Ludvika Town Hall (

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

: '' Ludvika stadshus'') is the official

Municipal Council A municipal council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, rural counc ...

building for the

City A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

Ludvika Ludvika () is a bimunicipal city and the seat of Ludvika Municipality, Dalarna County within the country of Sweden, with 14,498 inhabitants in 2010. Overview The conurbation of Ludvika extends over the border of Smedjebacken Municipality, where ...

Dalarna County Dalarna County ( sv, Dalarnas län) is a county or '' län'' in central Sweden (Svealand). It borders on the counties of Uppsala, Jämtland, Gävleborg, Västmanland, Örebro and Värmland. It also borders on the Norwegian counties of Hedmar ...

, Sweden. Situated centrally, the town hall is found in the corner of Bangatan and

Dan Andersson Dan Andersson (6 April 1888 in Ludvika – 16 September 1920 in Stockholm)Dan Andersson
' ...

s gata, opposite Ludvika Ulrica, the local parish church. The town hall was designed in 1934 by architect

Cyrillus Johansson Cyrillus Johansson (9 July 1884, in Gävle – 20 May 1959, in Lidingö) was a Swedish architect. Life and work Laurentius Cyrillus Johansson was born in Gävle, Sweden. He was the son of Magnus Johansson and Johanna Charlotta Bohlin His f ...

, ( city architect 1931–1941), with construction commencing in 1936. The building was completed in 1938 and remains in use as town hall to this day. Due to the small size of the building, the Municipal Council no longer convenes its meetings in the building but uses the local Peoples' House (

: ''

Folkets Hus People's Houses (russian: Народный дом) were originally leisure and cultural centres built with the intention of making art and cultural appreciation available to the working classes. The first establishment of this type appeared in T ...

'') instead.

Exterior

A student of National Romanticism architecture, Cyrillus Johansson applied a restrained form of Brick Expressionism to his town hall design – one of three official buildings he designed for the

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

. The west-facing tetrastyle portico is in fact a

folly In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but suggesting through its appearance some other purpose, or of such extravagant appearance that it transcends the range of usual garden buildings. Eighteenth-cent ...

with the entrance off-set to the south-facing west corner. Sculptured in brick above each of the first-floor windows are

mural crown A mural crown ( la, corona muralis) is a crown or headpiece representing city walls, towers, or fortresses. In classical antiquity, it was an emblem of tutelary deities who watched over a city, and among the Romans a military decoration. Later ...

s proclaiming the then city's

Royal Charter A royal charter is a formal grant issued by a monarch under royal prerogative as letters patent. Historically, they have been used to promulgate public laws, the most famous example being the English Magna Carta (great charter) of 1215, but s ...

(1919–1971). The building comprises four floors with a square clock tower rising centre above the ridged

verdigris Verdigris is the common name for blue-green, copper-based pigments that form a patina on copper, bronze, and brass. The technical literature is ambiguous as to its chemical composition. Some sources refer to "neutral verdigris" as copper(II) ...

copper roof. Giving the four columns of the portico a closer scrutiny will reveal a dog pattern in the tiled medallions – these were made by the builders in honour of their mascot, a stray they called Stella, who also stands immortalised as a statue in the town hall garden. The forecourt, located by the west gavel, is layered with large slate tiles on a bed of gravel long overgrown with grass.

Clock Tower

As the middle section of the clock tower, where the dials are, is narrower than the base on which it stands and its roof above, the tower's square ridged copper roof has four overhanging eaves, each of which are supported by an exposed,

exoskeleton An exoskeleton (from Greek ''éxō'' "outer" and ''skeletós'' "skeleton") is an external skeleton that supports and protects an animal's body, in contrast to an internal skeleton (endoskeleton) in for example, a human. In usage, some of the ...

copper column resting on the tower's square base. On top of the clock's roof stands the open-to-air bell tower surrounded by a circle of eight copper pillars and a single bell hangs within. The bell tower is crowned with a circular copper roof upon which a copper spire rises with a dragon-head weather wane, also in copper. The

turret clock A turret clock or tower clock is a clock designed to be mounted high in the wall of a building, usually in a clock tower, in public buildings such as churches, university buildings, and town halls. As a public amenity to enable the community to ...

(mechanism) was manufactured by Linderoths Urverk ( Stockholm) in 1937 and after face design and adjustment by Stefan Anderson was installed in 1938. All four dials and the bell were driven from the same mechanism. In 1976, the town council appointed local

watchmaker A watchmaker is an artisan who makes and repairs watches. Since a majority of watches are now factory-made, most modern watchmakers only repair watches. However, originally they were master craftsmen who built watches, including all their part ...

Karl-Arne Carlsson from

Grängesberg Grängesberg () is a locality situated in Ludvika Municipality, Dalarna County Dalarna County ( sv, Dalarnas län) is a county or '' län'' in central Sweden (Svealand). It borders on the counties of Uppsala, Jämtland, Gävleborg, Västman ...

as the town's first official

Timekeeper A timekeeper is an instrument or person that measures the passage of time. Person A timekeeper is a person who measures time with the assistance of a clock or a stopwatch. In addition, a timekeeper records time, time taken, or time remaining duri ...

, responsible for maintaining the Town Hall Clock. In late 2004 the mechanical turret clock was retired together with its keeper, and replaced with a self-maintaining digital timepiece controlling five independent electrical mechanisms, one for each dial and the bell. {{coord, 60, 09, 10, N, 15, 11, 22, E, region:SE_type:landmark, display=title City and town halls in Sweden