Mestlä

History

In 1756, the Mestlä plot was owned by a Rauma citizen named Wilhelm. In 1800, the other half of the Mestlä plot, plot 21, was owned by Stina Gestelin, the widow of a former shoemaker. She had a barrel of arable land and a meadow. The other half of the plot, plot 22, belonged to Henrik Österberg and the former bourgeois’s widow, Liisa Wilhelm. Österberg had more than a barrel of arable land, a granary, half of a reef and a barn, and two beach fences. Liisa Wilhelm also had some arable land and a meadow.

Fire insurance

The fire insurance had been taken out in 1848 by the merchant-porter Joel Gustaf Berglund. The plot had a residential building along Kuninkaankatu with a kitchen section on the side and a wing building on the western boundary of the plot. There were outbuildings on the northern border of the plot. The main building was old, boarded up and painted with red water based paint. It had an entrance hall, two halls and four chambers. The external staircase was covered. There were nine six-paned windows. The entrance hall had a double door, semi-transomed in design, with a window above the door. There was a cupboard in the hallway. The interior doors were half French doors with mirrored panels. The five rooms had paper wallpaper and skirting boards. The tiled stoves had one square with brown glazing, one round with brown glazing and one square with white glazing. There were also two brick tiled ovens. There were four chimneys. The kitchen, on the courtyard side, was recently built of logs, unplanked and unpainted. It had a kitchen oven. The kitchen had one larger and one smaller window. The outer door was a half-transomed mirrored door. The west wing, which was joined to the main house, was old, unplanked and painted red. The rooms included a hall, a kitchen baking room, a shed and a chalk room. Under the building was a vaulted cellar. There were three windows. There were one half-transomed and four boarded doors. The oven in the bakehouse was connected to the oven in the sauna.

There was still a log building on the northern boundary of the plot, which was erected in 1827 and was unplanked and unpainted. It had a hall and two chambers with tiled stoves. There were two windows, plus one half window. The outer door was a double boarded door and the two intermediate doors were semi-transomed. The tiled ovens were square and glazed.

The outbuilding was an old, log, angled building at the west and north corners of the property. It contained a shed, coach house, stable, barn and privy. The driveway and access gate were also insured. The boarded wooden shed was left uninsured.

The house suffered a fire accident in January 1855, which affected not only this property but also the outbuildings of a neighbour. The fire had gotten loose in the wooden ladder, but the cause was not determined.

In 1878, a new fire insurance was taken out. The house was then owned by the merchant Fredrik Lehtinen. The main building was planked and painted with oil paint on the east side and the roof side. The building had eight living rooms, two dormitories, a kitchen and two covered entrances. The position of the partition walls in the main building is also indicated on the fire insurance plan. It is clear that the building is based on a Carolinian central hall plan: hall and hallway in the middle, with chambers at either end. Another similar base has been added to this basic type. The separate kitchen log had now disappeared and instead the west wing had been rebuilt, so that part was stated to be old, part built in the summer of the year of the insurance. The building had been partially boarded up but not painted. The building contained a baking and laundry room, a kitchen and a hall. The building was extended by a timber framed extension. A residential building with a hall and two chambers also survived. All the buildings had a slate roof.

The next insurance policy is from 1898. The owner of the house was still the merchant Fredrik Lehtinen. The panelling on the main building is said to date from 1878. The building had a double felt roof. Now the courtyard wing was also planked and painted partly with oil paint and partly with red paint. The building has a tiled roof. There is a vaulted and an unvaulted cellar underneath.

The log outbuilding at the back of the courtyard, which housed cattle sheds, is said to have been built more recently. It was partly boarded up and painted partly with oil and partly with mixed paint. The timber-framed building was intact.

There is a plan from 1901 to provide electric light to part of the dwelling house.

At the rear of the property was an outbuilding, which was log, unlined and painted red. It contained a stable, a barn, a coach house, a dormitory and a latrine. There was also a second wooden carriage house on a boarded-up site.

