Hornsbergs Villastad (Hornsberg’s Villa City): An Unrealized Utopia

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While I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on unrealized plans on this blog, I find Hornsberg’s Villastad interesting because this unrealized ghost town was officially on the books for about 50 years which ended up stunting this area of Kungsholmen’s development.  The design was also a harbinger of a change in aesthetic which would soon become a major trend. 

Hornsberg’s Villastad was a reaction to both the success and the failure of Villastaden in Östermalm.  This Villa City was enormously popular and there was no problem selling lots for single-family houses.  However, the idea of zoning was so new and untested in Sweden that the easements requiring “villa-style buildings” and setbacks didn’t hold up against the development pressure to build larger and larger apartment buildings instead.  Understanding that the concept of a single-family residential neighborhood was marketable as well as that the idea needed stronger legal protections, a group of investors bought the idyllic Hornsberg Estate on Kungsholmen in 1876 and presented a plan to the city council in 1887.  

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I am curious why they waited so long to present a plan; Kungsholmen’s plan was discussed starting in 1876 and ratified in 1880—wouldn’t it have been easier to get their plan incorporated into the larger plan for Kungsholmen?

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In order to protect the single-family nature of the proposed development, this plan included several zoning measures:

• Setbacks of 12 meters (39ft) from the middle of the streets
• Only 1/8 of each lot was allowed to be built upon
• The building height was limited (I’m not sure to what height)

Like Villastaden in Östermalm, these zoning measures were not a part of the plan itself but were to be easements attached to the lots.  However, these easements were to be much more durable than in Östermalm as they would still apply even after the lots changed hands.  

The plan and easement proposal was adopted without even having to go to a vote on the condition that land for streets, open areas, and quaysides would be given over to the city after the area was fully developed.  Perhaps this was why the developers waited—they didn’t want their plan to be part of the contentious process of planning the entire island.  

Hornsberg was a hilly area by the water on the western edge of Kungsholmen.  In a big departure from Stockholm’s orthogonal street grid and the mostly orthogonal plan which had just been ratified a few years before, Hornsberg’s streets would follow the terrain, organically curving around and up the hills.  The idyllic nature of the area was emphasized by proposed street names like “Happiness,” “Paradise,” “Haven,” and “Refuge.”

The development company hired architect Magnus Isæus  to draw up sample house plans and elevations.  These included a national-romantic house, a Gothic mansion, and a country “cottage.”  

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Additionally, the prospectus included a bird’s-eye perspective showing the completed neighborhood with large, romantic houses climbing up the hillside, spread out and embedded in lush greenery. 

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Despite the verdant, waterside idyll promised by the drawings, not a single lot in Hornsberg’s Villastad was sold.  The area was too far and too disconnected from the city center.  To get there by road, you had to go all the way across Kungsholmen which was covered with polluting factories and inhabited by the working class—this was not the kind of area that wealthy people fleeing the dense city wanted to see, much less live next to.  And while a regular steamboat service was planned to connect Hornsberg to the city center, it became a chicken-and-egg conundrum where the boat company wouldn’t start a regularly trafficked boat service until there were residents to use and pay for the service, but no one would buy without a regular boat service.  

The estate languished empty for a few years but a large brewery was soon established on the land.  (Sadly, the Hornsberg Slott estate was demolished to make way for the brewery.  One of the gate houses, a lauded countryside pub, was saved and eventually restored.  It is now a cute little jealousy-inducing residence at the water’s edge in the middle of the bustling city.)  Around the turn of the century, other parts of the estate became a series of popular allotment gardens.  

The plan for Hornsberg’s Villastad was the official zoning for Hornsberg until 1933 when the area was rezoned for industry.  

One by one, all of the allotment gardens gave way to factories except for Karlbergs-Bro koloniområde which is still an idyllic little waterside garden today.  

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The factories remained throughout the 20th century and Hornsberg was the last industrial area within Stockholm’s inner city.  Eventually, even Hornsberg’s industrial epoch waned and the area was redeveloped into office and apartment buildings in the early 2000’s—the area is still being built out today. 

Since Hornsberg’s Villastad was never developed, the strength of the easements was never tested or tried in court.  Would they have stood up to creative property developers and intense development pressure?

The curvy, "organic" nature of Hornsberg’s Villastad's plan was a major departure from Lindhagen's rectilinear grid plan.  Despite never being built, it was one of Per Olof Hallman’s inspirations and precedents.  His organic, romantic city planning would soon begin to loosen up the strict grid structure of the city.  

Hornsberg is also interesting because the failed idea remained an officially zoned plan for nearly fifty years.  Despite the fact that the streets had never been built, generations of city maps showed the development’s streets as if they might appear at any moment.

This map of Hornsberg and Stadshagen from 1920 shows Hornsberg Villastad's streets as if they had been built. *

Because this unbuilt plan was on the books for so long, western Kungsholmen’s development into residential neighborhoods was stunted and delayed for more than a hundred years.  Just outside of the Hornsberg estate, a few blocks comprising the Thorildsplan area were developed 

Hornsberg Villastad is marked in red, Thorildsplan in orange.

according to the 1880 ratified plan for Kungsholmen, but these blocks could never develop into a broader neighborhood since further development was blocked by Hornsberg Villastads low-density, single-family zoning which was never built out.  

Sources:
The city council’s discussion and decision to ratify the plan for Hornsberg’s Villastad: https://stockholmskallan.stockholm.se/PostFiles/SMF/SD/Beredningsutskottets_utlatande_1887_83.pdf

Åke Abrahamsson, Stockholm: en utopisk historia (2004)

Gösta Selling, Esplanadsystemet och Albert Lindhagen: Stadsplanering i Stockholm åren 1857-1887 (1970)

Dagens nyheter newspaper article: https://www.dn.se/blogg/epstein/2015/01/02/nya-hornsbergs-gamla-historia/

Images:
Images are my own except for:
* Åke Abrahamsson, Stockholm: en utopisk historia (2004)
** Gösta Selling, Esplanadsystemet och Albert Lindhagen: Stadsplanering i Stockholm åren 1857-1887 (1970)
*** https://www.stockholmstories.se/2014/08/09/karlbergs-bro-kungsholmens-enda-kolonitradgard/