Trained architects were at this time only used for public prestige buildings and townhouses for the elite, while normal residential buildings were designed by the master craftsmen who built them. To promote good taste and diminish the gap between "architecture" and Vernacular buildings, Johann Friedrich Struensee had launched an initiative in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts to encourage such builders to take supplementary classes in drawing so as to develop the notion of "good taste". The building boom resulting from the Great Fire of 1795 greatly profited from this initiative. Caspar Frederik Harsdorff had also been commissioned to build a house on Kongens Nytorv, today known as Harsdorff’s House, which was to act as a model and source of inspiration for builders in their work. Some of the houses on Højbro Plads, like many in the surrounding streets, bear clear traces of influence from this house.