Etikettarkiv: school

Kvarteren Hästbacken, Otterhällan m.fl., Branten, Bergväggen, Käppslängaren, Telegrafen

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Episodes 75 to 79 take a look at decorations from the times of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, as well as more non-existent decorations of our modern era. Also a whole bunch of ghost buildings that once stood on Otterhällan and its slopes.

Episode 75: kv Hästbacken

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 19 August 2020

The red-brick building for the Melin paper factory was designed by Arvid Bjerke, who was very popular at the time with his national romanticism. His brick and granite houses recur again and again in this series. And Fredberg mentions that nearby there was a champagne factory in deep cellar vaults!

Episode 76: kv Otterhällan, kv Telegrafisten, kv Kraftstationen, kv Ekelunden, kv Hästkvarnen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 16 August 2020

The old power station was actually situated on the property where the paper factory was later built. Electricity manufacture in Gothenburg started in the mid 1880s, to supply shops and the Grand Opry with fashionable light. The first electricity factories were located smack in the middle of downtown, with steam engines driving turbines and belching smoke from tall chimneys. It looks quite remarkable on old photos.

Otterhällan was once a jumble of wooden houses and shacks, all destroyed in the fire of 1804. The newer houses weren’t much better but in the early 1830s an optical telegraph station was built on top of the hill, and in the early 1900s there was a movie studio as well as a tall school among the low houses. You can see them too on old photos.

The hill was covered with an oak forest in the 1600s but it was soon cut down, or burned down in one of the many fires. Just imagine, inside the walled city the houses only went up to about Ekelundsgatan and above that was a forest, where pigs could roam. And a windmill or two on top plus a horse-powered mill below. One old thing that remains is the big fallout shelter (and parking garage) dug into the hill in the 1950s. In preliminary investigations for Västlänken, I got to inspect the rock caverns and see the innards of the shelter — very exciting, you don’t see things like that very often!

Episode 77: kv Branten, kv Bergväggen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 16 August 2020

The fabulous 1920s skyscraper Otterhall was designed by Harald Ericson and built by Karl Alberts. In the early days it had a restaurant at the top, and a bowling alley on the 8th floor. Amazing. North of the Otterhall complex is the relatively new extension for the city archives. The actual stacks are situated in a cavern that is connected to the fallout shelter. And underneath these caverns is the Göta road tunnel and the railway tunnel Västlänken currently being built.

The Ahlberg House at the north end of the cliff was first built in 1783 and then again after the 1804 fire destroyed all the houses here except the Residence. I had actually never been up here before I set out on this project, and there are many other houses and structures and areas I’ve never visited before. It’s a project that keeps on giving!

Episode 78: kv Käppslängaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 19 August 2020

The garrison hospital was built in 1755 but discontinued in 1895 when the garrison moved out from the city centre. It had room for 72 patients. In 1907 it was razed and this new residential building put up instead, designed by Hjalmar Zetterström. The ”old school” in this block was also razed, in 1934, and it had apparently hosed Gothenburg’s first radio station in 1923 or therabouts. Radio was one of the ultra-modern inventions showcased at the 1923 anniversary exhibition, along with Albert Einstein who gave his long-delayed Nobel lecture here.

When the old school was gone, the building called Queen Kristina’s hunting lodge was moved to this site, where it still remains. I’ve been to a couple of tolkienist parties here, it is full of atmosphere.

Episode 79: kv Telegrafen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Ekelundsgatan to the river

Photo date: 19 August 2020

The city has put up these informative plaques on buildings of especial interest. There are also private initiatives, for instance around Fredsgatan, in Haga or on a few houses owned by proud condo associations. The official plaques, with extra information, have been collected in a book called ”100 utmärkta hus i Göteborg”. The word utmärkt means both ”marked” and ”excellent” so it is a pun, for which Gothenburg is famous, nay notorious.

