Mejlborg is a residential building in

Aarhus Aarhus (, , ; officially spelled Århus from 1948 until 1 January 2011) is the second-largest city in Denmark and the seat of Aarhus Municipality. It is located on the eastern shore of Jutland in the Kattegat sea and approximately northwes ...

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establishe ...

. The building is situated in the

Nørre Stenbro Nørre Stenbro is a small neighborhood in the city of Aarhus, Denmark home to some 3,000 residents. The neighborhood is part of the Aarhus C district and borders the neighborhoods of Indre By south and west, Aarhus Docklands in the east and Trøjbo ...

neighborhood on ''Kystvejen'' 59-65 and

Mejlgade Mejlgade is a street in Aarhus which runs north to south from ''Østbanetorvet'' to Skolegade and intersects ''Nørrebrogade''. The street is situated in the historic Latin Quarter neighborhood and has the highest number of historic and listed ...

92 in the city center. It was the first large, privately built apartment complex in the city and a social hub for the upper class in the early 20th century. Mejlborg is named for the adjacent Mejlgade street. "Mejl" is derived from the old-Danish word for middle and "borg" means castle making Mejlborg the middle-castle or the castle in the middle.

History

Mejlborg was built in 1896-98 by drawings of architect

Sophus Frederik Kühnel Sophus Frederik Kühnel (11 May 1851 – 13 October 1930) was a Danish architect best known for his design of Mejlborg and a number of other buildings in Aarhus. Biography Kühnel was born in Sæby, Denmark. He was the son of parish priest ...

. It was built on the site of the former Mejlgade

city gate A city gate is a gate which is, or was, set within a city wall. It is a type of fortified gateway. Uses City gates were traditionally built to provide a point of controlled access to and departure from a walled city for people, vehicles, goo ...

where the city walls had marked the limit of the city prior to 1871. Mejlborg was the first building of its size in the city and it towered above the nearby merchants houses in the nearby

Latin Quarter The Latin Quarter of Paris (french: Quartier latin, ) is an area in the 5th and the 6th arrondissements of Paris. It is situated on the left bank of the Seine, around the Sorbonne. Known for its student life, lively atmosphere, and bistros, ...

. Mejlborg was designed with expansive apartments on the east side facing ''Kystvejen'' with a commanding view of the

Bay of Aarhus The Bay of Aarhus, or Aarhus Bay, is a Danish waterway by Aarhus in eastern Jutland. The Bay of Aarhus is bounded by Kalø Vig in the north, Sletterhage and Helgenæs in the east, Samsø and Tunø to the south and the east Jutland coast to the ...

. The ground floor had a fashionable restaurant initially operated by the restaurateur Christian Madsen. In 1899 a fire broke out in a sawmill in

and the fire razed 14 buildings in the north end of the street, including Mejlborg, left with only its outer shell standing. Aarhus was at the time home to an artillery regiment housed in Langelandsgade Barracks and the soldiers subsequently used the ruins for target practice in a questionable bid to safely pull down the remains of the building. Mejlborg was rebuilt the same year of the fire and was completed in an almost identical form. The restaurant was re-established with a new owner and functioned until 1960 when it closed. Mejlborg functioned as a hotel for a brief period in the early 20th century but never with much success. Today Mejlborg only has residential units apart from the former restaurant on the ground floor which is used for offices.

Architecture

The building is characterized by a

historicist Historicism is an approach to explaining the existence of phenomena, especially social and cultural practices (including ideas and beliefs), by studying their history, that is, by studying the process by which they came about. The term is widely u ...

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass id ...

style with richly decorated facades. The facade facing the coast is divided in 3 sections each with a row of 3 windows. The outermost sections protrude slightly and have large Gothic

crow-stepped gable A stepped gable, crow-stepped gable, or corbie step is a stairstep type of design at the top of the triangular gable-end of a building. The top of the parapet wall projects above the roofline and the top of the brick or stone wall is stacked in a ...

s, bay windows,

avant-corps An ''avant-corps'' ( it, avancorpo or , plural , german: Risalit, pl, ryzalit), a French term literally meaning "fore-body", is a part of a building, such as a porch or pavilion, that juts out from the ''corps de logis In architecture, a '' ...

and balconies. The middle section share many features but lack the gables and instead have dormer windows in the ridged roof. The main entrance is an octagonal tower topped with an

onion dome An onion dome is a dome whose shape resembles an onion. Such domes are often larger in diameter than the tholobate upon which they sit, and their height usually exceeds their width. These bulbous structures taper smoothly to a point. It is a ty ...

with a small bell tower and spire on top of it.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mejlborg Buildings and structures in Aarhus Houses completed in 1898

History

Architecture

See also

References