In the Pantheon of the Swedish monarchs, King Oscar I (1844-1859) barely appreciates a mention. An early reformer, the second Bernadotte, lost his nerve in the cross -ends of the revolutionary uprisings of the era. After he died, his widow, Josephine, rose, in his honor, a home for older older women, often widows. Designed by the Architect for Ulrik Stenhammar and built between 1873 and 1875, the beautiful three-storey two-sided structure opposite a central courtyard was one of the first buildings in Stockholm that the rooms that opened the long corridors lit by arched windows. Charity but in no deplorable way, the home in the southern district of Södermalm’s Stogy’s Edgy provided comfort for nearly 80 years.
But after elderly inhabitants moved in the early 1950s, the buildings suffered decades of vicissitudes. Located directly on the top of a new rail tunnel, he sat empty for years – not exactly unwittingly, but ran down and seemingly trapped in a network of steel generations that protected its foundations from land works under it. Eventually the works were completed, and the city was ready to sell the building – but in the provision that it would become a public space.
So the historical property is reborn as a 32 room hotel and suite, its detailed metal roof with rounded rounded windows again shine, and its plastered facade was repaid in its original sandy stone color. In tympanum above the elegant front entrance, the original gilded letters pronounce his former name: Konung Oscar I: S Minne (King Oscar of Memory I). Below is the new building: Stockholm Stadshotel.
In English means “Hotel City” but for a Swedish, Stadshot Consarable something more romantic – a certain nostalgia, a bourgeois elegance. It also signals only what kind of establishment this is; So much that when Södermalm’s harsh locals learned the name, they were relieved. They were afraid that their beloved building would become an exclusive destination hotel mainly closed to its neighbors; Instead, they received a contemporary version of guesthouses led by the family that dripping the social country, or satts as they are collocually recognized.
“ instead of It is where you go for your first date, where you get grandmother for her 70th birthday. It is the living room for the city, “says Fredrik Carlström, a creative director who is one of the five founding partners of the New York -based hotel, which develops real estate brands and property, is fascinated by environmental art.” In real estate and real estate has this tendency to who designed it, who is the architect, but I believe that people who are really great in creating a vibe Restruators. Let the design follow as a backdrop, ”he says.
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With this instead of Carlström is practicing that theory after joining Johan Agrell, Jon Lacotte and Dan Källström, the trio after the very shocked neighborhood of Babette, Café Nizza, Schmaltz and Teng. They didn’t have to go away to find each other: Carlström was hanging in their restaurants for years, soaking their special sauce. “I visit every time I come from New York. Babette especially feels like a year -end local at an art college.” In 2020, when Agrell told him about a wonderful heritage building in the heart of Söder (as the locals call it) that had rented and would make the perfect hotel, Carlström was sold immediately. He recruited his friend and colleague Ian Nicholson, a manager and developer of the US Veteran Hotel, whose CV includes standard hotels, Mercer, Chateau Marmont, Hudson and Soho Grand Hotels. Their financial partner, Karl-Jojn Person, the third generation that was led by Swedish retail H&M (and a regular Babette), also needed minor conviction.
February was summarized – a home where you can eat and sleep, but where the focus is rolled. “A restaurant with rooms than a hotel that has to provide somewhere to eat breakfast,” Agrell says, adding that Bistro opening in front of the hotel, as they did in December, underlined their special change. Although the hotel name may not say anything about a non-Swedish, he says he signals what they want to achieve. “Likes as an anti-brand in some way. Stockholm Stadshotel is very institutional, which helps to send a message that it is the product, it is the food, it is service, it is inclusive; this is what we want.”
Everything goes from there. Even the nomenclature is straightforward, if not prosaic: there are bistro, with tiles up the walls, tables glued to the floor and a handwritten black menu; Salongen, with banquets and småland chairs; grass; and high-level restaurant, Matsalen- “Dining Room” in Swedish. Like the house where you eat in the kitchen every day and use Dining room for special cases. Quite special, in this case: Matsalen is in the previous hat, complete with arched ceilings, ionic pilasters, golden angels and recently remedied Merbleized walls. The staff can reaffirm the formality of excellent eating, folding napkins in the bishop’s hats, for example, but this is not a hasty temple. The taste menu is five generous courses, not 15, created under the direction of the executive chef and Chez Panisse Alum Olle Cellton, and served with no fuss and ego.
Hotel design – lobby, salons and rooms – supervised by Elin Martin and Michaela Hemlin of Escapist Studio, and matches this mentality. A distinct luxury where nothing screams, and everything is comfortable and beautiful without ever overloading; Carlström alternating it “Shaker Chic” and “Monastic meets Palazzo”. There are discrete knots for the history of Swedish design, from influenced Biedermeier and Swedish ashes to the 1940s and ’50s functionalism. (Curved plywood bench places in Bistro are an homage to those in the Gunnar Asplund’s Woodland Cemetery Faith Chapel, widely accepted as the best Stockholm. The vintage findings are combined with custom -made wood bumps, such as burrching brupers.
Thanks to the building itself, there is a large inherent character, an old energy and humanity that is still very perceptible even if most of the current interior was built from scratch. There are 150 years treading marks in limestone steps on the two original curved stairs, and gracious corridors protected by inheritance, with their views on large windows, which in many such projects would have been immersed in larger hotel rooms. A sense of art and craft is spread, by the marriage of Intarsis that captures the motifs of Stockholm in the elevator to the traditional väveri insjöns woven napkins.
Södermalm is in itself a special place; Until now, but still with a diligent gravel, the self-stylized creative location of the city-Brooklyn of Stockholm, to say, whose inhabitants prefer to be accompanied in their hood, says aggregation. He is not brave enough to suggest that he and his partners have created a very necessary social center, but he is “super-criminal” if others are saying it. (They are.) They are the first days, but there is a sense of life beyond the isolation of a luxury hotel, a neighborhood spirit in which a stranger can share. Lacotte, a proud Söder bar who grew up in the prefecture of the nearby utilitarian station, cannot wait for the summer when he and his crew will turn the yard into an Italian -style pizza with wicked and umbrellas chairs, and will really throw the door opening.
Stockholmstadshotell.comby SKR3.500 (about € 325)
