Folkets Allé

Facts

Workers' building societies

By Jacob Bjerring-Hansen, Direktør for Bornholms Museum (12 stories)

In about 1900, building societies began shooting up in Copenhagen, especially in Valby. The reason was simple. There was a shortage of good housing, and the best-paid workers now earned enough to dream of setting up for themselves. The Folkets Allé Building Society was formed on the initiative of the gas workers in Frederiksberg. Altogether, 45 semi-detached buildings with two flats in each half and seven detached houses were built between 1898 and 1900. The architecture followed the trends of the time. White walls and clean lines made it clear that the workers were moving on from the grey inner-city tenements and crowded backyard slums.

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Symbolic street names

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Story written by Jacob Bjerring-Hansen

Time / Periode 1898 1900

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The name Folkets Allé", meaning People's Avenue, is a far from random choice. The street name reflects the building society ideology. Through work and a cooperative approach, the workers should "create benefits for ourselves at the cost of Capital." The city's workers were to "create a home for themselves" and escape the badly built speculator's tenements that were the result of the constant housing shortage in the rapidly growing city. The building societies often had high-flown symbolic names that testified to solidarity, awareness of workers and faith in progress. The same was true of the allotment garden societies and cooperative companies. Valby, for example, has allotments called The Light, Freehold, Clover Leaf and the Red City. The street names in Frederiksberg have the same ring to them: Freedom Road, Equality Road and Brotherhood Road and naturally, People's Avenue. "