The Metamorphosis of Restaurant Island

[More blog entries about architecture, history, Sweden, Victorian; arkitektur, historia, oscariansk, Wallenberg, Saltsjöbaden.]

The area where I grew up once belonged to the village of Neglinge, a group of small holdings on the inner margin of the Stockholm archipelago. The nearby inlet was briefly used as a harbour by a foreign fleet in the High Middle ages, but apart from that, Neglinge didn't really make the news until the 1890s. A Stockholm banker, Knut Agaton Wallenberg (whose family still rules the Swedish economy), bought the area in 1891 and turned it into a summer resort for his rich friends: Saltsjöbaden. He had a great big hotel and restaurant built at the sea, funded a railroad there and laid out plots where people built huge summer villas in an 1890s New England style, highly ornate and often with pinecone shinglework on the facades.

Neglinge consisted of three farmsteads: the North, Middle and Lower farms. Each of them owned a nearby island with rights to fishing and pasture. The North farm had Sumpholmen, the "Island of the Underwater-Live-Fish-Storage-Box", which I see from my dad's guestroom window where I work. The Middle farm had Mellangårdsholmen, "Middle Farm Island", and the Lower farm had Nedergårdsholmen, "Lower Farm Island".

Today, nobody knows where Nedergårdsholmen is anymore, because that's where Wallenberg had his palatial restaurant built. Everybody calls it Restaurangholmen. The establishment opened in 1893 and was a popular nightspot up until World War II. King Oscar II signed his name on a cliff. Exiled Chinese reformist K'ang Youwei wrote poems about the place. Much-beloved Swedish songwriter Evert Taube premiered a number of his dance tunes there. Then the restaurant went into decline and finally burned to the ground in the 1950s or 60s. Since then, Restaurangholmen has mainly been used by amateur sailors and the visitors to Wallenberg's old outdoor baths. When I was a kid, my friends and I used to ride our bikes there and explore the cavernous cellars. A smaller hotel building nearby survived into the 80s before being torn down.

Nothing much was done about Restaurangholmen for half a century. But the island is among Sweden's most attractive non-urban real estate. Finally, construction is going on there now, with the foundations of apartment houses and a new resort already laid out. My wife and I visited on Sunday and I snapped a few pics of this transient stage between how I remember the place and what it'll look like for the next half century.

More old pix from Saltsjöbaden at Föreningen Motorvagnens Vänner. Here's the building contractor's site with pics from last winter.