Porsgrunn City Hall is the

seat of government The seat of government is (as defined by ''Brewer's Politics'') "the building, complex of buildings or the city from which a government exercises its authority". In most countries, the nation’s capital is also seat of its government, thus that ...

for

Porsgrunn is a city and municipality in Telemark in the county of Vestfold og Telemark in Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Grenland. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Porsgrunn. The municipality of Porsgrunn w ...

city and

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 ...

Telemark Telemark is a traditional region, a former county, and a current electoral district in southern Norway. In 2020, Telemark merged with the former county of Vestfold to form the county of Vestfold og Telemark. Telemark borders the traditional ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. The current city hall was constructed in 1905 after the original building was destroyed in a fire. The building is situated at the intersection of Storgata and Rådhusgata in eastern Porsgrunn.

History

Original building

The first city hall in Porsgrunn was originally part of a

farm A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used fo ...

called the Chamberlain Estate ( no, Kammerherregården). The

farmhouse FarmHouse (FH) is a social Fraternities and sororities in North America, fraternity founded at the University of Missouri on April 15, 1905. It became a national organization in 1921. Today FarmHouse has 33 active chapters and four associate ch ...

was built for Niels Aall between 1763 and 1765 by the

master builder A master builder or master mason is a central figure leading construction projects in pre-modern times (a precursor to the modern architect and engineer). Historically, the term has generally referred to "the head of a construction project in the ...

Joen Jacobsen, who was famous for building

Grenland Grenland is a traditional district in the county of Vestfold og Telemark, in the south-east of Norway. Located in the southeastern part of the county, Grenland is composed of the municipalities Skien, Porsgrunn, Bamble, and Siljan. Sometimes the ...

churches such as Østre Porsgrunn Church. Jacobsen built the farmhouse using the pattern of Herregården, a

count Count (feminine: countess) is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, varying in relative status, generally of middling rank in the hierarchy of nobility. Pine, L. G. ''Titles: How the King Became His Majesty''. New York: ...

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals w ...

Larvik Larvik () is a List of cities in Norway, town and Municipalities of Norway, municipality in Vestfold in Vestfold og Telemark Counties of Norway, county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Larvik. The municipality ...

, after which he had also modeled the house at Borgestad Farm in

Skien Skien () is a city and municipality in Vestfold og Telemark county in Norway. In modern times it is regarded as part of the traditional region of Grenland, although historically it belonged to Grenmar/Skiensfjorden, while Grenland referred the Norsj ...

a few years earlier. The mansion was an example of classic Telemark

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

, with its distinctive H-shaped

floor plan In architecture and building engineering, a floor plan is a technical drawing to scale, showing a view from above, of the relationships between rooms, spaces, traffic patterns, and other physical features at one level of a structure. Dimensio ...

and steep

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

in the ''seteritak'' form, characterized by two slopes of roof separated by a vertical wall. In 1777, the farm was passed down to Niels' son, Jacob Aall (uncle of the historian of the same name), who sold the farm ten years later to his

brother-in-law A sibling-in-law is the spouse of one's sibling, or the sibling of one's spouse, or the person who is married to the sibling of one's spouse.Cambridge Dictionaries Online.Family: non-blood relations. More commonly, a sibling-in-law is referre ...

, Severin Løvenskiold (father of the politician of the same name). Løvenskiold was a

chamberlain Chamberlain may refer to: Profession *Chamberlain (office), the officer in charge of managing the household of a sovereign or other noble figure People *Chamberlain (surname) **Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), German-British philosop ...

( no, kammerherre) under the Danish crown, thus giving the farm its name. In 1814, Løvenskiold moved to his property at Fossum Ironworks in Fossum and gave the farm to his two sons, Niels and Fritz Løvenskiold. The farm was later sold to Jacob Grubbe Ottesen in 1823 and then to the newly formed Bratsberg

formannskapsdistrikt () is the name for Norwegian local self-government districts that were legally enacted on 1 January 1838. This system of municipalities was created in a bill approved by the Parliament of Norway and signed into law by King Carl Johan on 14 January ...

in 1838 for a sum of 2,200

speciedaler The rigsdaler specie was a unit of silver currency used in Norway, renamed as the speciedaler in 1816 and used until 1873. Norway used a common reichsthaler currency system shared with Denmark, Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein until 1873 when the go ...

. Soon, however, the municipal government found themselves cramped in the building and were in desperate need of office space. In 1882, the building was completely remodeled and expanded under the leadership of

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

Henrik Thrap-Meyer Henrik Thrap-Meyer (31 July 1833 – 29 December 1910) was a Norwegian architect. He is most associated with a wide range of significant buildings, including churches and schools. Thrap-Meyer was born in Bergen, Norway. He was the son of Jo ...

. The building was remade into a more contemporary style and was completely unrecognizable from the old one, but still kept the name Kammerherregården. On 9 December 1901, the building burned to the ground, and it was decided that a new city hall should be built on the same plot.

