Before I move forward in time, I’d like to take a quick step
back and add a little more depth to my post on Stockholm’s Earliest Urban Plan. When I wrote about Örnehufvud’s
urban plan for Stockholm in the 1630’s, I had an appreciation for how
revolutionary the plan was in that it created a coherent, monumental city and
in that it has been strictly followed through Stockholm’s development for 350
years. However, after reading Thomas
Hall’s Stockholm: The Making of a
Metropolis, I have a new-found appreciation for just how revolutionary the
plan was at both a local and on a continental scale.
At a local level, the new, regularized plan for Stockholm
required an extremely involved central government to finance and enforce the
plan. Why was the king so focused on
creating a modern city? There seem to be
two main reasons: first, Sweden was rapidly becoming a powerful empire and
Stockholm needed “a more worthy physical form, architectural apparel in keeping
with the new pretensions” (Hall). In
fact, when King Gustav II Adolf died in 1632, there were serious hesitations
about inviting leading European sovereigns and dignitaries to the funeral due
to embarrassment over the shabbiness of the capital. After the fire of 1625, Stora Nygatan in
Gamla Stan was re-built to a regularized, grandiose plan to accommodate stately
royal processions. Skeppsbron was
also rebuilt in the 1630’s to present an imposing first impression to those
sailing into Stockholm. While Stora
Nygatan and Skeppsbron were localized projects, Örnehufvud’s regularized urban
plan was an overarching scheme that would transform the entire city and all of
its suburbs into an impressive and orderly first-rate European capital.
Secondly, Stockholm was regularized so that the crown could
exert as much control over trade and industry as possible. A more regular town with an understandable, easily-navigable
street grid made regulation and taxation of business much easier. At the same time that the regent (Kristina was
too young to ascend the throne after Gustav II’s death) ordered the
regularization of the physical city (according to Gustav II’s wishes), he reorganized
city administration (also according to the previous king’s wishes). Previously, administration was inefficient
and cumbersome because being an aldermen or a councilor was a leisure activity
that was always subordinate to one’s commercial enterprises. To counter this, the regent took control out
of amateurs’ hands and in 1634 established four city administration entities
staffed by trained, salaried officials.
The earliest four departments oversaw trade, justice, officials, and
building. These were the ingredients
needed to create an orderly city where trade could prosper and flourish in an
orderly, governed, and easily-taxable manner.
In addition to the amount of power and oversight that was
required to accomplish Örnehufvud’s urban plan, I also have a new-found
appreciation for just how much work the regularization was to accomplish. Although the development outside of Gamla
Stan was generally quite rural and substandard in nature, there was an
extensive network of established roads as well as a substantial population
living in the suburbs. Each and every
road would have to be re-dug and replaced; each and every house and barn and
shed and workshop would have to be dismantled, moved, and rebuilt; and each and
every farm field would have to be relocated and replanted. Örnehufvud’s plan was not drawn upon a blank
slate of virgin land; instead, it was a massive project on the scale of 1950’s
urban renewal that displaced thousands of people and caused massive demolition
and rebuilding.
These maps from 1636 and 1641 respectively of Norrmalm and
Södermalm show the new, regular street grid superimposed on the existing, irregular street network. Because the 380 year-old pencil drawings are
hard to see, I have shaded in the existing streets in grey and the new streets
in red. Seeing these maps drove home for
me just how massive this urban regularization project really was.
Landowners were given new, rectangular plots along straight city
streets to replace their original, irregular lots along country lanes. If the original and new land values were not
deemed equal, landowners were given cash money to make up the difference. Some were given money in compensation for the
expense of moving their houses, but those receiving house-moving compensation
seem to have been in the minority. While
the city paid for street-building, land owners were responsible for all
development inside their property boundaries.
If their new land was rocky or not uniform, the landowners could incur
very high earth-moving expenses for which they received no compensation.
On a continental scale, many cities considered overarching
renewal, but Stockholm was the only city in Europe to undertake such an extensive
overhaul in the 17th century.
Rome was perhaps the closest in achieving such large-scale projects, but
Rome’s projects were more focused on clearing out a central focal point within
a neighborhood and creating open, monumental squares. These new open spaces were comparatively
small interventions into the dense fabric of medieval Rome. Paris also cleared out islands of order among
the medieval chaos, but the city as a whole was considered beyond hope and King
Louis XIV moved his court out of the city and to Versailles. After London’s Great Fire of 1666, there were
plans to rebuild in an orderly, regularized manner, but these plans were never
enforced and the city was redeveloped with nearly the exact same meandering
layout as before. There was a 17th century plan to redevelop Copenhagen into a grid pattern with radial streets,
but this plan was never enforced. Only
in Stockholm was there a strong-enough central government with enough willpower
and far-sightedness to achieve an overarching rebuilding of the city along a
predetermined, regularized plan.
After completing 17th century Europe’s largest
urban construction project, Stockholm was undoubtedly the trimmest and most
orderly capital on the continent, and to a large extent remains so to this
day. In an incredibly long-sighted move,
the king and regent chose to focus not on creating a few architecturally monumental
buildings or squares; instead, they chose to transform the entire city into a deliberate
masterpiece that was envisioned to be the center of a great Nordic-Baltic
empire.
A little side note: while Örnehufvud was in charge of the
new city plan, Torstensson was responsible for the day-to-day management of the
project for over two decades. According to
Hall, Torstensson made considerable improvements to Örnehufvud’s plan including
creating a hierarchy of streets with wider main streets and narrower side
streets. Whoever came up with which
ideas, the resulting city is wonderful, and the result was positively received
by the crown who gave Torstensson a prominent plot of land just across the
bridge from the castle as well as money to build a house. The result is #5 in my post Palaces from TheTime of Great Power in the 1600's.
