Pajala

History

The Pajala plot is located in the oldest inhabited area of Rauma. In the early decades of the 1700s, the Pappila and Pajala plots were deserted. In the 1756 map of Rauma, the owner of the plot was Unaeus. In the 1800 land register, the owner of the plot is listed as Johan Erik Lindqvist, a bourgeois who owned property, fields and meadows, as well as a share in a ship.

Fire insurance

Fire insurance was taken out in 1847. The building was owned by Carl Sederström. There were three buildings on the plot along Kuninkaankatu and Vähäpoikkikatu: the angular main building at the corner of the streets, with two other buildings as extensions, and an outbuilding on the east side of the courtyard. The main building was built in 1839 and boarded up in 1846. The building had two lobbies, a great hall, a hall with five chambers, a kitchen, a pantry and a store room. There was a vaulted cellar under the building. There were 11 six-paned windows, two slightly smaller six-paned windows, two four-paned windows and six attic windows. The outer door was a double door of double board. There were also two single-sided, double board doors. There were three half-panel double doors and seven half-panel single-panel doors on the exterior. One room had paper wallpaper and skirting boards. The attic staircase led from a closet with two doors. The doorways were one square, two round and one mullioned with brown glazing. The two tiled ovens were of brick. There was also a kitchen stove with an oven.

The building was extended by a shed and a macasin. It was old and painted in red clay paint and built together with another building, which was an old, log, unplanked, red bakery building. There was a shed, a baking room with two ovens and a brick oven, a hall and a toilet. The building had one window.

On the eastern boundary of the property was an old unboarded outbuilding containing a stable, barn, hayloft and feed fence.

In 1877 a new insurance policy was taken out. The house was then owned by J. E. Eriksson, a master coppersmith. The main building was boarded up and painted in 1875 with green mud paint. There were 12 rooms: two halls, a dampers, a hall, six chambers, a kitchen, a pantry and a porch. In the last year, four rooms had new doors and new floors (the chamber and hallway completely, two chambers partially). Four rooms were wallpapered and two rooms had new tiled stoves, one of which was porcelain. The roof was covered with tiles.

The northern part of the main row of buildings, which used to house the bakehouse, had been transformed from a bakehouse into a threshing floor, decorated as a copper smith’s workshop. The building also contained a pantry and a shed. There were two tiled ovens. Five of the lowest five layers of logs had been replaced and the building was now in good condition. The building had been painted with red paint. The outbuilding on the east side of the courtyard had not been altered. In the centre of the courtyard, a separate boarded toilet had been built and painted red. In addition, the gates and fence were still insured.

Modification drafts

In 1888, the owner of the plot, merchant W. Söderlund, who was the richest shipowner in the city, commissioned architect Lisi Herlin to design an extension to the main building on the courtyard side and an additional building on the garden site. The building, or the neo-renaissance style of the panelling, differed somewhat in its formal language from that of other designers for the same space. The building contained a shop and its store room, 12 living rooms, a bathroom and three hallways. The entrance to the commercial building was at the corner of Kalatori. The courtyard of the plot was made closed off by adding new outbuildings on the southern and eastern boundaries of the plot. The residential building on the Kalatori side and the outer row were left intact. In 1906, windows were added to the Kalatori side outbuilding.

In the 20th century, Pajala became the headquarters of the Rauma Osuuskauppa for decades, and this gradually transformed the buildings. In 1912, the first shop windows were made, following the neo-renaissance design of the building. Another building on the Kalatori also had shop windows. In 1928, large display windows were opened in the façade of the main building, only a few windows in the eastern part remained of the residential type. The attic floor retained part of the old appearance of the building, but otherwise the building took on a twentieth-century classicist appearance. A large part of the building’s spaces were integrated into a single commercial building. Central heating was also added. In 1956, the last of the main building’s rooms were incorporated into a commercial building and the remaining windows on the east side of the Kauppakatu were converted into shop windows. The building then housed the agricultural and iron departments of the Osuuskauppa, as well as the fabric and mixed goods departments at the east end. In 1969, their premises were joined into a single commercial building and the last partitions were demolished.

In 1937, the SOK building department designed a stone two-storey commercial and storage building on the site of the outbuildings. The drawings were signed by architect Paavo Riihimäki. The building represents a similar functionalism to the buildings of the SOK cooperative store of the time. In the 1980s the building was converted into a hotel. The conversion was designed by architect Markus Bernoulli.

Neighbouring plots were gradually added to the cooperative’s use, so that eventually the whole block, with the exception of the Fiilar house, was one asphalted courtyard. The outbuildings had given way, and one of the residential buildings was used as an office. The others were used as various warehouses, with large loading doors. In the 1980s, the plots became separate again.

Current situation

Building parallel to the Kauppakatu
A short-cornered residential building, now a commercial building, built in 1831 and 1862, with horizontal brickwork in 1888 (by Lisi Herlin), hipped roof, shop windows, the first of which were opened in 1927. The present appearance is due to the removal of decorative details and entrances, which are related to the 1928 alteration designed by Kaarlo Wirtanen.

The stone house on the Kalatori
A plastered commercial building from 1937, (Paavo Riihimäki). Built for the Rauma cooperative as a warehouse and commercial building, converted into a hotel in the 1980s according to a design by Markus Bernoulli.