Stockholm During The Age of Liberty - Urban Development

Urban Development

In 1723 a devastating fire destroyed large parts of the parish of the Catherine Church, an event which resulted in the city's first building code in 1725. Produced by City Architect G J Adelcrantz (1668–1739), the assistant of Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, it attempted to improve fire safety by prohibiting wooden buildings in the old town, and ameliorate the city's appearance by implementing the rectangular 17th century city plan.

The royal palace had been ruined by fire in 1697, but as the king lost in influence during the Age of Liberty, the work on the new palace was postponed until 1727. Under the leadership of Carl Hårleman (1700-1753) and Tessin the Younger's son Carl Gustaf Tessin, a group of skilled artists and craftsmen from both Sweden and elsewhere gathered around the royal construction work and the newly founded Academy of Arts which was to be of tremendous importance for the visual arts and architecture during the century that followed.

In 1727, J E Carlberg (1683–1773) was appointed new city architect — a position which he was to hold for almost 50 years, a period marked by dwindling resources and growing needs. As an architect, Carlberg was industrious and designed structures of all sizes all over town, few of which were ever built and considerably less have survived. His most notable surviving deed is the present Baroque exterior of the Storkyrkan church, a product of the reconstruction 1736-42 which amalgamated the appearance of the medieval church with that of the new palace.

As a city planer, Carlberg reworked the building code at several occasions which resulted in wooden buildings being prohibited on the ridges surrounding the medieval city. Notwithstanding these precautions, two devastating fires in the 1750s destroyed large parts of the buildings on the ridges. Some of the structures built following these fires are today, together with Djurgårdsstaden, the best preserved 18th century neighbourhoods in Stockholm. To the straight boulevards proposed by his predecessors, Carlberg added new squares and open spaces surrounded by uniformly designed façades with colours limited to various shades of yellow and grey — still a characteristic of large parts of Stockholm. One of Carlberg's adepts was Erik Palmstedt (1741–1803). Palmstedt was able implemented many of the renewal plans Carlberg have had for the medieval city, including the Stock Exchange Building and the small open space Tyska Brunnsplan, both still preserved. In 1744–53, the area around the Karl Johanslussen sluice was redesigned by an aged Christopher Polhem (1661–1751).