Dragesprinvandet / The Dragon Fountain is back on the square in front of the city hall

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Today, the Dragon Fountain was moved back to Rådhuspladsen and lifted into place at the centre of a shallow granite basin that reinstates an earlier form of the work.

By the time I got to the square, the bronze basin with the lower dragons clinging to its rim and then the upper sculpture of a dragon and a bull fighting were all in place and the compound was empty of people although an article in Politiken, in their evening edition, described just how many problems there had been through the day in getting the bronze work to drop into place over the centre of the granite basin.

In 1901 - when the fountain was first set up in Rådhuspladsen - it was in the south-west corner of the square, close to the city hall, but out to the west side.

In 1954, when Hans Christian Andersens Boulevard was established as a main and therefore wide road across the west side of the square, the fountain had to be moved in towards the city hall.

The square has seen major changes over the last couple of years with the construction of a station for the metro and after being dismantled and after it was restored, the fountain has now been given a new and more prominent position on the axis of the main entrance into the city hall and on the short cross axis of the square it is now in line with Strøget …. The Walking Street.

A post here - from November 2020 - when the fountain was dismantled and taken from the square for restoration - has more photographs of the fountain and more information about the design.

Once the fountain is connected to water and after all the paving has been reinstated then I should be able to take a picture-postcard view.

the Dragon Fountain is on the move again
2 November 2020

 

the stone base for the fountain photographed at end of April
note: the temporary wooden rail around the rim and a metal beam pivoting at the centre of the fountain to carry a curved former that was swept around, once concrete had been poured in, to form a shallow basin with a consistent profile

 

Vester Voldgade

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On Saturday morning there was a small flea market on Vester Voldgade.

Hans Cristian Andersens Boulevard, with some of the heaviest traffic in the historic centre, is just a block away to the south but Vester Voldgade is the street that runs down from the city hall and Rådhuspladsen to the harbour and Lille Langebro - the pedestrian and bicycle bridge to Christianshavn on the other side of the harbour.

There is little through traffic here or, rather, few cars but there is a wide pavement on one side - the sunny side - with trees and seats and there are bicycle lanes on both sides. It was interesting to see just how many stall holders had arrived on their cargo bikes and just how many cyclists stopped off to browse and buy.

Yet again, this shows how people in the city use public outdoor space. Events out on squares or on street pavements have always been popular but now, with Coronavirus, it makes sense to be outside.

the Dragon Fountain is on the move again

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The Dragon Fountain - the ornate bronze fountain on Rådhuspladsen - is on the move.

Today, work starts on dismantling the large sculpture of a bull fighting a dragon and it will be taken to the workshop of Skulptur Støberiet for restoration and repair. Then, on Friday, the bronze basin supporting the sculpture will be removed from the square and it too will be taken to the workshops.

The fountain has had a complicated history.

In 1889, there was a competition for a new fountain on Amagertorv - the public square about a kilometre to the east - and Joakim Skovgaard submitted a design. That design was then modified by Thorvald Bindesbøll but the competition was won by a design for a fountain by Edvard Petersen and Vilhelm Bissen.

Then, in 1901 as part of the Town Hall Exhibition of Danish Art, the Dragon Fountain design by Skovgaard was resurrected, cast in bronze in the foundry of Lauritz Rasmussen and installed in front of the city hall but with just a basin and the dragons around its rim.

A large outer basin was added in 1908 and then, in 1915, a central group for the top of the fountain with a bull and a dragon in combat was shown to the public as a plaster version but it was not until June 1923 that the bull and dragon were finally cast in bronze and installed.

In 1954, when H C Andersens Boulevard was widened, the fountain was moved further into the square by 25 metres and at that stage the outer basin was removed.

Once the bronze work of the fountain has been restored - with the work planned to take about two years - it will be reinstalled in a more central position in the square, on the axis of the main entrance into the city hall, and set further out from the city hall, on the cross axis of the Walking Street.

The outer basin will also be reinstated to make the fountain a much more prominent feature of the public space.

Skulptur Støberiet

the fountain with its outer basin in the earlier position, about 25 metres further west, before H C Andersens Boulevard, the main street running across the west side the city hall, was widened

the fountain earlier in the summer in its present location in front of the city hall
when restoration work has been completed the fountain will be returned to Rådhuspladsen but will be in a new position on the axis of the main entrance to city hall and with the outer basin reinstated

photographed yesterday, Sunday 1 November, with boarding in place ready for work to start today

Amagertorv with the Stork Fountain by Edvard Petersen and Vilhelm Bissen …. the Dragon Fountain was designed for this square but did not win that competition and was only installed 12 years later on Rådhuspladsen - the square in front of the city hall

 

an unbuilt tram station for Rådhuspladsen

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Looking for old photographs and drawings of the buildings around Rådhuspladsen - the square in front of the city hall - I came across this amazing proposal by the architect Ludvig Clausen for large and elaborate tram station - a Sporvejsstation - that was designed in 1899 but was not built.

It would have been across the north side of the square so opposite the city hall and over the new metro station that opened recently.

In plan it would have been a large square building but with strongly chamfered external corners but with a courtyard that was a regular octagon. Tram lines would have entered through double arches on each of these corners and the trams would have crossed over in the centre, with pairs of lines crossing over like a cross of Saint Andrew, but also with curved lines on each side so that trams could come in and then exit through adjacent corners.

The four main elevations would have had arcaded loggias facing outwards and the building would have had three floors with a balustraded parapet. Windows on the main first floor are shown with architraves and pediments so it was a modern transport hub in the style of a renaissance palace in Italy.

And it would have been an enormous building … the plan shows it as wider than Helmerhus - the large apartment building with commercial space, designed by Arne Petersen and Henrik Hagemann, that was finished in 1893 and survives across the north side of the square.

The tram station would have been laid out to respect the alignment of what were then the most recent buildings on the square rather than being set square on to the city hall or being lined up with the older buildings along the east side of the square.

Note the 31 horse-drawn cabs that are shown standing in ranks on three sides and facing out and ready to take passengers into the city. This was clearly intended to be a busy and important transport hub.

The main tram lines were in and out of the square along Vesterbrogade, as you would expect, but also up and down Vester Voldgade, on the east side of the city hall, rather than along what is now HC Andersens Boulevard on the west side of the square. That only became the main street for traffic in the 20th century. A fourth tram line went out of the square and down Jernbanegade that was then not the street to Vesterport station, as it is now, but led to what was then the main railway station then on the north side of Vesterbrogade.

In the archive, there is a second drawing by Clausen for an alternative version of a tram interchange that is in the style of grand Danish architecture in the 17th-century, with polygonal turrets and cupolas, as if the architect had imagined trams driving in and out of Frederiksborg.

drawing in the archive of Danmarks Kunstbibliotek

the north end of Rådhuspladsen with Helmerhus to the right and, beyond, the shallow dome of Dagmarteatret opened in 1883 but closed in 1937 and was then demolished - the trams are there but, sadly, not the renaissance tram station