Luwila

History

The owner of Luvila in 1765 was Henrik Hansson. In 1800 the plot belonged to Daniel Blom, a townsman and bourgeois. He also owned more than three barrels of arable land, a meadow, a granary, a storehouse, a barn and a thirds of a barn and a thirds of a barn. In addition, he had a waterfront barn with a loading dock. There were other assets, but they were equal in amount to the debts.

Fire insurance

In 1847, Johan Lagerbom, a lathier and merchant, took out fire insurance on a house he owned. The main building was on Kuninkaankatu, and had two wings, one on Koulukatu and the other on Isokirkkokatu. The building had been altered and repaired in 1839. It was planked and painted with oil paint, except for the western wing, which was painted with water based paint. The windows were six-paned and there were 14 of them, plus a half-window, which was part of the main hall, opening onto the gateway. The windows had shutters and iron bars. There were also 14 windows in the attic. The building had seventeen rooms, two hallways and a fireplace with no hearth. It also had four halls, a förmaaki and four chambers with six tiled stoves. In the threshing floor there was a vaulted sauna stove. The building also had a kitchen with a stove and a bread oven, a shop, a tool shed, a wood stove, a feed store, a stable for three horses and a barn for four cows. The roof was made of boards. The building was built together with the other building on the site for the porch and the common roof. The wooden staircase to the shop had an iron railing. The stairway outside the vestibule of the tambour and east wing was covered.

The kitchen staircase was without a roof. There were two stairs to the attic, one from the kitchen hallway and one from the tambourine closet. The doors to the three hallways were double doors with a double-paned window above them. Two of the doors also had glass tops. Two of the exterior doors were double doors with double panes. The shop door was made of two-inch board and had an iron bar. The intermediate doors were half-transom and one-piece. Seven rooms had skirting boards and fascia boards, as well as ceiling moldings. Seven rooms had paper wallpaper, and one room had cloth wallpaper with paper on top. The ceiling of the foyer was papered. Of the fireplaces, one was a large brown square, two round brown. One oven was a cupboard oven (skänk) with green glazing, there was also a kitchen oven, which included a bread oven, and an oven in the bunkhouse, which was the oven in the sauna. There were four chimneys. In addition, the house had wooden water troughs. There were four hatches to the attic of the outbuilding. The store had three drawer frames with a total of 81 drawers. There was also a shelf with a six-sash window and another with a four-sash window. There were stairs from the shop to the attic, which was accessed via a hatch. There were hatches for the shop window.

The second building on the plot was made of old logs in 1839, in good condition, and was oil-painted on the east or roof side, the other sides were painted red. The building had one dormitory. The building had a boarded roof and a vaulted cellar underneath. The street front had a glazed six-paned false window. The building also had an attic window. The gate between the buildings was made of planks and oil-painted.

In 1864 the owner was the merchant A. F. Palmroth. Improvements had been made to the buildings. In the summer of the same year, the living rooms had received new floors, ceilings and wallpaper. The shop had been redecorated and extended, with new doors and shutters on the outbuilding. A brick vaulted cellar had been added to the north side of the building. In the summer, a latrine building had also been built on a slab near the barn. The insurance value had therefore increased.

In September 1866, the house suffered a fire accident. The fire seemed to have been started in several places at once, in the shop and the attic, and immediately took over. It turned out that the fire had been started by a contractor. It had been ordered by the then shopkeeper from a relative who was a former fireman. The work had been done with care. To prevent the fire from being immediately detected, the attic windows had been covered with lattices and the time chosen for lighting the fire had been midnight. However, the watchful fire watchers had smelled the smoke and tried to wake up the house by making noise. This had also woken up the neighbours, who had rushed to help. By ringing the town hall bells and beating the drum in the streets, the townspeople had been woken up and the sprayers and water buckets had been brought in. The mayor and the town marshal had led the fire-fighting efforts. The fire was extinguished before morning. This time, in addition to the firefighters, the maid of one neighbouring house and the servant of another were rewarded for their diligence. It was later discovered that the store’s warehouse had recently been insured for twice its actual value. The uninsured valuables had been recovered by staging a theft. The person who started the fire was sentenced to death, but there was insufficient evidence against the trader. In the end, thanks to the Emperor’s amnesty, both ended up on bread and water, followed by six years’ ordinary imprisonment in Turku.

