Musikhuset København to use the old building of the Museum of Copenhagen

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The future use of this fine 18th-century building on Vesterbrogade was uncertain after the Museum of Copenhagen moved from here to their present building on Stormgade south of the city hall.

Initially, the building was to be sold and then, after the reversal of that decision, there were rumours that the buildings would be restored and would become a centre for music.

It has just been announced that the recently-formed association Musikhuset København will be allowed to use the buildings for classical concerts and jazz before major restoration work starts in 2022.

the old Museum of Copenhagen

Musikhuset København

Vesterbrogade then …….

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In the late 19th century, following the devastation of an outbreak of cholera in Copenhagen in 1853, when nearly 5,000 people in the city died, and then the economic impact of defeat in a war with Germany in the 1860s with the loss of Schleswig Holstein, politicians and businessmen together, presumably, with Danish banks and investors, developed plans to revitalise the city by expanding the old city out to the west which meant demolishing the west gate and levelling the banks of the old defences - in order to build a new commercial and political centre for the city. It was such an ambitious plan that it took over forty years to realise.

Two wide new streets or boulevards were laid out with Vestre Boulevard, now HC Andersens Boulevard, that runs north to south from the north-west corner of the old city to the harbour, along the line of the old defences, and Vesterbrogade running out to the west, from the site of the old west gate, on the line of an existing road to Frederiksberg.

At the intersection is Rådhuspladsen, a vast public space with a transport hub for a rapidly growing tram system and with busy ranks for horse-drawn cabs and with a grand new city hall, to reflect the status and prestige of the city.

Along the new boulevards were built hotels and new office buildings and Industriforeningen, a vast building for international fairs and trade shows, on one side of the square, alongside a new museum to show off the best of manufactured design. There were new theatres and places of entertainment to draw people to the area and a new railway station on a better site and within walking distance for workers coming into the city from the new suburbs and for visitors arriving from more distant parts of the country or from abroad.

Curiously, the only thing missing was a new stock exchange and, of course, the new Free Port with its new warehouses that were completed in 1904, to stimulate and finance this growth, was some distance away - across and beyond the city - although it was an integral part of this redevelopment.

Building work slowed with the onset of the first world war but then, despite the economic depression following the war, continued with new commercial buildings on down Vesterbrogade that showed the very best of modern Danish architecture and engineering.

Axelborg, built as the headquarters for Den Danske Andelsbank and designed by Arthur Witmaack and Vilhelm Hvalsoe, was one of the last of the older style of building and was finished by 1920, but Vesterport a large office building by Paul Baumann and Ole Ralkentorp with a steel frame, concrete floors and copper cladding was completed in 1932 and The Hotel Astoria, framing the area in front of the central station on the west side, in a very different style, is an important example of the functionalist movement and was designed by Ole Falkentorp, and was finished in 1935.

This construction of large prestigious buildings that pushed boundaries continued after the second war. There was the dramatic office building that spans across Vester Farimagsgade by Ib Lunding, F Allan Christensen, Thorvald Dreyer and Ole Hagen completed in 1958 although it was just part of a scheme that was intended to extend across the full width of the area in front of the station. Only the west half was completed.

There was a first proposal for a tower block on the site that was to become the SAS Hotel, and then, of course, there was the construction of the SAS Royal Hotel by Arne Jacobsen that is now acknowledged to be one of the great buildings of the modern movement from what is generally described as the classic period of modern Danish design, but essentially it was also part of that early vision for promoting Danish products and Danish design - the main reason for it being a total design concept with furniture, interiors and fittings all by Jacobsen.

When it opened, it was the airport terminal for people arriving and departing from the country in style …. not for tourists then but for businessmen, investors and politicians coming to Copenhagen from all over the world who were brought straight to the centre of this commercial and political and business district.

Paul Fischer - Copenhagen in the best possible light

Copenhagen City Archive

An amazing photograph from the city archive … an elevated view along Vesterbrogade to Rådhuspladsen - but here, at the time of the photograph, before the Bristol and the Palace hotels and the city hall itself had been built. To the left is the earlier main railway station and the open ground was the meat market - Trommeshalen or Drum Hall.
The Monument to Liberty was set up here in 1788 but when the new central railway station was built - set back on a site in the trees on the right - the tracks of what was called the Boulevard Line were taken under the road and the monument was dismantled and then reinstated but to a position said to be 5 metres further east.