The telegraph or telephone station is a very prominent building, designed as it says on the plaque by Hans Hedlund (his son Björner designed the 1940s and 50s additions) and built by F O Peterson. Its predecessor on the site was the Burghers’ Barracks, so called because after the 1792 fires there were no more private houses for the soldiers to be lodged in and the private citizens really didn’t want to put up with housing them any longer: a barracks must be provided! This building was payed for by the burghers, designed by Carl Wilhelm Carlberg and finally put up in 1793 by soldiers and convicts from Fortress Älvsborg.

Kvarteren Artilleristallet, Biskopen, Gymnasiet, Sidenvävaren

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Episodes 62 to 65 stroll along Magasinsgatan to look at what the inner city used to be like. The artillery barracks have left their mark, and any number of shops, as well as the bishop and Gothenburg’s first school. All of them have disappeared long ago.

Episode 62: kv Artilleristallet

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

For further information about the houses in this block, see Gudrun Lönnroth’s book ”Hus för hus”. Web sources only say the stables were built in 1835, that the cab company moved in in 1898, and that it has recently been renovated to house bars, clubs and cafés. There are some additional photos in Intermission II.

Episode 63: kv Biskopen

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

Again, the Lönnroth book has all the details. A quick web search comes up with a recent trademark filing for the name Carl G Platin Punch, so the brand seems to be relevant still, even if his grand house has long since been turned into other businesses.

The Bishop’s House was built for a trader named Bauch, who decorated the interior with paintings of Captain Cook’s expeditions to the South Seas. Presumably that was too light-weight a subject for a bishop so they were covered up and only re-discovered in 1929. The facade was also covered for a while, with neo-renaissance decorations added by Adrian Peterson iin 1889, and removed in the more austere age of 1938.

Episode 64: kv Gymnasiet

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

The original Gymnasium (Lyceum) was situated off the southwest corner of the cathedral. In 1923, as part of the celebration of the city’s 300th anniversary (put off two years due to after-effects of the Great War), the city adminstration was overhauled and all these block names created. They are also numbered which makes it easier to find them when looking at maps with property designations. Before, the city was divided into ”rotar” or ”sections” which is the translation of the aviation meaning of the same word. So a block was called ”number x in rote y”.

The Telegraph House was built in 1826 by Otto Dymling’s father and designed by Jonas Hagberg. It was a replacement for the Lyceum which burned down in the 1802 fire. Before that, this property held the dean’s house. When the Lyceum moved to the Old Latin school in 1862, it became an auction house, and then in 1892 the telegraph station. Isak Gustaf Clason re-designed the house for its new purpose. Twenty years later, the telegraph moved to a new, gigantic house further up the hill but the house was retained as a training and union venue. The LM Engström highschool bought this house and the Bishops’s House in 1999, and it is once again a ”gymnasium”.

Several other houses are from the 1930s, judging by the style. One of them is Kungsgatan 19 where you can visit the Science Fiction Bookstore, SF-bok, and its lovely Café Sirius. I spend far too much time and money there, every Sunday and twice a month for board meetings with Club Cosmos and bookclub meetings with Mithlond. And since they moved from their second venue in Paddock, they organise a Geek Pride Parade every Towel Day, or thereabouts. An opportunity to dress up and astond the general public as we march down Avenyn.

Episode 65: kv Sidenvävaren

District: Inom Vallgraven, from Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan

Photo date: 6 August 2020

Wikipedia has a lot to say about this block, which otherwise is rather boring, lots of shops. New houses to the north, some older ones retained to the south and east. The latter houses are listed.

The violet house at Kaserntorget 1 was designed by Nils Einar Eriksson and put up in 1956. It was built for a gents’ outfitters called Malmströms.

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 Klensmeden, Manegen, Bastionen, Vattenkällan, Gamleport samt Kungsportsbron

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Episodes 37 to 41 stroll along the moat and the filled-in East Canal. There are reminders of the city’s military past in the shape of the former bastions, and of older types of entertainment like circuses and cinemas.

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.

