Governor’s houses: unique Gothenburg workers’ housing

Journal article, 2024

‘Governor's houses' were built between 1875 and 1945 as workers’ housing in Gothenburg. Typically, they comprised a ground floor made of brick and two storeys built in wood. They were narrow houses with staircases lit by daylight and the apartments were illuminated from both sides. Though they were cheap to build and popular homes for half of the city's population in the late 1930s, this type of housing was not reproduced anywhere else. The initiative came from a Workers’ Building Association and was supported by Gothenburg town architect Victor Gegerfelt. Around 1900, governor's houses were mainly built by speculative builders, often with poor quality, resulting in low reputation. From 1910 architects started to design them and large builders like the municipal housing companies and cooperative HSB got involved. The same basic typology followed changing ideals in exterior design and town planning from the 1910s to the 1930s. In the 1960s and 1970s, almost half of the stock of governor’s houses was demolished, mainly the older and more central ones. The conclusion raises the counterfactual question of why those houses were not built elsewhere and what would be needed to reintroduce this type of housing.