Egeberg Castle a building in St. Hanshaugen

St. Hanshaugen

St. Hanshaugen is a borough of the city of Oslo, Norway.-Area:It has a triangular shape, with its northern border just north of the buildings of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and Ullevål University Hospital, and south of the University of Oslo campus at Blindern...

, Oslo

Oslo

Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

.

Einar Westye Egeberg

Egeberg Castle was constructed by leading architect Halfdan Berle in 1899-1901 on behalf of Einar Westye Egeberg (1851-1940) and his wife Birgitte Halvordine (1857-1930). Einar Westye Egeberg co-owned one of Oslo's most important lumber companies, Westye Egeberg & Co. The Egeberg couple had seven children of which most had reached adulthood when the family moved into the castle in 1901.

Egeberg Castle was Oslo's biggest private residence at 1600 square metres over two floors and a tower section. At the turn of the century, the castle stood tall surrounded by a big park and with a splendid view over the city and harbour.

Construction

The total construction cost was in 1901. The construction was done using quality materials such as granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 and soapstone

Soapstone

Soapstone is a metamorphic rock, a talc-schist. It is largely composed of the mineral talc and is thus rich in magnesium. It is produced by dynamothermal metamorphism and metasomatism, which occurs in the areas where tectonic plates are subducted, changing rocks by heat and pressure, with influx...

. The architectural style was Italian renaissance

Italian Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...

 dominated by noble forms. The interior ceilings were made by Italian stucco

Stucco

Stucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...

 workers. The first floor contained hall, vestibule, smoking lounge, dining room, kitchen, loggia

Loggia

Loggia is the name given to an architectural feature, originally of Minoan design. They are often a gallery or corridor at ground level, sometimes higher, on the facade of a building and open to the air on one side, where it is supported by columns or pierced openings in the wall...

, garden room and cabinet. In the second floor, there were bed rooms, dressing rooms and bath room. The tower held the billiard room whereas storage rooms were found in the basement. Mrs. Egeberg suffered from a weak health and was partially paralyzed. Therefore, a lift was installed at a cost of NOK 25,000. A car—an open Minerva similar to that of the Norwegian royal family

Norwegian Royal Family

The Royal Family of Norway is the family of King Harald V of Norway. In Norway there is a distinction between the Royal House and the Royal Family. The Royal House includes only the King and his spouse, the Queen, the King's eldest son with spouse, being the Crown Prince and Crown Princess, and the...

—was acquired in 1912 for Mrs. Egeberg to be able go on a daily drive with the castle chauffeur. She died in 1930.

Later years

After his wife's death, Einar Egeberg did not want to live alone in the big residence, and thus wanted to sell it, which proved difficult during the 1930s economic depression. In the end, the Egeberg Castle was sold to Bolig-Bygg AS and subsequently was rebuilt. Another two floors were added within the original building construction: one additional floor was created by splitting the second floor into two separate floors. The fourth floor came from converting the original loft surrounding the billiard room into living area. Thus, Egeberg Castle changed from a private residence to an apartment building with 24 apartments.