Berg

History

The Berg house was owned in 1756 by Bernstén’s widow. In 1800 it belonged to the goldsmith Samuel Vesander

Fire insurance

The fire insurance was taken out in 1850 by Henrik Gudmund Reinholm, the county magistrate. The main building was located on Kuninkaankatu and the property was accessed through a gateway. The outer building was a corner building on the east and south sides of the plot. The main building was in good condition. It was built of new materials in 1815, planked and painted with oil paint in 1825, and consisted of a entrance hall, a hall, three chambers, a kitchen, a storeroom and a gateway. Under the building was a vaulted cellar. The building also had a plank porch with three windows and a further two-light window above the door. One of the three closets had an attic step. In addition, the storage had its own attic staircase with a railing. There were 12 ordinary windows and one false window, and two attic windows. There were six semi-transparent external doors. The gate had a separate access gate, the double board was the structure of the gate. The door to the attic was a double board door, there were also two single board doors. One of the chambers was papered with wallpaper. The ovens included one flat brown glazed, two column ovens, also brown, and one brick oven. The kitchen stove had a baking oven. There were four chimneys in the building.

The exterior was partly made of logs, partly of boards. The building had been built the previous year, it had not been boarded up, but it had been painted red. There was an entrance hall, a laundry room, three sheds, a barn, a stable, two toilets and two dung holds. The washroom had an oven. The building had two larger and two smaller windows, plus a set of doors and shutters with double and single boards.

In 1885, a new insurance policy was issued. The house was then owned by master watchmaker H. V. H. Hastell. The main building had a tiled roof. There were five living rooms, plus a kitchen, entrance hall and porch. The kitchen hearth was now tiled, with an iron stove and a baking oven. The second residence, on the eastern boundary of the property, built in 1849, was unlined and unpainted, had two rooms, a bakery and a porch. The oven in the bakehouse was also covered with glazed tile. It appears that the laundry room had been converted into a baking room and a couple of sleeping rooms or other outbuildings had been converted into living rooms. The outbuilding wing, on the southern boundary of the property, now contained a woodshed, barn, manure shed and two latrines, as well as a stable with a hayloft. Also mentioned was a woodshed, which was plank. It was built in 1881 and painted red.

Modification drafts

The oldest alteration drawings for the site date back to 1881. There was a residential building along Kuninkaankatu, a residential and outbuilding on the eastern boundary and an outbuilding on the southern boundary. The roof was covered with a uniform tiled roof and had a gateway through the building. The courtyard wing had a pitched roof. The outbuilding section was repaired and some of the board walls were replaced with logs and the outbuilding on the northern boundary of the property was extended by one room. The building on the eastern boundary of the site had had a bakehouse in addition to the outbuildings, but it was now desired to convert the two sleeping rooms near the gate into living rooms. In 1882, a double door for a commercial building was opened into one of these rooms on the roof side. In front of it was a high staircase running on two sides, parallel to the street. The windows on the roof were six-paned and had classical panelling. Above each window was a double-paned attic window. The upper part of the facade gate was arched in the same way as the Kirsti gate. Next to the drive gate was a shallower access gate. In the same year, more of the eastern boundary building was taken into residential use. The former bakehouse became a chamber and a tiled oven was added. The bakehouse was moved from there to the next, former storage room. A tiled stove was also to be built in the hallway of the building facing the street. The building was a semi-detached house with an end chamber at each end. The next alteration drawing was from 1885. The stove in the building on Kuninkaankatu had served as a kitchen, but now the stove was to be replaced by a porcelain tiled stove. The room was fitted out as a watchmaker’s workshop and shop. The shop was opened from the street through double doors with glass panes at the top. In front of the entrance there was a double step, initially made of wood but later to be replaced by a cast-iron step. The windows on the façade of Kuninkaankatu were converted into modern four-light windows. Both the planking and the panelling of the windows were kept in a classical style. The kitchen was moved to the porch. Part of the porch remained as a boarded porch.

There is an 1897 modification drawing for a commercial door and window opening into a small room next to the pass-through gate.

In 1904, changes were made to the Berger building on Kuninkaankatu. The façades were designed by Arvi Forsman in a neo-renaissance style. However, not everything went exactly according to plan. The two-storey building, extended at both ends by a main chamber and extended from the courtyard side by a kitchen attached to the porch, had had a shop entrance in the middle chamber, but now the shop was moved to one of the halls. A partition wall separated the rear of the room into a back room for the shop. The commercial building also had tall display windows on either side of the door. Additional entrances were provided on the courtyard side. A door was added to the end chamber closest to the gateway, replacing the window, and another porch-like entrance was added on the other side of the kitchen, providing direct access to the kitchen. A few new fireplaces were also added, including moving the two room stoves from the street-facing corners of the rooms to the gable end of the building.

At the street end of the exterior row of buildings was a commercial space with a street door and a display window, as shown on the drawing. The room gave access to two successive chambers and the adjoining bakery, which also had an entrance through a small porch from the courtyard. The next rooms were board sheds. In the wing at the rear of the property were a stable and a barn, with two-storey latrines between them and three more sheds.

Two façade designs were made in 1923 for the shop front at the end of the outer wing, one by William. V. Williams and Maurus Isaksson. The latter was executed. The following year, fireplace alterations were planned for the building.

In 1937, the street façade of the building was fitted with display windows and shop entrances along the entire length of the façade. Previously there had been one entrance with shop windows on either side. In 1939, extensions were made to the side of the street frontage building. In 1955, central heating was installed. A boiler room was placed in the basement under the house. The furnaces were removed.

Current situation

The western building on Kuninkaankatu
Long-cornered residential building, now a commercial building, built in 1815, neo-renaissance renovation in 1904 (Arvi Forsman), saddle roof, display windows

Eastern building on Kuninkaankatu
Long-cornered residential and commercial building, built in 1815 and 1849, narrow horizontal timbering, exterior design 1923 (Maurus Isaksson), saddle roof

Outdoor building
The long-cornered outbuilding dates from 1849.