Kvarteren Lilla Bommen, Ljusstöparen, Mätaren, Mjölnaren, Kvarnberget, Navigationsskolan, Stadskvarnen

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Episodes 6 to 10 continue in the old city. When it was first built, it was surrounded by a high wall with several bastions and an outer moat. The city itself was criss-crossed by Dutch-type canals with bars at the outlets into the river. The walls were torn down in the early 1800s and all but one canal were filled in in the early years of the 20th century.

Episode 6: kv Lilla Bommen

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 2 January 2020

What do you call the obstacle placed over the outlet of a canal, moat or river? Boom or bar? And don’t confuse this block with the sub-district just north of here, also called Little Boom/Bar.

The main feature in this block is the old Hasselblad headquarters. The camera company expanded until it owned the whole block. They became world famous when they made some of the cameras used in the Apollo program. The brand name still exists but the company itself has been bought and merged a couple of times. When they finally switched to digital they were way behind most of the other camera companies and also made some bad financial decisions. Their fancy new premises on Hisingen were immediately sold and now the Swedish State Television resides there.

This block reflects the company’s various stages of expansion and re-development.

Episode 7: kv Ljusstöparen, kv Mätaren

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7 March 2020

The city within the walls was built around two hills, Kvarnberget and Otterhällan. The Mill-hill is the one north of the main canal and in this episode we look at two blocks along its north side.

The Candle-Maker and The Measurer front the St Erik Street, named after one of the old bastions. The area is currently under heavy construction, to make a new subterranean railroad link. The Gothenburg underground is characterised by hard crystalline rock and very thick layers of glacial clay, overlain by marine clays and riverine sediments. No soft rock or hard soil. This makes building work very ”interesting”, geotechnically speaking. The Turkish-Norwegian-Spanish consortium building part of the tunnel has their work cut out for them, trying to understand our sub-soil.

Episode 8: kv Mjölnaren, kv Kvarnberget

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 8 March 2020

The Mill-hill is quite steep and it has two blocks commemorating the wind-mills that once stood here: Mill-hill and The Miller. Apart from the steepness there isn’t much to tell about these residential buildings.

But underneath the hill it gets more interesting. After the bombing of Guernica, the fire-bombing of London, all German cities and almost all of Japan, and not least the advent of atomic weapons, the city council decided to make civil defence shelters in Kvarnberget and Otterhällan. After the Castle Bravo test in 1954 and the subsequent mad themonuclear arms race, it was felt pointless to build more shelters. But these days, with renewed conventional shelling of city centres, they might come into their own again.

In early geologic investigations for Västlänken, I got to visit the shelter under Kvarnberget in 2012. Awesome! in a chilling sort of way.

Episode 9: kv Navigationsskolan

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 8 March 2020

On top of Mill-hill is the old School of Navigation, where my father once studied to become a captain in the merchant navy.

The leading men in the city long wanted a school to train boys for a life at sea, but an official school was only opened in the 1840s. The current big building on top of Mill-hill was first built in 1862 and re-developed in 1915. An extension was added in 1952.

In 1994 the school was taken over by the Chalmers University of Technology and moved to new premises on Hisingen. The old building has since housed various civil engineering companies like ÅF (later Afry) and Serneke (current owners).

Episode 10: kv Stadskvarnen

District: Västra Nordstaden

Photo date: 7-8 March 2020

Until the 1970s it was possible to rent cheap accomodation in the old houses in Gothenburg. In this block, The City Mill, we often visited one of my father’s colleagues when I was a kid. It was a very steep climp up the cobbled street, into a courtyard and up rickety stairs to a tiny garret. In the 1970s, much of the city was razed to make way for modern office blocks and housing estates made of concrete. Good-bye cheap garrets!

Ironically, those very concrete housing estate turned out to have been made very shoddily and are now the cheap lodgings decried by the current city planners. Not because they are mouldy and sub-standard but because they are cheap, meaning that they are the only flats immigrants and people on welfare can afford, further meaning that segregation increases and crime erupts. The solution: build new expensive condos and/or refurbish the old flats and raise rents two- to ten-fold, and force the segregated people to move. Or something, I don’t quite follow the reasoning here.