries on the east side and train sheds, a farm and a public bath on the west side, two whole blocks called Narva and Klissow. At the end of the street, a little bridge ran over a reed-filled riverlet to district Olskroken. It’s really difiicult to picture nowadays. The big motorway connecting Malmö and Stockholm was built in the late 1960s, just where the little bridge was, and the whole area was given over to streets. The river itself was led into a culvert and disappeared under the motorway. Curious factoid: the motorway and its ramps and flyovers were designed in the early 1960s. In the middle of building work, there was a referendum that changed Sweden from a left-driving to a right-driving country. Meaning all the flyovers and ramps now seem wrongly designed!

Until a few years ago, the bus and tram stop called Svingeln was distributed all over the area here, because of the old road layout and the narrow section between the remaining buildings and the railway. But then the officials had a brain-wave and decided to make one unified stop, for easy and safe access when changing lines. So now, buses, trams, bikes, cars and pedestrians have to cross one another’s lanes several times and just a year after the re-development there was a fatal accident… Sheesh.

Neither of the houses in these blocks are decorated, so there isn’t much narration in the video. Both are managed by Higab which is the city’s property company. Their website lists information about the properties too: Gullbergsbrohemmet and Hantverkshuset. The former was originally designed by Bengt Wilhelm Carlberg, the city engineer, and consisted of two square buildings, still extant but with several additions over the centuries. The latter was built in the late 1960s, on land that consisted of an old river bed overlying marine and glacial clays. Not the best sort of foundation!

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.

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 Ostindiska Kompaniet, Lilla Berget, Traktören, Rådhuset

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Episodes 16 to 21 deal with the splendid trading houses and official buildings along the Main Canal. In the old days, the view and general aura of the area were somewhat marred by the cheap bazaars under the church and the Fish Raft floating in the canal below the City Hall. Today the nuisances have shifted to combustion engines and enterprising seagulls.

Episode 16: kv Ostindiska Kompaniet

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 5 April 2020

The Swedish East India Company was first set up in 1731, to fetch tea, china and silk from the Far East without paying Dutch and English middlemen. Some ten years later the company directors decided to build a big warehouse for their luxury goods, and this block is it.

A hundred years later, much of the building became the City Museum. The museum was small enough to hold everything from weird animals to art. Later, the collections expanded and in 1923, the year of the big 300th anniversary exhibition, the arts and animals moved to separate museum buildings.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by Native Americans and the museum had a fabulous ethnographic section including artifacts from both North and South America. I especially remember the top floor with the big display boxes with models dressed in fantastic South American feather decorations. They were soon taken down, though, and now I wonder if the memory is real or a fantastic dream recollection like Randolph Carter’s city…

Episode 17: kv Ostindiska Kompaniet inuti

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 27 June 2020

For a small fee you can visit the museum and look at the inner courtyard. In the beginning it was an open yard with cobbles, where merchants could come and get their luxury goods. In the mid-1800s it was turned into a garden for the museum. And in 1890 it was closed in, when the Wilson Wing along the back of the block was added. The wing was designed by Hans Hedlund and the paintings were made by Yngve Rasmussen, who also decorated the Gnome House in Vasastaden.

The inside of the house is well-decorated too. But in this project I limit myself to the outside of houses and only those inside areas that are open to the public. I made an exception in this case because it is a funny little place.

Episode 18: kv Lilla Berget, kv Traktören

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 March and 5 April 2020

”Gothenburg’s Trade and Shipping Newspaper” started in 1832 and soon became the major newspaper in town. In the latter half of the 1800s it was dominated by S A Hedlund who was one of the biggest names in Gothenburg history, period. He and his nephew secured the services of one of Sweden’s best-loved poets, Viktor Rydberg. And during WWII, the paper was run by Torgny Segerstedt who was an active anti-Nazi. A grand legacy — and in the 1970s the paper went bankrupt and is now just a memory.

One of the reasons it died was the other major newspaper in town, Göteborgs-Posten, which had a less liberal and more conservative focus. In the 1930s, when its new production house next to the railway station was built, it had 500,000 readers, in the 1980s 600,000. The digital era put paid to their activities too but the ”paper” still exists, at least.

The house in this block was built in the late 1870s and housed offices and printing presses. Before that, the site consisted of a Small Hill with a nasty slum. Right next to the grand residences and official buildings!

Episode 19: kv Rådhuset — Sahlgrenska huset

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 March 2020

The block called City Hall consists of three separate houses, each richly decorated enough to warrant splitting the block into three episodes.

In 1717 the very wealthy and influential merchant Jacob Sahlgren bought the stone house that stood on this property, until 1746 when it was destroyed in one of the savage fires that used to sweep through the crowded wooden city. His widow Birgitta had this splendid new house built for her son Niclas Sahlgren. The upper floors were residential while the lower floors and cellars held offices and magazines for the trade.

In 1873 another very wealthy trader bought the house and he and his partner added their initials to the remodelled portal: CC for Christopher Carlander and JJ for Johannes Johansson. The city took over the building in 1905 and various services have had their offices here since.

Episode 20: kv Rådhuset — Christinae kyrka

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 March and 5 April 2020

The middle part of the City Hall block holds the so-called German Church. The congreation is just about as old as the city itself but the first building was destroyed in a fire in 1669, and the new building partially destroyed in the fire of 1746. The current building was put up on the 1660s foundations and was completed in the 1780s.

It actually had graves around it and inside it. The famous 1600s general Ascheberg had an addition built on the east side, to house his casket. It miraculously survived the fires. In the tower is a 1962 glockenspiel that you can barely hear over the traffic noise.

Episode 21: kv Rådhuset — själva Rådhuset

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 December 2019

The eastern end of the block holds City Hall itself. It consists of two parts, one from the late 1600s and an extension from the 1930s. I’ve never been inside, but the interior is said to be a marvel of modernism. The facade decorations on the extension are called The Four Winds and were made by artist Eric Grate.

City Hall is still in use, for the politicians and for civil marriage ceremonies. In the old days the basement held the Exchange as well as a beer-hall. The Exchange was moved in 1849 to its own spectacular building at the other end of the Gustav Adolf Square.