In 1898 the house was owned by the bookseller Ludvig Nordberg. In the same year, the house had a new, modern foundation. It was covered with clapboard, had new panelling and was painted with oil paint. The rooms had been raised and new fireplaces, doors and windows had been added, as well as new ceilings and floors. There were now 12 living rooms, a hall, three cloakrooms, a porch and a pass over the gateway. There were nine tiled stoves, two kitchen stoves, one baking oven and one baking and laundry oven with a baking oven and a masonry stove. The insurance also covered the fixed interior of the bookshop and the large display windows. The cellar was also mentioned. The granary building was also boarded up and painted. It had a felt roof. The wing of the outbuilding was also covered with clapboard. There was also a separate, small, boarded outbuilding with a wooden shed built in 1893 on the southern boundary of the property. The building was thatched and painted with oil paint. A plan for the introduction of electric light into the rooms was still attached to the fire insurance in 1900.

Modification drafts

The alteration drawing for the facade of Isokirkkokatu dates back to 1888. The window closest to Kuninkaankatu had been replaced by a door, but the intention was to turn it back into a window. The façade thus had four six-paned windows and a gateway leading to the gateway corridor through the building. The planking of the building was described as wide horizontal boarding and smooth planking in the attic area. The windows in the attic were double-glazed. The next alteration drawing dates from 1893. A glass porch was added to the courtyard side of the dwelling. At the same time, a small shed with a pent roof was built in the courtyard. The plan was drawn up by John Fredr. Lindegren.

In 1897, changes were again being made. The drawings show that there were three rooms on the Isokirkkokatu side. The room facing the square from the gateway was a dormitory. On the Kuninkaankatu side there was a long row of rooms with three large rooms and one smaller chamber, a kitchen with a cupboard or alcove with an oven, and a baking room with a fireplace and a masonry hearth. On the Koulukatu side were two dormitories and a passageway with a gateway. On the courtyard side there were porches connected to the entrances, with a small kitchen attached to the one on Isokirkkokatu. The large glass porch facing Kuninkaankatu was partially heated, as it also had an oven. In addition, there was a slab fireplace in front of the entrances to the kitchen and the bakery. All the rooms were connected, so the drawing does not show how the building was divided into apartments. It may have varied according to the situation. All the street facades of the building were given a decorative neo-renaissance design by August Helenius, with many fretwork details. In 1907, the building was extended from the courtyard side. At the same time, the gateway on the square side was abandoned in favour of an ordinary gateway between the buildings. The old section of the gateway was demolished, along with a small outbuilding, which was replaced by a new one further away from the gateway. The commercial space in the corner of the building was enlarged. After the alteration, there were premises along the square, including a warehouse at the gate, a side room and a shop. Further along Kuninkaankatu, after the shop, there was a hall, a room, a bedroom, a kitchen and a cold store and a bakery. On the courtyard side was the shop’s office room, entrance hall and dining room. On the school street side there was a gate and two dormitories. The conversion plan was drawn up by Onni von Zansen.

In 1928, it was decided to put all the premises into commercial use. The commercial premises were to become open-plan, as the walls were to be removed, so that three shops could operate on the premises. For heating, the intention was to switch to central heating and to build a boiler room in the basement. Large shop windows were to be installed along the square and Kuninkaankatu. The exterior of the building would have been transformed into a twentieth-century classical style. However, the plan drawn up by Kaino Kari never came to fruition.

In 1950, however, more commercial space was added when a temporary bank building was opened in the middle of the building along Kuninkaankatu. A door was built, but no windows were installed. The bank building and the shop next to it were fitted with toilets. In 1956, a flower stall was to be opened on the Koulukatu side. In 1961, one of the commercial premises was converted to oil-fired heating.

In 1970, the facades of the building were altered to their current form. The new very large shop windows meant that the remaining original windows and all the decorative mouldings were lost. The remaining partitions and fireplaces were demolished.

Current situation

Building along Kuninkaankatu and the market square
Long-cornered residential building, commercial building, built of new and old logs in 1839, Renaissance renovation in 1897 (August Helenius), hipped roof, large shop windows from 1970

Exterior building
Longitudinal exterior building, horizontal boarded

Gate
From the exterior building, gateway to Koulukatu, part of the 1897 outfit, old gate leaves.