Biography|Olof Kjellstrom — The Cement Under the New Royal Opera

People look at Axel Anderberg's 1898 opera house and name the architect.

The ground under it was a contractor's problem.

Gustav III's old house on this plot was condemned as worn and a fire risk.

The city voted in 1892 to pull it down.

Anderberg's replacement rose on the same footprint and opened on 19 September 1898, when Oscar II walked it in.

AB Skånska Cementgjuteriet laid the cement foundations.

Olof Kjellström was by then head of the firm's Stockholm branch, the post he held from 1887 until 1902.

The biographical handbook Svenska män och kvinnor later listed the Royal Theatre, Dramaten and Hallwylska Palace among the cement undercrofts done under his direction.

The work does not show.

The house still stands on Gustav Adolfs torg, opposite the Foreign Ministry.

A visitor walks into Norwegian marble and a gold foyer.

The contractor's name sits in the company histories, not on the façade.

Photo: Tage Olsin, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons