Kouhi

History

In 1800 the plot was owned by the bourgeois Fredr. Ståhle. He had a field and meadow, a food shed, a reef and barn, two beach fences and a loading dock. He also owned a sailing vessel called Adolph Fredrik.

Fire insurance

The fire insurance was taken out by the merchant Johan Sandell in 1847. The main building on Kauppakatu was listed as built in 1775 and lined in 1843. It was painted with yellow oil paint. The building had a porch with square windows on both sides of the door with 16 panes. The other 11 windows in the building were hexagonal and the five attic windows were triangular. The building had wooden gutters. There were seven rooms: an entrance hall, two halls, two chambers and a kitchen. In 1843, new floors had also been laid in the rooms and in 1846 new ceilings had been installed throughout the building. In 1838, new stoves were installed in the chambers, as well as in the hall in 1844. There were six semi-transomed French doors. The porch door was a new double door with a window above it. The hall and both chambers have chest, foot and ceiling panels, the other hall and the kitchen have ceiling and foot panels. In the second hall, there was board cladding between the chest and skirting boards. The halls and chambers had paper wallpaper. Two rooms had large, square brown tiled stoves and one had a smaller one of the same type. The kitchen stove had neither a baking nor a roasting oven. The extension at the west end of the main house was built in 1846. It was unplanked and unpainted. There were three rooms, a baker’s pantry, a hall with access to the attic, and a pantry with a circular brown tiled stove. This building also had wooden gutters.

The outbuilding, built in 1846, included a sauna with a vaulted oven and stove. The building had a single 12-paned fritted window and a board door. A second outbuilding was also erected in 1846. It was unboarded, unpainted and housed a five-cow barn with an attic above. The outbuildings were covered by the same roof, leaving a canopy between them.

On the Kalatori side was an outbuilding, built in 1843 partly of new and partly of old logs. The building was planked and painted only on the east side, the Kalatori side. The building housed a stable for two horses. In the same row was another outbuilding built in the same year, also boarded and painted with oil paint on the Kalatori side. The building had a two-part vaulted cellar, a food shed, an attic and a barn. The building had a six-sash window and a three-sash attic window. There were two doors. A covered gateway was left between the buildings along the Kalatori. The second gateway was between the main building and the dormer building. There was also a latrine built in 1846, attached to the side of the barn building. The gates, made of planks and lined with boards, were also insured.

In 1881, it was reported that changes had been made to the house owned by merchant Fredrik Grundström. The chamber in the newer part of the building on the side of the shopping street had been converted into a distillery. A distillation pot of 30 jugs had been connected to the tiled kiln. At the same time, the interior of the room was lined with iron cladding. In 1883 it was announced that the distillery was no longer in operation. The merchant Fredrik Grundström had gone bankrupt and the house had been bought from the bankrupt’s estate by his sister, Miss Lovisa Grundström. The room was in the process of being converted into an ordinary shop.

In 1884, the merchant’s daughter Louise Grundström took out a new insurance policy on the house. Before that, the buildings had been altered. The entire row facing the shopping street had been painted with oil paint in 1882. The buildings had tiled roofs. The building now had four living rooms, a kitchen, a baking room and two porches. The fireplaces had four tiled stoves, a kitchen stove without an oven and a baking oven. The outbuildings on the courtyard side, which had previously been separate, were now treated as a single building. It was painted in red brick and had a tiled roof. The building contained a barn, a latrine, a wood stove and a sauna. The building on the Kalatori side of the square, which was painted with oil paint, was also reported as a single unit. The building had a tiled roof. The rooms included a stable with a hayloft above, a coach house, a sleeping room and two bunk rooms, one of which was above the gateway. Under the granary was a brick-vaulted cellar.

In 1885, the insurance company was again notified of the establishment of a wine insurance company. Now the distillery was built in the sauna of the outbuilding. The floor was made of brick and the walls were reveted with three-inch-thick bricks set on their heels. The intermediate roof and door are lined with iron cladding. The room has a tiled stove in addition to a distillery firebox. A board-walled shed had been built on the site of the canopy between the stable part of the outbuilding and the former sauna part.

In 1887, Louise Grundström took out a new insurance policy. The main building, with five rooms, a kitchen, a porch and a hall, had been thoroughly renovated in the summer of 1886. Most of the fireplaces were rebuilt, all the windows, window frames, doors and floors were replaced, some of the ceilings were raised and all the rooms were papered. The roof cladding has been temporarily removed, and an asphalt roof has been put in between. Under one third of the building, a basement has been created without a fireplace. The floor and walls of the room are brick and the ceiling is lined with cladding.

The outbuilding on the Kalator side was connected to the outbuilding in the courtyard, forming an angle. The whole building comprises a wine cellar, four dormitories, two pantries, a stable with a loft, a barn, a carriage house, a wooden staircase, a latrine and a cellar.

In 1892, Fredrik Grundström informed the insurance company that he intended to convert the distillery he owned into a bakery. Fire insurance premiums could be reduced because the bakery was less fire-prone than the distillery.

In February 1900, the building suffered a fire accident, which was attributed to negligence. The fire had started in a hardware store in a building on the side of the shopping street. The hardware store was first owned by the merchant Oskar Nordlund, but after his bankruptcy it was bought by a partnership of several people. The stock had been sold out to the point where the shop was no longer kept open and the remaining goods were to be sold at auction. In order to organise the auction, a couple of men had been working in the shop and had left through the door. The shopkeeper had locked the door from the inside and said he was leaving through the chamber. Within ten minutes the fire had reached such a level that passers-by on the street had raised the fire alarm. The fire had started in a pile of rubbish in the doorway on the courtyard side and spread to the shelves, the wall and the ceiling. As the walls were boarded up and not papered, and as help had been quickly summoned by ringing the fire bells, and there had been sufficient water, the damage was limited to the interior of the shop. The investigation into the cause of the fire revealed that one of the men had smoked a cigarette in the workshop, which he had first extinguished with the back of his hand and then by stamping his foot on the floor. The rubbish had then been swept up and it was apparently the cigarette that had caused the fire.

In October 1903, there was another fire accident. This time the shop in the basement was damaged. Smoke had come through the window of Jalmari Kordelin’s shop in Fredrik Grundström’s house and had penetrated through the floor from the beer store in the basement. The smouldering fillings were immediately extinguished. The cause of the fire was found to be an oil lamp that was too close to the ceiling. The lamp had been extinguished at 6 o’clock the previous evening when the beer saleswoman working in the shop had gone home. The lamp did not have a smoke hood, which a ceiling lamp should have had.

Modification drafts

The oldest modification drawing for the site dates back to 1880. There is a residential and commercial building on the side of the plot facing Kauppakatu. At the end of the Kalatori there are two chambers, next to which was a large room, a hall and a small chamber, another large hall and a small chamber, and a large room at the west end of the building. The middle of the large rooms served as a shop, in front of which there are stairs leading from two sides. One of the stairwells served as a kitchen. Now the large room at the west end and the antechamber next to it were used to make a distillery. There is a separate entrance to the apartment and the distillery from the courtyard. The lining of the building is described as wide horizontal boarding and the windows as two-paned lined in classical style. The other buildings on the site were on the side of the Kalator and on the southern boundary of the site.

An old, undated drawing showing the outbuildings on the plot. The outbuilding on the southern boundary consisted of two log sections, a sauna, and connecting board sections. It was intended to extend the building with a shed. The building on the Kalatori side consisted of a stable and a dormitory with a shed between them, which also served as a gateway. The courtyard side had a dormer window. In 1892 the exterior was altered. In the oldest drawing, the room that had been used as a sauna was used as a wine cellar, with brick walls and a pantile roof. However, it was now decided to convert the room into a baking room. A masonry cauldron was also added to the wall of the baking room.

An alteration drawing of the main building from 1886 shows that the building consists of sections of different widths. The west end of the house, with its adjoining hall and antechamber, is narrower than the rest of the building. An extension to the courtyard was now required to allow the large central room to be divided lengthways into two smaller rooms. The extension will also have two entrances. After the conversion, the building will have two apartments. One will consist of two shop rooms, a living room, a hallway and a kitchen. The second apartment will have a baking room, a pantry and a hallway. The doors of the shop apartments are located at the corner of the building and in the middle of the facade of the shopping street. Under the eastern end of the building there is a brick basement with two rooms, as shown on the plan, with access from both the Kauppakatu and Kalatori sides. Later in the same year it is planned to open double doors to the shop, replacing the first window at the west end. In this drawing, there is no longer a door to the basement from Kauppakatu. Both plans are by John Fredr. Lindegren, but unsigned. The panelling of the building is of the Neo-Renaissance type. In front of the retail premises are high stairs rising on two sides.

