The story
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In the late 1700s, this ground was the Sillhovet, the city’s herring yard. On the adjacent lane, farriers worked at their anvils, eventually giving Hovslagargatan its name. The herring trade marked the block until 1871; by then the corner plot already carried houses from the 1820s and the 1840s.
The corner house was rebuilt in the early 1880s for Carl Fabian Edelstam, a city councillor and businessman. Its master builder was Andreas Gustaf Sällström, though the architect remains unknown. On the facade facing the park, there is a stone frieze salvaged from the Makalös palace, which burned down in 1825 during a theatrical performance.
By the mid-1920s, the German State owned the property, and the German Legation operated from here through the Second World War. In January 1951, the Stockholm start of the Monte Carlo rally took place on the quay right outside. Marine-archaeological digs along the waterfront in 2011 found several seventeenth- and eighteenth-century shipwrecks buried in the soil.
After decades as offices, the house was converted in 2007 and 2008 and reopened that autumn as the Lydmar Hotel.
That was Södra Blasieholmshamnen, Stockholm, Sweden. Avsha tells a story like this about wherever you are — any street, in your language.
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