THE STORY - A TOWN AWAKENS
The house now standing at Vegamotastigur 9 was built in 1904 by the carpenter Páll Guðmundsson on his land, Efri-Vegamót, and the house was referred to by that name in its early years. Since it was bought newly built by Davíð Jóhannesson the house has been in ownership of the same family, the sixth generation of which is occupying it now. The house is remarkable not only for its age (Reykjavík is a very young town) but also as Iceland‘s most renowned painter, Jóhannes Kjarval, lived and worked there as a young man. A frequent guest was the Nobel literary laureate Halldór Kiljan Laxness who wrote his first novel there.
The house is typical for its time when timber houses clad with corrugated iron replaced the earlier stone cottages or smaller houses solely built of wood. It has modest proportions and has a few cousins of similar type in central Reykjavik having survived the modernity trend of the city planners earlier in the century. As it stands amidst later and earlier constructions you are able to read to some extent Reykjavik´s building history of the twentieth century missing only an example of the stone cottages that were to be found in this part of the awakening town in the early 20th century.
One of these cottages stood on the lot Vegamótastígur 7 which is now empty but will be part of the Crossroad House project. The cottage, built 1883 and named after Herdís Símonardóttir who lived there last, was demolished in the mid sixties but will be reconstructed as part of Crossroad House standing proud on top of the building together with the aforementioned house on the adjacent lot. Herdísarbær cottage was one of many on Skólavörðuholt, next of which were Tobbukot, the house of Þorbjörg Sveinsdóttir at Skólavörðustígur and Hábær (Rönkubær) at the other side of Grettisgata, just a few meters up the road. Both these cottages were taken down and are now preserved at the Reykjavik City Museum at Árbær.
Flats and commercial space is available for prospective buyers and investors who can now be part of the project before the final stage of design and construction. Information at vego@vegamotahus.is.