In 1899, a metal fireplace was built in the brick basement under the Kalatori room of the main building to serve the needs of the waterworks. In the same year, a partition was built to divide the room at the west end of the building, which had been a bakehouse, into a store room and a kitchen.

In 1907, the east end of the commercial building underwent alterations to the partition walls and fireplaces. In 1913, a stove was to be built in the basement. In 1911, plans were made to open a display window in the corner store, and a year later, a display window in the west side store. At the same time it was planned to extend the bakehouse in the courtyard building with a small brick section. In 1919, new shop doors were being built on the roof side and the old shop entrances were being replaced. In addition, shop windows were made so that there were no residential windows left on the Kauppakatu side. There were five doors, including the corner door, and seven shop windows.

In 1916, a commercial door and two display windows were opened in the middle of the Kalatori-side outbuilding, at the entrance corridor. The building had horizontal brickwork, and there were also two double-glazed false windows on the roof side and three attic windows. The building had a tiled roof. In 1920, two more shop doors were opened on the Kalatori side. On either side of each door will be display windows. Larger attic windows will be added above all three doors. Both plans were drawn up by Arvi Leikari. In 1921, a brick extension was planned between the outbuilding, which was converted into a commercial building, and the outbuilding on the southern boundary of the courtyard, but apparently never built.

In 1934, there was a desire to change the shop windows on the roof. There were now four doors, and the plan was to add four new windows to the three that were already there. Apparently, some of the windows planned in 1919 had not been built.

In 1937, plans were made to demolish all the old buildings on the site. The site would be replaced by a functional, two-storey stone commercial and residential building with a Kalatori façade that would have the same features as the Kalatori façade of the Osuuskauppa warehouse. However, the plan drawn up by Kaino Kari was never realised.

In 1947, the old outbuilding on the southern edge of the courtyard was demolished. A new, small, brick, hipped-roof outbuilding was built on the western boundary of the property. In 1950, window and door alterations were again made on the side facing Kauppakatu. The doors were replaced, and the four display windows were replaced with wider ones. One shop door and display window were replaced by a tripartite residential window. One window was completely closed and replaced with a smooth wall. One narrow residential window still remains on the façade. The attic windows were covered with boarding. In 1966, the interior was renovated. A boiler room was added in the basement, and the fireplaces on the living floor were demolished. Although a new fireplace was installed in the living room of the apartment. The kitchens were modernised. Previously, they had a sink but no countertop. A bathroom was also added to the larger flat and a toilet to the smaller flat and the commercial flat at the western end of the building. A corner door and a shop door were removed from the street frontage. The remaining shop window will be enlarged. The other windows were to be completely undivided in the first plan, but later it was decided to make a transverse division at the top of the window. The basement entrance on the Kalatori side was also removed. The façades were given a divided cladding. The plans were drawn up by Pertti Reivolahti. The following year, it was decided to raise the height of the outbuilding and add a carport and sauna. The outhouse had become redundant.

In 1992, the buildings underwent a major renovation. The facades of the shopping street were given a neo-renaissance look. On the courtyard side, the older, vertical-framed dwelling of the building was slightly exposed. Two apartments were added to the building. A commercial building remained at the west end, which was given additional space by a new outbuilding to be built on the western boundary of the site. The building became a two-storey building with a sauna. The Kalatori building was converted into a heated commercial space. The basement was reused as a commercial building. The plans were drawn up by Jukka Koivula.

Current situation

Residential twin building
An elongated residential building, built in three phases: the east end in 1775 and early 1800s, the west end in 1846, with a hipped roof. The building had undergone minor alterations in the 1990s, with the street façade’s clapboarding restored to match the 1886 design by John F. Lindegren. Some of the 17th-century vertical stucco on the courtyard side had been left in place. The building had been remodelled in 1966 to a scanty period style.

Kalatori side building
Long-cornered outbuilding dating from 1843, originally a two-storey lean-to, with horizontal planking on the street façade and vertical planking on the courtyard façade. There was a gateway in the centre of the building. The first shop opened in the centre of the building in 1916, the shops on the edges opened in 1920 (both designs by Arvi Leikari).

Outdoor building
New exterior wing, from the 1990s (Jukka Koivula).