Norra Latin

Coordinates: 59°20′08″N 18°03′26″E / 59.33556°N 18.05722°E

Norra Latin Högre allmänna läroverket för gossar å Norrmalm
Norra Latin, façade on Drottninggatan
Address
71b Drottninggatan Norrmalm Stockholm, 111 23 Sweden
Information
School type	Gymnasium (senior secondary)
Established	3 September 1880
Closed	1982
Song	O Herre, du som säger
Website	www.stoccc.se

Norra Latin, blueprint from 1897.

Norra Latin, façade on Norra Bantorget.

Norra Latin is the familiar Swedish name of a historic Stockholm school more properly known as Högre allmänna läroverket för gossar å Norrmalm ("public senior secondary school for boys at Norrmalm"). Completed in 1880, for over a hundred years the school, at 71b Drottninggatan in the Norrmalm district of Stockholm, offered an education that emphasized Greek, Latin and classical studies. The school was formed by a merger that included Klara gamla skola on Klara västra kyrkogata and Stockholms gymnasium on the island of Riddarholmen. Although a 1918 resolution declared that the school should be co-educational, girls were in fact not admitted until 1961.^[1] In the beginning of the 1980s the building was sold to Landsorganisationen i Sverige, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation, who renovated the building as a modern conference centre, opening in 1989.

Architecture

The building was designed in Neo-Renaissance style by Helgo Zetterwall and was inaugurated in 1880 in the presence of, among others, Church of Sweden Archbishop Anton Sundberg, King Oscar II and Crown Prince Eugen.^[1] The architecture follows the 19th-century academic drawing tradition and incorporates glazed atriums on three floors with Romanesque arcade passageways and surrounding classrooms. The entire composition is similar to a dual Florentine Renaissance palace. Within the central axis, Zetterwall arranged a large gymnasium and an auditorium.^{[2] [3]}

Closure

The school finally closed in 1982 after 102 years of instruction. After the building and property had been transferred to the City, the Socialist majority on City Council voted to sell the property to the Swedish Trade Union Confederation. After the ownership transfer, the school premises were used for two years as teaching facilities for the newly formed Tensta Gymnasium, known since 2010 as Ross Tensta Gymnasium and which follows the teaching principles of the private Ross School of Long Island, New York.

By 1989 conversion of the former school building was complete, and it was renamed City Conference Centre, Stockholm (CCC). The Swedish TUC distributed 85% of the ownership shares in the facility among its major member unions. The building is now configured with 30 meeting rooms of various sizes. In conjunction with a neighbouring building, Folkets Hus ("House of the people"), the conference centre can accommodate as many as 4,000 attendees.^[4]

References

1. Our history, 2011, City Conference Centre, Stockholm. Retrieved 16 November 2012.
2. Fredric Bedoire, Henrik Andersson. Stockholms byggnader: en bok om arkitektur och stadsbild i Stockholm ("Stockholm buildings: a book about architecture and cityscapes in Stockholm"), 3rd ed., 1977. Stockholm: Prisma. ISBN 91-518-1125-1
3. Olof Hultin, Ola Österling, Michael Perlmutter. Guide till Stockholms arkitektur ("Guide to Stockholm's architecture"), 2nd ed., 2002. Stockholm: Arkitektur Förlag. ISBN 91-86050-58-3
4. Om Oss ("About us"), 2011, City Conference Centre, Stockholm. Retrieved 16 November 2012.