Øregaard Museum

Øregård Museum
Øregård, seen from the garden
General information
Architectural style	Neoclassicism
Town or city	Hellerup
Country	Denmark
Construction started	1806
Completed	1808
Client	Johannes Søbøtker
Design and construction
Architect	Joseph-Jacques Ramée

Øregård Museum is an art museum located in Hellerup in the northern outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark. It is owned by Gentofte Municipality and holds a topographic collection of pictures from Copenhagen and the area north of the city. It also hosts special exhibitions. The building is a former country house built by a wealthy merchant, active in the triangle trade on the Danish West Indies.

Øregård is a former country house built by Johannes Søbøtker, a merchant, plantation owner and shipping agent who was a partner in one of Denmark's largest trading companies and had made a fortune in sugar plantations, shipping and the lucrative triangle trade between Denmark, Danish Gold Coast and the former 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 a town mansion 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.

The resulting building was a simple, white-washed Neoclassical building, typical of Ramée's work around that time. Ramée also designed the surrounding park which was laid out in English style as a Romantic landscape garden with an artificial lake and grotto.