Kastrupværk

Facts

A multi-faceted enterprise

By Henrik Harnow, Museumsinspektør, Ph.D., Odense Bys Museer (18 stories)

Kastrupværk, built by Jacob Fortling in 1749-54, was one of the great Danish industrial projects of the 18th century. Fortling created an artificial peninsula extending into the waters of the Øresund, and was granted a monopoly on limestone excavation on Saltholm island. He built a massive complex comprising a lime works, brickworks, tin-glazed earthenware factory and the main buildings and gatehouse. The Kastrupværk complex suffered a mixed fate, but several of the original buildings have survived. The complex was refurbished in 2006-08 and converted into housing and commercial premises. Kastrupværk is one of few complexes to have survived from the industrial heyday of the 18th century. The factory complex was made a listed edifice in 1971 and its modern name, Bryggergården, recalls the brewery that it contained in the 19th century.

Public place

Selected entry

Jacob Fortling, master builder and industrialist

Story written by Henrik Harnow

Time / Periode 1749 1754

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The story of Jacob Fortling also recounts the expansion of Copenhagen that accelerated from the mid-1700s. Born in Bayreuth in 1711, from 1740, Fortling served as a building contractor to the Danish Crown, and was responsible for structures such as the Queen's Staircase" in the former Christiansborg Palace and a number of other major stone structures. Fortling's interest in coastal Kastrup was in the Saltholm limestone seams, and he also had excavation rights to several Norwegian quarries. He worked closely with Denmark's foremost architects, Nicolai Eigtved and Laurids de Thurah, in an era where the ready flow of money permitted construction of some of Denmark's finest buildings. Fortling built the imposing Kastrupgård manor for himself and his wife, but he died in 1761, just 50 years old. Today, Kastrupgård houses a museum of art. "