Episodes 243 to 246 comprise charities and public amenities in western Haga.
Episode 243: kv Korpralen
District: Haga
Photo date: 30 April 2022
Until the early 1800s, much of Gothenburg consisted of wooden houses. And devastating city-wide fires were all too common. In Haga too there were many fires, and seeing all the wood in the northern part of this block one can understand why. All houses were warmed by one or more fireplaces and there were bakeries and smithies and other businesses employing fire. Fredberg has a whole chapter devoted to conflagrations in Haga.
Episode 244: kv Löjtnanten
District: Haga
Photo date: 30 April 2022
The Castle originally had a terrace on the roof, to give the tenants access to clean-ish air and sunlight. But it wasn’t waterproof so after 20 years it was replaced with an ordinary roof. I think the topside tenants were relieved, imagine the cost for buckets!
Episode 245: kv Översten
District: Haga
Photo date: 30 April 2022
Imagine not being able to have a proper bath or shower! The modern city dweller shudders in revulsion at the very thought. So did many others 150 years ago I guess, and not just at the thought but at the actual pong of unwashed bodies. Thus a public bath was really necessary. Architect Axel Kumlien specialised in hospitals and other public institutions. Among other things in Gothenburg, he designed the Maternity Hospital and the original core of the Sahlgrenska hospital in Änggården, of which only one small pavillion remains today.
Episode 246: kv Generalen, kv Fänriken
District: Haga
Photo date: 7 May 2022
The Tai Shanghai restaurant was put up for sale in 2025 – the end of an era. Where will Club Cosmos have its annual meetings now? And yes, it is spelled ”Tai” and not ”Thai” as most contemporary persons think it is. As for the Dickson Foundation block, contrast these houses with the ones in Annedal.
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.
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…
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