Modification drafts

There is a modification drawing from 1881 for a porch on a small building in the courtyard. The porch would have a gable roof and would have vertical planking ending in a scalloped roof. Above the loft door would be a latticed, ornate window. The windows of the building would be six-paned and classically framed.

From 1888 is John Fredr. Lindegren. The highly ornate, neo-renaissance façade is divided symmetrically into two halves along a central pilaster, as Lindegren did. In addition to the other decorative features, Lindegren has also used a handsome roof ornamentation here. An alteration drawing from 1893 also reveals the symmetrical base of the street-side building. The alteration involves the conversion of one of the chambers into a kitchen, which adds to the symmetry.

In 1916, the building owned by the Lindberg brothers underwent alterations. The drawings were made by Arvi Leikari. The wing on the courtyard side was extended, but changes were also made to the Kuninkaankatu side. One of the partition walls was moved to make more space for the kitchen, which is now in the corner room on the courtyard side. A shop door and display windows had also been added to the street façade of the building. Almost all the space in the courtyard wing was to be used for a bicycle shop. The sauna and the bakehouse also had to be moved. The stone extension of the building was to have a combined laundry and bakery room and a room for the bicycle shop. The outbuilding at the back of the courtyard was left with two paddocks and a shed.

In 1921, plans were made to convert the stone part into a bicycle workshop and to raise it to two storeys. The following year, they wanted to extend the barn and include a basement.

In 1937, a number of changes were made. Large display windows were added all along the street frontage and two new ones were added to one of the commercial doors. In the courtyard wing, the wall between the two rooms in the middle of the building was demolished to create a single commercial building. The floor plan shows that the building had three separate commercial apartments, with a couple of kitchens and pantries remaining as back rooms for the shops. In the same year, central heating pipes were laid in the buildings. The cookers in the kitchens were not dismantled, although other fireplaces were removed. A boiler room and storage room were built in the basement of the stone part. The first floor was a workshop with a stove. On the second floor, an apartment was designed with a living room, bedroom, lounge, kitchen and hall.

In 1945, changes were again planned for the courtyard wing. The wooden part was to be two-storeyed and a knitting mill was to be built above the workshop on the ground floor. The plan never came to fruition, but the idea of a two-storey building survived. In 1949, plans were made for an apartment upstairs with a bedroom, living room, kitchen and hall. There would also be a toilet and an electric stove in the kitchen. The plan never came to fruition.

The next changes were made in the 1970s. In the first phase, in 1975, toilets were installed in the building for commercial use. The bicycle shop was demolished and the office parts were removed. The shop became more spacious. The outbuilding on the northern boundary of the site was demolished to make way for toilets and the premises were connected to a storage room. The small residential building on the plot was also given amenities, namely a toilet room on the porch and water in the kitchen. The heating furnace was heated by an electric storage heater. A sauna was built in the basement of the stone-built verst building. A small staff social room was separated from the first floor. Later, the wall between the shop in the street-side building and the workshop in the courtyard wing was demolished and a new partition wall was built further away. The shop area increased from 70 m2 to 130 m2.

In 1987, the shop in the middle of the building was connected to the commercial building in the west of the building. The partitions between the two rooms were removed, but the office room in the middle was retained. In 1993, the east end of the building was connected to the rest of the shop. The space had previously been divided into three rooms, but now the partitions were removed. In 1999, adaptive façade changes were made. Listings and new doors have been added in an attempt to recreate the neo-renaissance look lost through the large shop windows. The changes were designed by Jukka Koivula.

Current situation

Street-side building
Short-cornered commercial building, Neo-Renaissance 1888 (John F. Lindegren), clapboard siding on courtyard facade, saddle roof, large display windows from 1937. Adaptive changes to the façade in 1999

Courtyard building
Short-cornered dwelling dating from 1827, pantile lining, saddle roof.

Stucco building
Timber and brick, 2-storey workshop and residential building

Outbuilding
Vertical timber-framed outbuilding

Gate
Built in 1985, of a type common in the early 20th century.