early modern ... Vesterport, Vesterbrogade, Copenhagen
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Vesterport - a large copper-clad office building on Vesterbrogade and close to the central railway station in Copenhagen - was designed by Ole Falkentorp and Povl Baumann and was completed in 1931.
It fills a complete city block with the building running back from Vesterbrogade to Gammel Kongevej with a side elevation towards Meldahlsgade that is over 110 metres (365 ft) - and there are three service courtyards.
This was the first steel-framed building in Copenhagen with reinforced concrete floors and is the first truly modern building in the city but if anyone notices it today then it is probably for the striking colour of the cladding which, with patina, has turned a sharp but pale acid tone of green. When new, before the copper changed colour, the building was known as the penny.
At street level there were shops so, again in a modern way, this was very much a commercial building and it was in what was then an important commercial area of the city.
The principle tenant was an English insurance company but the open-floor construction meant that it could be subdivided with non-structural partition walls depending on the requirements of any tenants.
But it is not just the method of construction but it is the scale of the block with its flat roof line and the grid-like division of the facades with continuous lines of windows above panels of cladding that is distinctly modern.
Signs for the road names as part of the canopy survive as an example of good typography from the period and brass doors at the entrances with heavy brass handles have been retained.
The building has a significant place in design history for another reason because Den Permanente, an influential design gallery and furniture shop, opened here in 1931 with display space over two floors. It was at the south-west corner of the building with large windows to Vesterbrogade and to Trommeshalen but closed in the 1980s.
note:
The photograph of the ironwork of the building at an early stage of the construction is from the city archive - Historie & Kunst, Københavns Kommune, Stormgade 20
