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For many years we at the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center have had Göran Rygert's 1996 research report Svenska Arkitekter i USA 1846-1930 cataloged in our library. It is in the Swedish language and features biographies of 140 Swedish immigrant architects living and working in the United States. I have had many occasions to use it in genealogical research for and with our patrons. The genealogical detail for each architect is impressive and it has long been a go-to resource. Now after nearly 30 years, Rygert has an updated version for the Englishspeaking audience. It is every genealogist's dream to see a new a book full of biographies and I have especially looked forward to this English-language version since I learned of it, as our patrons typically cannot read Swedish. A Swedish immigrant himself, Rygert's background in architecture in Sweden and in the United States gives him something in common with the immigrants in his book. He has the perfect perspective and position to perform this meticulous research. There are 156 featured architects in this new work, and with 30 years between these publications, new resources have certainly surfaced that have increased this work tremendously. I look forward to being able to reach for this new work in our reference book collection and point it out to others as a must-see resource.

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Att läsa om dessa arkitekter är verkligen inspirerande. Det är ett imponerande arbete, och en njutning att sitta och bläddra i boken.

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”A must-see resource.” ”It’s every genealogists’ dream to see a new book full of biographies.”

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“An impressive report. Rygert has broken new ground with a welcome contribution on a significant, but neglected immigrant category.”

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“Rygert’s surveying of Swedish-born architects is not only a bit of personal history, it is an impressive and intelligently executed field research.”

"It is an impressive project".

Fountain Hall is a historic academic building on the campus of Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia. Built in 1882, it is the oldest surviving building originally associated with Atlanta University—now Clark Atlanta University—which is the first of all historically black colleges and universities in the American South founded September 19, 1865. The building was designed by the Swedish-American architect Gottfried Norrman in the High Victorian Gothic style. (Wikipedia) Géran Rygert, now a retired architect from Sweden residing in Atlanta and founder of the Swedish men’s chorus Vasa Drangar there, on a visit to Atlanta in 1993 was intrigued by the Swedish-sounding name of Gottfried Normann and discovered that indeed Norrman had been born in Sweden. It turns out Norrman came to Atlanta in 1880 where he became an important architect, not only to Atlanta but to the entire southeast. This led Rygert to propose a project about Swedish architects who immigrated to America for which he received a grant from five Swedish foundations. The report came to fruition in 1996 written in Swedish and printed in a very small number of copies, enough only to be given to the sponsors and to a limited number of archives. Years later, it has now become a book written in English and published last year in 2025. The book reports on the lives and work of 156 architects and includes some who were not present in the initial publication in Swedish. To be included in the study, the architect had to have been born before 1900 in Sweden and worked as an architect in the United States for at least one year. The book contains bios of the 156 architects covering almost 150 pages and provides extremely well reproduced photos of many examples of the architecture in question. Quite apart from its significance as a crucial support for the study of architecture in both Sweden and the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the study also has much to say about Swedish emigration to the US and the complicated relationship of Swedish immigrants to the land they left and the new home they made in America, at least for a short period of time. The study even goes back to the traditional architectural roots of New Sweden in the seventeenth century. Rygert quotes Professor Ulf Beijbom of the Swedish Emigrant Institute in Vaxjö, Sweden as stating that “whereas a lot had been written about emigrants from other professional categories, such as clergymen, teachers, journalists and farmers, no research had been conducted about architects.” (Rygert 6) Rygert devotes an entire chapter to the Chicago fire in 1871 and its significance for his project. As he points out, a great number of architects, American and Swedish, came to Chicago to take part in the building boom. That followed the fire. The Swedes included Lars G. Hallberg, Erick G. Petterson, John Otter and Hokan Hovander, all of whom have bios in Rygert’s book. Rygert’s study also deals with the period of World War I including architects with connections to the war. Of interest is Olof Hanson whom Rygert notes was perhaps the first deaf person in the United States to practice architecture. Here is his World War I connection as related in the book: In 1901 he became partner with an architect in Mankato, Minnesota, Frank Thayer. A year later both of them with families moved from Mankato to Seattle. But after a few years Thayer got sick and Olof had to keep up with the business alone. Eventually he got to work with other architects in Seattle. During WWI he had to go back east to find work—which he did as a draftsman in St. Paul and Omaha. In March 1919 in a response to an advertisement he secured a position as a consulting architect for the University of Washington. His fascinating story then goes on: It is in his residential architecture Olof Hanson best showed his skill of using different styles—popular at the time—that his clients wanted: Queen Anne, shingle, neo-classical, etc. However, no Scandinavian influences are included in his architecture. (Rygert 95-96) I asked Géran about the choice of a number of the architects to show no Swedish or Scandinavian influence, and Géran answered that he thought it was because they wanted to show themselves to be totally American. To conclude, we will return to the Swedish architects in Chicago and a Chicago School implementing ideas that did not work well in Sweden, in particular new techniques in the erecting of steel-framed tall buildings. Why? First, writes Rygert, steel constructions in buildings were not in accordance with Swedish traditions, although Sweden produces a lot of steel. Secondly, tall buildings were out of the question in Sweden, where politicians as well as city planners stubbornly upheld the “all-buildings-must-be-of-the-same-height” policy. I would note that Jean-Paul Sartre noted the unevenness of the New York skyline as jolting in a 1940s visit to the US. Rygert concludes that none of the Chicago School features were therefore brought to Sweden by re-migrating architects—with one notable exception: Ture Stenberg introduced the elevator and installed it for the first time in Sweden in an apartment building in Stockholm. “What about the Prairie School,” asks Rygert. He replies: It started in the mid 1890’s and faded out 30 years later. There were 20 Swedish architects who re-migrated back to Sweden. Eleven of them returned in the 1890's and could not have had much time to see this new style. And none of the remaining nine architects, who very well could have seen at least some of, for instance, Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture, created any known design inspired by the Prairie School after returning home. (49) And here is Rygert’s polemical conclusion about the Swedish Chicago School. It can serve as a conclusion to this consideration of only a few of the fascinating stories and insightful analysis in this study of much interest to retelling the Swedish American experience: The Swedish contractors in Chicago have been well documented in the emigrant literature, although the architects have been mentioned more like footnotes. But the Swedish architects were important. They were by no means any kind of second-degree figures. They set foot in Chicago immediately after the Great Fire to make sure that the contractors got the drawings and documents they needed to start building. After all, the architect must always be a step ahead of the builder. (Rygert 48)