Jorcks Passage is a passageway and associated building in central

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

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 , establish ...

. It connects the pedestrian street

Strøget Strøget () is a pedestrian, car free shopping area in Copenhagen, Denmark. This popular tourist attraction in the centre of town is one of the longest pedestrian shopping streets in Europe at 1.1 km. Located at the centre of the old city o ...

Skindergade Skindergade is a street in central Copenhagen, Denmark. Running roughly parallel to Strøget, to which it is connected through Jorcks Passage, it extends for approximately 400 metres from Gammeltorv to Købmagergade. History Its name dates bac ...

at the end of

Fiolstræde Fiolstræde is a pedestrianised shopping street in central Copenhagen, Denmark. It passes the square Frue Plads on its way from Nørreport station in the north to Skindergade in the south where Jorcks Passage connects it to the shopping street S ...

History

Construction

Jorcks Passage takes its name after the developer and sugar goods manufacturer Reinholdt W. Jorck. In 1880, Jorck purchased a property on the other side of Strøget (47 Vimmelskaftet) which was rented out to the newly founded telephone company KTAS. Jorck built the Jorcks Passage complex when the company ran out of space at their old building. He commissioned

Vilhelm Dahlerup Jens Vilhelm Dahlerup (4 August 1836 – 24 January 1907) was a Danish architect who specialized in the Historicist style. One of the most productive and noted Danish architects of the 19th century, he is behind many of the most known buildings ...

to design the building which was constructed between 1893 and 1895.

KTAS

KTAS opened their first telephone exchange in the premises in 1896. Literally thousands of telephone wires extended from a structure on the roof to customers in the vicinity. KTAS left the building in 1910 when they inaugurated their new Telephone Building (Danish: Telefonhuset) in Nørregade.

Other tenants

The retail premises at Vimmelskaftet 42 was from 1891 home to the book shop Henriques & Bonfils. It was taken over by Frederik Bøttzauw (1865-1952) and closed in 1952. Frederik Riise operated a

photographic studio A photographic studio is often a business owned and represented by one or more photographers, possibly accompanied by assistants and pupils, who create and sell their own and sometimes others’ photographs. Since the early years of the 20th ce ...

in the building from 1897 to 1909. The Danish Radio Foundation (later

Danmarks Radio DR (), officially the Danish Broadcasting Corporation in English, is a Danish public-service radio and television broadcasting company. Founded in 1925 as a public-service organization, it is Denmark's oldest and largest electronic media enter ...

) broadcast their first radio programmes from the building on 24 September 1924 under the name Københavns Radio (English: Copenhagen Radio). Det Danske Kulkompagni was among the tenants in 1919.

Architecture

The

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 ...

building is four storeys high and consists of 11 bays on Skindergade and 12 bays on Vimmelskaftet. It surrounds a narrow rectangular courtyard space which is open at ground level in both ends and lined by retail space along the sides. The passageway is flanked by two rows of columns topped by small statues of toddlers and the floor is paved with mosaics. A bust of Reinholdt W. Jorck is placed in a niche.

Today

The owner Jorcks Ejendomsselskab is based in the building. Tenants include the communications agency Geelmuyden Kiese (Np. 1A).

References

External links

{{coord, 55.6789, N, 12.5741, E, source:wikidata, display=title Office buildings in Copenhagen Commercial buildings in Copenhagen Historicist architecture in Copenhagen Buildings and structures completed in 1895 Vilhelm Dahlerup buildings