 

From the centre of Rådhuspladsen looking west along Vesterbrogade.
The building to the right, approximately over what is now the new metro station, was a pavilion from the Nordisk Exhibition of 1888 and Industriforeningen, the main exhibition halls from 1872 and designed by Vilhelm Klein, is the roof just visible above the trees on the left - now Dansk Industri.

Painting by Paul Fischer of Vesterbrogade. On the right, the building with two storeys and a dome at the corner, is the National Scala building that was demolished in 2013 and is now the site of the Axeltorv building and beyond is the Axelborg bank building completed in 1920 but here, apparently, still under construction.

Painting by Paul Fischer of the National Scala looking across Vesterbrogade from the entrance to Tivoli

….. and Vesterbrogade now

Vesterbrogade now. No longer the elegant boulevard of the 1900s and not, despite Dansk Industri still being here, the heart of Danish trade and business but the route for commuters and tourists to traipse from the station to Strøget …. the Walking Street.

Now, to do that walk from the railway station to the city hall square is the visual equivalent of walking through a babble of loud and competing sounds and each new building and each new architect does their own thing because being different is now more important than contributing to the whole.

And Vesterbrogade really has to be seen as a single public space for the 500 metres or more from HC Andersens Boulevard to Trommeshalen and Helgolandsgade.

The part of the street on to the west from the monument is less damaged visually but the buildings there have to be protected and there should be a wider central space and less traffic changing lanes.

Frederiksberg Allé, that starts a little further west along Vesterbrogade, has recently been given special planning status and through that considerable protection so surely Vesterbrogade and HC Andersens Boulevard deserve as much if not more?

It's not that Vesterbrogade needs sanitising and it certainly does not need to be gentrified or made safe and dull but it needs wider pavements, simpler and better street furniture and developments that reinstate a coherent line of facades.

Oh yes …. and the DI building needs to remove its top three or maybe four floors.

Tivoli Hjornet / The Corner

view looking towards Rådhuspladsen from Frihedsstøtten - from the Liberty Monument
below is a similar viewpoint from 1971.

looking west from the monument

 

a BIG hotel for Tivoli

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Back in June, newspapers in the city published an illustration (above) to show the proposal for a new hotel that Tivoli want to build towards the north-east corner of the pleasure gardens - close to the back of the Dansk Industri / Danish Industry building - along with a scheme to close Vesterbrogade to traffic to create a new urban park across the front of the main entrance to Tivoli that has been drawn up by the studio of Jan Gehl.

This would link the gardens to the new square on the north side of the road - part of the relatively new development called Axeltorv designed by Lundgaard & Tranberg Arkitekter - and it would create a much more attractive route from the central railway station - a block west of Tivoli - to the public square in front of the City Hall to the east.

From the drawing it is difficult to judge the scale of the space but this part of Vesterbrogade - from Bernstorffsgade to HC Andersens Boulevard, the main road running north south between Tivoli and the square in front of city hall, is about 220 metres. Although the alignment of the front of buildings vary slightly - it is around 50 metres from the buildings on one side of the street to the front of buildings on the other.

The drawing suggests at least two obvious and major concerns that surely have to have very careful consideration.

The round tower for the hotel has been designed by BIG - The Bjarke Ingels Group - and, described as a pagoda , is shown with large terraces or balconies that are covered with greenery but neither the description nor the greenery disguise the fact that the building proposed would have eighteen floors and be around 70 metres high. There are towers within the gardens but these are relatively insubstantial - most formed with open frameworks of steel - and a tower here, so close to the north-east corner of Tivoli, and a building of this height and mass would block and compete with the views of the tower of the City Hall immediately to the east and with the silhouette of the SAS hotel by Arne Jacobsen to the north west that is just under 70 metres high.

The form of planting and hard landscaping along the street is schematic - this is simply an initial proposal - but is it appropriate for an urban context? Would a better model be the formal avenues of the King’s Garden with simple gravel walkways or the trees of Kongens Nytorv, at the east end of the old city, where the surface is cobbled and has double lines of trees to provide an area where people walk.

Are running water and meadow-like planting really appropriate for an urban and city-centre setting?

