The Annedal House is home to the heritage club Annedalspojkar and to a working class museum. It was built in 1876 as part of the charity housing estate in episode 220. The Annedal School next to it was originally built at the same time but the house we see today was designed by Carl Fahlström in 1883, with additions in 1893 and 1899.
In the early 1970s all the other old houses were replaced with the current buildings. Neither loud and persistent outcries nor de facto listings of valuable houses were heeded. The builders were several: Walter Lundborg Byggnadsaktiebolag, Alexandersson Byggnads AB, Gunnar Zetterberg Byggnads AB, Byggnadsfirma Ernst Rosén and Innerstadsbyggen i Göteborg AB. There is not much else to say.
Episode 225: Kv Körsbäret
District: Annedal
Photo date: 30 January 2022
Before the housing estate designed by Lund & Valentin was put up in the 1970s, Nilssonsberg was a cluster of rickety old buildings along really bad streets. It looked incredibly quaint and it was cheap to live there, but really, the new houses are much better. If also boring.
Last year I visited the fabrics shop housed in the wooden double-villa at Västergatan 1. It was just as fabulous inside as out. The Modernist curved corner house at Lilla Bergsgatan 1 was designed by Sven Steen and Vilhelm Mattson for F O Peterson. The low building was once a bank. On the slope above is a new little park that is not open to the public.
West Coast Trekkers used to rent Bio Capitol a decade or so ago, to meet and watch Star Trek. Like everything else, it has become too expensive for simple clubs. The building was designed by Nils Olsson in 1940. Next to it is another early 1940s house designed by Åke Wahlberg. Skanstorget was regulated in the 1880s, when the first stone houses in Cherry came up. What to make of the market square has long been debated but the current zoning plan is still the one drawn up in 1893.
Episode 226: kv Päronet part 1
District: Annedal
Photo date: 5 February 2022
The 1999 white paper on culturally significant architecture in Gothenburg gives some descriptions of these houses on page 230 and 231. At Västergatan 2 I stumbled across a tiny boutique with lovely fabrics so I had to go in and buy some clothes. Nils Einar Eriksson designed Västergatan 4 which was built in 1942. Strangely, there are some decorations on this Modernist facade.
Episode 227: kv Päronet part 2
District: Annedal
Photo date: 5 February 2022
We conclude district Annedal with shis splendid and well-loved Jugend confection designed by Louis Enders. It can be seen as another conclusion too, of the grand villas along Föreningsgatan.
Episodes 10 to 15 document splendid old houses and boring new ones. Behind the rich facades along the water-fronts, the backstreets in the old days were full of emigrants setting out for America, and of the lodgings and merchants taking their last money before they left the old country. It still looks rather cramped, despite massive re-devlopment in the early 1980s.
Episode 11: kv Vindragaren, kv Enigheten, kv Gamla Teatern
District: Västra Nordstaden
Photo date: 7 March 2020
The block names reflect businesses once active in this area: Wine-puller (self-explanatory), Unity (a gentlemen’s club) and The Old Theatre (not actually in this block but nearby).
However, two of these blocks were re-developed in the 1980s and almost nothing of the old remains. One can possibly understand why: when the number of emigrants lessened, the cheap lodgings and eateries became full of drunks and disorderlies instead.
It’s rather typical that the city administration has commandeered an old building for its offices. Maybe the modern concrete boxes they advocated weren’t satisfactory after all? By the way, the silhouettes on the windows can also be found on the cylindrical lamp-shades at some of our bus and tram stops!
Episode 12: kv Kronhuset, kv Wadman
District: Västra Nordstaden
Photo date: 19 December 2019 and 8 March 2020
Kronhuset is one of the oldest houses in Gothenburg, along with the so-called Residence, a warehouse behind it, and of course the fortresses. The reason it remains is, being made of stone, it escaped the many devastating fires (unlike the first city hall) and housed a church for so many years it survived until it was fashionable to have old houses to show tourists.
It is surrounded by former workshops now full of tourist-friendly boutiques. Lerverk sells glass and ceramic art. When they first started in the early 1980s we bought several small animal figurines, very funny. Their shop has moved around a bit before ending up here — in one of them they used to have an amazingly detailed winter wonderland every December.
The block named after a now-forgotten poet, Wadman, runs along the foot of the steep hill. The shack the destitute poet briefly lived in was destroyed in the 1980s re-development and the site now holds a tiny playground, as seen in Intermission.
Episode 13: kv Kruthuset
District: Västra Nordstaden
Photo date: 8 March 2020
Gothenburg was first built as a fortified trading post, with massive defence works. Half the population or more were soldiers, housed with the civilians. One of the affiliated services was manufacturing and storing gun-powder, preferably somehwere off in case an accident occurred. Here under the hill, on the other side of a harbour basin full of masts, was suitably off and so this block was named the Powder House.
When the city expanded, the harbour basin was filled in, the quays extended, and a fabulous trading house erected in this block. The merchants JA Hertz & Co commissioned it and the German architect Louis Enders designed it. The style is called Jugend in Sweden and Art Nouveau in English-speaking countries.
The house is a bit inaccessible now, due to works for Västlänken all round and under it. It is very important to maintain groundwater levels when constructing in clays: lower the water table and subsidence will set in and crash goes your lovingly preserved 1901 masterpiece!
Episode 14: kv Franska Tomten
District: Västra Nordstaden
Photo date: 8 March 2020
The French Plot sounds like a movie script for a costume drama — and it might well be! When Sweden wanted a lucrative slave colony in the Caribbean in the 1780s, the king made a deal with the French: they got a free-trade agreement and depot area on this plot, and Sweden got St Barthélemy to make money for the Crown. The island was unsuitable for plantations, though, so the island became a free-port for the slave trade instead. The French depot ceased operations in the early 1800s, when the new king fell out with Napoleon. Instead, Gothenburg became a depot for the British.
Anyway, the French memory stuck and the area around the old mast-harbour was dubbed the French plot, and there was a French inn too, apparently. When the new quays were laid out in the 1860-70s, fancy stone buildings were erected along the water-front. In this block, the old post house was torn down in 1942 to make way for a modern HQ för shipping company Transatlatic. In the list here, I know my father served on numbers 202, 211 (which he helped to build) and 217 (I accompanied him on a voyage across the Atlantic in 1989).
The slave trade is reflected in the art adorning the facade and the lamp-post next to the house. I’m surprised it has been allowed to remain, in this era of cancel-culture.
Episode 15: kv Gamla Tullen
District: Västra Nordstaden
Photo date: 8 March 2020
The French Plot extended to this site too but in the other corner of the block was the old custums house so that’s what the city planners used for its name. The river-side is however dominated by the HQ for one of the biggest shipping companies in Gothenburg at the time, Broströms. The facade is richly decorated with nautical and martime reliefs, and the glass doors have etchings of the zodiac. Today the building holds law courts so it is rather iffy to photograph it. I managed to sneak by one day and catch some of the zodiac, as seen in Intermission.
The canal-side is also full of impressive trade-houses and residences for the major trading families of the time. CRA Fredberg relates the story of the Björnberg liquor riots, and other facts and rumours about the area. He was a journalist and published a 3-volume collection of articles about the old Gothenburg, as seen from the year 1920. It is full of photos and drawings and a rich source of material for this project. As long as you don’t quote verbatim: somewhat purple prose and not entirely fact-checked stories. And as long as you steer clear of the theatre which he spends far too much text on.
Rockyramblings 