Modern city hall

On 9 January 1903, the final decision was made to rebuild the city hall, and the city commissioned local

Haldor Larsen Børve to design the new building. Børve had made a name for himself with the construction of the luxury

Dalen Hotel Dalen Hotel is a historic hotel located at Dalen in the municipality of Tokke in Vestfold og Telemark, Norway. The luxury Dalen Hotel, once a popular locale for European royalty, is one of the largest wooden buildings in Norway and one of the b ...

Tokke Tokke is a municipality in Telemark in the county of Vestfold og Telemark in Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Vest-Telemark. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Dalen. The municipality of Tokke was c ...

as well as several local churches in Grenland, such as

Vår Frue Church Vår Frue Church ( no, Vår Frue kirke / en, Our Lady's Church) is a medieval parish church of the Church of Norway in Trondheim municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. It is located in the downtown Midtbyen area of the city of Trondheim, ...

in Porsgrunn built a few years earlier. The

cornerstone The cornerstone (or foundation stone or setting stone) is the first stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation. All other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of the entire structure. Over time ...

was laid down on 3 March 1904, and the building was inaugurated on 20 June of the next year. The city hall building is in the

Renaissance Revival Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th century architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range o ...

architectural style An architectural style is a set of characteristics and features that make a building or other structure notable or historically identifiable. It is a sub-class of style in the visual arts generally, and most styles in architecture relate closely ...

with decorative elements taken from

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...

. The main

building material Building material is material used for construction. Many naturally occurring substances, such as clay, rock (geology), rocks, sand, wood, and even twigs and leaves, have been used to construct buildings. Apart from naturally occurring materia ...

used is

plaster Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for Molding (decorative), moulding and casting decorative elements. In English, "plaster" usually means a material used for the interiors of ...

brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...

. The building has a symmetrical facade with a protruding central section that faces Storgata and out to

Porsgrunn River is a city and municipality in Telemark in the county of Vestfold og Telemark in Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Grenland. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Porsgrunn. The municipality of Porsgrunn was ...

. The central section is composed of four decorative columns around three large arched

window A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent materia ...

s, with a

balcony A balcony (from it, balcone, "scaffold") is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor. Types The traditional Maltese balcony is ...

protruding from the central window that is decorated with

wrought iron Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag Inclusion (mineral), inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a ...

Art Nouveau patterns. The recessed parts on either side of the building feature smaller windows, and the arches above the second floor windows are each decorated with the Porsgrunn coat-of-arms surrounded by ''pors'' branches. In addition to city administration offices, the city hall houses a

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

and for many years also had classrooms for the Porsgrunn Navigation School ( no, Navigasjonsskolen i Porsgrunn). One notable

alumnus Alumni (singular: alumnus (masculine) or alumna (feminine)) are former students of a school, college, or university who have either attended or graduated in some fashion from the institution. The feminine plural alumnae is sometimes used for grou ...

of the school is Carl Reynolds, founder of the Norwegian chapter of the

IOGT The International Organisation of Good Templars (IOGT; founded as the Independent Order of Good Templars), whose international body is known as Movendi International, is a fraternal organization which is part of the temperance movement, promotin ...

temperance movement The temperance movement is a social movement promoting temperance or complete abstinence from consumption of alcoholic beverages. Participants in the movement typically criticize alcohol intoxication or promote teetotalism, and its leaders emph ...

who caused the dissolution of the '' Porsgrunds Brændevinssamlag'' and is memorialized in Porsgrunn with a

statue A statue is a free-standing sculpture in which the realistic, full-length figures of persons or animals are carved or cast in a durable material such as wood, metal or stone. Typical statues are life-sized or close to life-size; a sculpture t ...

created by sculptor Trygve Thorsen. In 2007, to mark the 200th anniversary of Porsgrunn's city status, the square near the city hall was renovated and stairs were built leading down to the river path.

Historical images

File:Kammerherregården.jpeg, alt=Drawing of a building with a sloped roof, extrending to two wings on either side, A depiction of the original Chamberlain Estate from 1779. File:Kammerherregården after 1882 remodelling.jpeg, alt=Photo of a larger, more contemporary building, with two stories and large windows, The city hall after its remodeling in 1882. File:Kammerherregården syttende mai tog 1896.jpeg, alt=People carrying banners down the street, various flags in the background,

Norwegian Constitution Day Constitution Day is the national day of Norway and is an official public holiday observed on 17 May each year. Among Norwegians, the day is referred to as ''Syttende Mai'' ("Seventeenth of May"), ''Nasjonaldagen'' ("National Day"), or ''Grunnlo ...

parade on 17 May 1896 passing near the city hall (on the left). File:New Porsgrunn City Hall in 1905.jpeg, alt=People gathered in front of the new city hall, which is white with two stories and stately features, Modern city hall in August 1905 during the referendum for the dissolution of the Norwegian-Swedish union. The tree and some of the people in the foreground were added by the photographer to give "life" to the picture.

References

{{reflist City and town halls in Norway Government buildings completed in 1905 Buildings and structures in Porsgrunn Renaissance Revival architecture in Norway Art Nouveau architecture in Norway Art Nouveau government buildings 1905 establishments in Norway