Cobbles over wider areas of pavement and double avenues of trees with space under the natural canopy for people to walk and creating space for occasional small-scale events would be more robust and provide a stronger but simpler foil to the buildings along the street.

Initially, traffic could be restricted to a lane in each direction along the centre for essential access and relatively short traditional lamp posts could provide a better level of good light at night. That is not to suggest something staid but lower lighting …. lower in height not in brightness … would compete less with the more important lighting of the gardens and of the electric advertising signs high up on the buildings.

If a major project to construct a tunnel - to take the heavy traffic from HC Andersens Boulevard down underground - and to create a landscaped area between Jarmers Plads and the harbour does go ahead then the two areas of new park would link together to create an extensive area of green from what are now some of the busiest roads in the city.

Tivoli press release

 

historic view of the entrance to Tivoli from Vesterbrogade.
the entrance was designed by Richardt Bergmann and Emil Blichfeldt and built in 1890 to replace an earlier gateway - note the wide pavements; large open area in front of the pleasure gardens - a deep but uncluttered set back from the pavement where people can meet and the relatively narrow cobbled road; low street lighting and double line of young trees

proposal from 2017 by Tredje Natur to divert most of the traffic from the city end of Vesterbrogade to create an area of trees and water across the front of the main entrance into Tivoli … published by Magasinet KBH

Magasinet KBH

looking across Vesterbrogade from Axeltorv to the main entrance to Tivoli
the problem is not just the traffic but the narrow and crowded pavements and the clutter of street furniture and bikes

 

Ⓐ City Hall
Ⓑ Rådhuspladsen Metro station
Ⓒ Vesterbrogade
Ⓓ Axeltorv

Ⓔ SAS tower by Arne Jacobsen
Ⓕ Central Railway Station
Ⓖ Main entrance to Tivoli
Ⓗ proposed hotel?

 

the old Museum of Copenhagen

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the forecourt and the main range of the 18th-century building from Vesterbrogade

The Museum of Copenhagen will reopen in February but in a different part of the city - in a refurbished building on Stormgade close to the city hall - and there is now a growing controversy about the future of the building that they occupied on Vesterbrogade that is now vacant.

In the 1950s, the museum of the history of the city moved to this very fine house that dates from 1782 and was built as a new home for the Royal Copenhagen Shooting Society … a society had been established back in the 15th century to train citizens to defend Copenhagen. 

In the late 18th century, in their new building, outside the west gate of the city, there were gardens and shooting ranges that ran back from the house as far as the beach. However, in the 19th century, after the construction of the Copenhagen to Roskilde railway, that ran across the end of the shooting range and with the subsequent and rapid development of the west suburb, including apartment buildings on the south end of the shooting range and along what is now Istedgade, a high brick wall had to be built in 1887 across the end of the ranges to protect pedestrians walking across on the new road along the beach.

After the war, the Shooting Society moved out of the city to Solyst, north of Klampenborg, and the land and buildings on Vesterbrogade were acquired by the city. Much of the old garden and the shooting range behind the 18th-century house became what is now a very popular inner-city park and Vesterbro Ungdomsgård - a club and sports facilities for young people in this district - was built in 1952-53 across almost the full width of the garden and close to the back of the house so, although there is still an impressive forecourt towards the road, there is surprisingly little land behind the house for such a large and important historic property.

Inside, the house there are large and distinctive rooms with fine interior fittings so the property is protected and any new owner would be restricted in what they could do to the building and that could, in turn, limit how it is used.

Initially the building was offered on the commercial market for sale but, after some discussion, there is now a possibility that the house will either be retained by the city or it could be restored for a social or public function so that some public access would still be possible.

The battle now would seem to be between sections of the city administration who see the building as an important asset owned by and for the city that has to be kept in public ownership and control for the citizens and political factions who see it as financially astute to realise an asset that will have serious upfront and ongoing costs to restore and maintain but for now the building is unused and looks more and more unloved.

the gardens of the Royal Shooting Gallery

the old museum building from the air … the distinct grey-tiled roof with hipped ends of the main building from 1782 is approximately at the centre of this view with the forecourt towards Vesterbrogade running across at an angle at the top or north side of the view.
The L-shaped buildings and the square area of grass immediately below the old building are Vesterbro Ungdomsgård

photograph of the house and forecourt and the service range across the west side of the forecourt
Københavns Stadsarkiv, reference 20087