Sverrigsgade Workers Housing

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Workers' houses on Sverrigsgade were built on a narrow and oddly-shaped strip of land between Hallandsgade and Brigadvej that had been owned by the veterinary school but, shortly after they moved to Frederiksberg in 1858, it was sold at auction, in part to private buyers and in part to LP Holmblad the manufacturer of candles, soap and paint.

A new road, then called Nygade - New Street - was laid out with two sharp angles along the length and Holmblad built houses and a school at the far end of the street on the north side of  which two pairs of houses survive.

Land on the south side of the road was sold to the engineering company Burmeister Wain and they were responsible for the building of the rest of the workers' housing.

There is a drawing in the national archive - Danmarks Kunstbibliotek - of an initial scheme designed by the architect Henrik Steffens Sibbern and dated 1866.

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Lyngbyvej Housing

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The row houses in Lyngbyvejskvartet / Lingbyvej Quarter were built by the Workers Building Association between 1906 and 1929 for workers from Burmeister Wain and the architect was Christen Larsen who had replaced Frederik Boettger as architect to the association.

Lyngbyvej - the King's highway - is an important and historic road that runs out north from the city to Lyngby and from there on to the royal castle at Frederiksborg.

The housing is about 4 kilometres from the centre of Copenhagen. In a modern city this might not seem far but until the city defences were dismantled around 1870, the historic core of Copenhagen, on this side of the harbour, was confined to an area little more than a kilometre from the wharves to the north gate and around 1.5 kilometres across from the east gate to the west gate with remarkably little building outside the defences …. so this was quite a long way out of the centre for workers employed at the engineering works of Burmeister Wain on Christianshavn on the far side of the city or for men working at their ship yards at Refshaleøen.

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Ørnegårdsvej, Gentofte by Arne Jacobsen

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For the row houses in Ørnegårdsvej, built in 1957 for A Jespersen & Son, Arne Jacobsen used a form of curtain wall construction - with large areas of window for front and back walls of the terraced rows that are not load bearing. Generally, this is a form of construction that is normally associated with commercial and office buildings, rather than housing, and with metal, aluminium or steel, used for a framework that hold panes of glass or opaque panels, but at Ørnegårdsvej the large areas of glazing on the front and back of the the terraced houses between the solid cross walls have relatively thin timber frames for the windows with teak glazing beads. 

The buildings are listed and original colours on the exterior have been retained although inevitably many of the houses have been restored and some the interiors altered. Doors and some parts of the frames are painted a dull olive green; and blind panels, concrete reinforced with asbestos fibre, are painted grey but tall thin panels, on the line of the cross walls and rising unbroken through both floors, are black. The effect is rather like a painting by Piet Mondrian but in a rather more muted colour scheme.

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Nyboder

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Christian IV understood well that the men in his navy and in his army might be more loyal if they had reasonable accommodation and some rights to housing after they left his service.

Construction of the naval accommodation of the Nyboder housing scheme, designed by the Flemish stone mason and architect Hans van Steenwinkel the younger, began in 1631 and by 1648, the year that Christian died, there were 600 housing units in the streets laid out north of the city, on land just beyond the king’s house and garden of Rosenborg. 

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In the late 19th century some of the earlier rows were demolished and new larger brick houses were built -

see separate post

 

Brumleby

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The houses in Brumleby in Østerbro - designed by the architects Michael Gottlieb Bindesbøll - were built for The Medical Association housing scheme and initially were known as Lægeforeningens Boliger.

There are four rows of blocks separated by wide gardens or avenues with 240 units in the first phase begun in 1853 and completed in 1857. Between 1866 and 1872 a further 310 units were added, designed by the architect Vilhelm Klein. Common facilities included a kindergarten, bathhouse and meeting hall and the first co-operative store in Copenhagen.

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English Row Houses

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Toldbodgade 71-85
1869-1873

Designed by Vilhelm Tvede for the charity Det Classenske Fideicommis
established in the 18th century by the Army General and armaments manufacture Johan Frederik Classen.

This terraced row of eight houses is just north of the royal palace and runs parallel to the harbour but is set back behind warehouses. There is a courtyard or garden to the front, on the side away from the harbour, separated from the street by iron railings and stone gate piers and there are now very small back yards with single-storey toilet blocks - presumably for the use of servants.

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Building Society Row Houses

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Dating from 1873 to 1889 and designed by Frederik Christian Bøttger, there are 480 houses in relatively short and continuous terraces along eleven streets between Øster Farimagsgade and Øster Søgade which, as its name implies, runs along the south shore of the lake Sortedams Sø. 

The houses are popularly known as the Potato Rows or Potato Houses and were built by and for the workers at the Burmeister & Wain shipyard. Workers contributed to a fund and then had their names drawn to see who would move into the houses.

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Nyboder - rebuilding in the late 19th century

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The Nyboder housing - on the north edge of the historic city and close to Kastellet, the fortress or citadel - were houses built for the navy. The first of the houses were constructed in the early 17th century and through the 17th and 18th centuries more rows were added with a series of parallel streets with long narrow yards between the rows of houses. 

In the 1880s several blocks of the old Nyboder houses were demolished. New streets of apartment buildings were constructed between Borger Gade and Store Kongensgade and a new church, Sankt Pauls Kirke, was built facing a new square with new naval houses constructed along three parallel streets close to the church including Haregade, Gernersgade and Rævegade. These houses are much larger than the earlier Nyboder row houses and were subdivided into apartments.

