"A House with Connections" – now on the internet – Stories from Købmagergade III

By Liv Skovholm

01. Feb. 2009

Post & Tele Museum is placed in a house with many important connections to the history of communication: The Post Yard of Copenhagen with the Central Telegraph Station. Its history and functions are now being documented in six short films and with a selected picture material of the course of life in the house today and in the past. 

The complex of buildings seen from the corner of Købmagergade and Valkendorfsgade with the post yard in the foreground. Photographer: René Strandbygaard. 

In the internet exhibition "A House with Connections" everyone may follow the creation of the information society in Denmark in the offices where the first steps were made. Here we find Denmark's oldest operating post office, this is where the first stamps were printed, and for many decades it was the heart of Danish telecommunication. The first studios of the state broadcasting service were also housed here.

Director Birgitte Wistoft gives a guided tour in the post yard, in the museum, on the roof and in the basement, and soon the lapse of centuries in the House of Communication comes alive to the spectators. We are shown the offices which anyone may enter as well as the areas which have so far been reserved for the staff only. 

The Post Office Boxes as the customers see them when they enter the room from Valkendorfsgade. Photographer: René Strandbygaard. 

The long lines are supplemented by personal memories of the employees who are working or used to work in the big house: Office clerks Kirsten Kirk and Inger Mikkelsen tell about their time at the Central Telegraph Station which was operating all the 24 hours, postman Torben Møller shows us his efficient routines in the year 2008, Ole Hansen invites the public in behind the closed doors of the post office box, whilst the memories of bicycle repairer Søren Andreasen are dating back to his childhood when he came with his father to work at the Copenhagen Post Yard. 

The teleprinter hall of the Central Telegraph Station in 1939. The noise was deafening and more and more teleprinters or telex machines were added. It was operating all the 24 hours because the world never sleeps at the same time! Photo: Post & Tele Museum. 

"A House with Connections" has come about in collaboration with The Copenhagen Film Company and is based on thorough studies in the museum's photo and film archives as well as interviews and shootings. The result can be seen on the museum's website www.ptt-museum.dk under web-exhibitions. 

The former teleprinter hall is today a letter-sorting hall with hectic activity in the early hours of the morning. Like in the days of the central telegraph, only staff is admitted.  

Come with us behind the walls in film and pictures and listen to the story of a house steaming with the history of communication.

Please remember that you can also see the Telephone House in Nørregade, Copenhagen, in pictures, film, and sound in "Farvel til Telefonhuset" [Goodbye to the Telephone House] at www.ptt-museum.dk under web-exhibitions.

 

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Nørregade af Liv Skovholm
The building in Nørregade was a telephone exchange. The construction of the building began 13th September 1900 and was not finished until 25th October 1910 due to a financial crisis in the years 1899-1903. 
Question please af Professor Leo DANA
The building at 21 Norregaad says Telefonhuset. Was this a telegraph office or a telephone exchange please? Also I would like to learn what date this building was constructed please. Thank you.
leo.dana@canterbury.ac.nz 

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Stories from Købmagergade I
A House with Connections - Communication in the Interwar Period II

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