Strandvägen

This guide to Strandvägen in Stockholm follows the boulevard from its start as unstable mud and cow pasture, mocked by city officials, to the king's order in 1861 that it be built anyway. It centers on Fredrik Bunsow, a self-made timber baron who wired his new limestone building for electricity and private elevators in 1888, and on the wholesalers, bankers and officers who built these waterfront palaces in French chateau style rather than the Swedish forms tied to old noble bloodlines. Listen for what that choice of architecture was meant to say to the aristocracy that stayed away.