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Bakkehusene housing scheme

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About 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) to the north west of the city on a slope that faces south east and looks down on and across Copenhagen, this was the first scheme built for KAB (Copenhagen’s Public Housing Association) that had been founded in 1920. The Bakkehusene scheme was designed by Ivar Bentsen and Thorkild Henningsen and completed in 1923. 

There were 171 low-rise houses in short rows running away from a large, tree lined rectangular green that rose up the slope from Hulgårdsvej. The row house was a traditional rural form found in villages and small market towns although a few survive in Copenhagen, notably in Sankt Pauls Gade - some of the earliest houses in the Nyboder area and dating from the early 17th century - and in a short row at the south end of the Frederiksholm Canal.

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Studiebyen housing quarter

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Built for KAB (Copenhagen Public Housing Association) between 1920 and 1924 to designs from Edvard Thomsen, Anton Rosen, Ivar Bentsen, Thorkild Henningsen and Kay Fisker. 

Nearly 6 kilometres (3.5 miles) north of the city, There were 104 houses including a number of villas and two long rows along Rygårds Allé that face each other, running north south, with a large road-width gateway at the centre of the west row for access to a small group of semi-detached houses. All the houses including the rows have small front gardens and back gardens. The landscape was designed by G N Brandt, the municipal gardener in Gentofte.

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Søndergårdspark housing scheme

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Søndergårdspark was constructed between 1949 and 1951 for the Danish Public Housing Association. 

Designed by Poul Hoff and Bennet Windinge, the plan and style of the houses were a development of schemes before the war at Studiebyen in 1920-1924 and for the Bakkehusene housing scheme completed in 1923 but at Søndergårdspark there was emphasis on a rural landscape with informal planting of trees and shrubs and the houses set at slight angles around a large open public space, like a village green, rather than along a street or around a formal square.

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Søndergård Park circa 1950

 

workers' housing

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One thing has certainly surprised me about my move to Denmark: when Danes realise that I am not just a visitor but have chosen to move my home here they seem genuinely surprised … the almost universal response has been “but why?” as if they really feel that there are better or at least more interesting places to live. As far as I can judge, this really is not a false or feigned modesty. 

When I go on to explain that I am here to write about architecture and design there is an even more curious and equally genuine and almost universal response which is to say that Denmark is not as wealthy and as comfortable as everyone else seems to think - for a start, I'm told, the Norwegians are certainly wealthier - and most then point out that Copenhagen had some terrible areas of slum housing in the early 20th century, even in the 1970s Copenhagen was, they tell me, rather gloomy and not prosperous and that there are still areas of poor or bad housing in the city. Again this is not false modesty but seems to be a genuine frustration about Denmark generally being written off as privileged or even complacent as a country. 

I have seen the photographs of Nyhavn in the 1960s when it was very much a part of the dock and lined with tattoo parlours and bars that would certainly not attract the tourists that flock to the area now and I have read about the overcrowded apartments, the dark inner courtyards off inner courtyards and the lack of sanitation in the housing in the city around the time of the First World War. 

In part, of course, poor quality and overcrowded housing was inevitable in a city that was growing rapidly, in terms of population, but with little land available then for expanding outwards. But what is also clear is that for centuries Denmark has tried to use good design and well-built architecture to enhance and improve the lives of ordinary people and this is most obvious in a number of large well-planned housing schemes to build good homes around the city. Some from a remarkably early date.

 

The dark ochre-coloured houses (top) are part of the Nyboder housing scheme with 600 houses on the west side of Kastellet for navy personnel. Building work started in 1631 (that is 1631 and not a typing mistake) and some of the single-storey rows from that period survive along Sankt Pouls Gade. (above) The scheme was completed by 1758. There were small “cabbage gardens” between the rows of houses so families could stretch out their housekeeping budget by growing their own food. The king, Christian IV, realised that providing good housing meant sailors were more likely to be loyal in his service particularly as the housing seems to have been available to men after they were too old to serve and clearly the plan to encourage growing food meant that, where families lived in the houses, young boys, potential recruits to the service, would be healthier and stronger.

The houses with a pale grey upper storey are on the Brumleby Medical Association Scheme in the north part of the city just beyond the Sortedams Sø. These were built between 1853 and 1872 following an outbreak of cholera in the city and were for the “needy classes”. The scheme included a kindergarten, a bathhouse and a meeting hall.

 

The brightly painted houses are in Olufsvej, a slightly later street immediately south of Brumleby.

 

The houses that look similar to large Edwardian terraced houses in England are on the city side of Sortedams Sø. These are the Building Society Row Houses otherwise known as the “Potato Rows”. The 480 houses were built between 1873 and 1889 on the initiative of workers from the Burmeister & Wain’s shipyard who saved money in a building society and could win the right to rent one of the houses in a lottery. The large houses were originally divided into apartments to accommodate more families.

It is clear that socialism, or at least a clear understanding of social responsibility, is not simply a recent political phase of post war Denmark.

Through the summer I hope to explore the city archive for plans of these buildings and look at any documents about regulations and to look for information about the developers and architects who planned these housing schemes and about the artisans who built them.

The great apartments of Grønningen with ten or twelve rooms and accommodation for servants are important because they show how rooms in middle-class homes were furnished and used but, from a design perspective, the small apartments for workers are just as interesting. Many of these apartments still provide accommodation for the people of Copenhagen but equally they provide a context and a starting point for the design of all the new apartments and housing schemes that are being built now. If I can make sense of the material and as I get to understand more and discover more as I walk the streets of the city, I will post my thoughts here.