Øregård Museum

The building is a former country house built by merchant and planter Johannes Søbøtker, who was active in the triangular trade and the Atlantic slave trade in the Danish West Indies.

• Name — Øregård Museum • Location Town — Hellerup • Location Country — Denmark • Architect — Joseph-Jacques Ramée • Client — Johannes Søbøtker • Construction Start Date — 1806 • Completion Date — 1808 • Architectural Style — Neoclassicism

Øregård is a former country house built by Danish merchant, planter and shipping agent Johannes Søbøtker, who was a partner in one of Denmark's largest trading companies and made a fortune in slave plantations, shipping and the triangular trade between Denmark, the Danish Gold Coast and the Danish West Indies. Like many of his contemporaries in trade and shipping, Søbøtker became a very wealthy member of an emerging bourgeoisie which was becoming a major force in the 19th century and was acquiring the habits that had previously been reserved for the aristocracy. Over recent decades, it had become common for people to build stately summer residences north of the city while spending winters in town mansions in Copenhagen. In 1806, Søbøtker acquired a farm, Øregaard, in Hellerup and commissioned the French architect Joseph-Jacques Ramée to build a suitable country house on the property. Ramée was at that time working out of Hamburg but designed a number of similar houses in the same area for other wealthy families, including Sophienholm for Constantin Brun and Hellerupgård. • Illustration — Øregaard The resulting building was a simple, white-washed Neoclassical building, typical of Ramée's work around that time. He also designed the surrounding park which was laid out in English style as a Romantic landscape garden with an artificial lake and grotto. Søbøtker maintained an extravagant lifestyle and in the same time the meagre times which followed the English Wars and the national bankruptcy in 1813 hit his business enterprises hard. In 1821 he had to sell Øregård, and moved to the Danish West Indies where he settled on his estate on Saint Croix and later became governor of Saint John and Saint Thomas. Øregård came under new ownership and was converted into a museum. It was ultimately acquired by Gentofte Municipality in 1917 and converted into a museum. The park was carefully renovated by Gudmund Nyeland Brandt, municipal gardener and later parks director in Gentofte from 1914 to 1841, and was converted into a public park.

• 1806-1821: Johannes Søbøtker • 1821-1833: Johan Jørgen Hunæus • 1833-1843: Joseph Hambro • 1843-1873: Andreas Nicolai Hansen • 1873-1893: Alfred Hansen • 1893-1917: Detlef Ohlsen • 1917: Gentofte Municipality