In 1859 the Navy decommissioned their last operations at Gammelholm, and the area was designated for residential redevelopment. The City's initial plan was to reserve it for large villas in an attempt to keep wealthy tax-payers within the municipal borders since they were increasingly settling in Frederiksberg or in the northern suburbs. The grocer and bankier Martin Levin bought a lot on the waterfront and charged the architect Johan Daniel Herholdt with designing a house which was built in 1865–66. Due to the difficult economic times that followed from Denmark's involvement in the Second Schleswig War, it was the only detached single-family house-with-garden that was built in the area. Gammelholm was instead built over with apartment buildings according to a master plan created by Ferdinand Meldahl. An expansion of the house incorporated it into the block structure of the new plan.