Tasala

History

The owner of the Tasala plot in 1756 was a person named Tasala. In 1800 there were two Tasala plots, number 62 and number 63, which was called Iso-Tasala. The Tasala plot belonged to Regina Piikki, a seaman’s widow. She was poor. The other tenant was Fredrik Nyström, a shoemaker. He was recorded as being quite poor. Iso-Tasala was owned by Anders Ahlgrén. He had a field with a large barrel field, a food shed and half a reef and barn. He also owned shares in a ship

Fire insurance

J. Sunell, a merchant-owner, took out fire insurance in 1853. There were four buildings on the plot. The main building was on Kuninkaankatu. The macasin on the western boundary of the plot was built together with it, which was also connected to another building on the western boundary of the plot. On the northern boundary was an outbuilding.

The main building was built in 1841 with new materials. The building had been boarded up in 1850, but was unpainted. There were eight windows, plus two smaller ones and eight attic windows. There were seven rooms: an entrance hall, two halls, two chambers, a kitchen and a pantry. Under the building was a stone cellar. There were nine half-transomed mirrored doors and one double door of double plank with a window above. The attic stairs led from the hall closet. There was also a second closet. In five of the rooms, the walls were papered with machine-made paper that had been painted. The rooms also had baseboards and ceiling trim. Two of the fireplaces were flat and two were round brown tiled stoves, and there was a kitchen stove with a small pot.

The small old dormitory attached to the main building was unplanked, painted in red paint and had a tiled roof. The building had a false floor and a simple board door. The other building on the western boundary was partly old, partly built in 1852. Part of the building was log, part boarded. There were two bays, a hall, a pantry and a baker’s room, which had not only a baking oven but also a sauna oven bricked into its side. In the chamber was a tiled oven with a brown top. The building had two windows, one half-transomed intermediate door and four board doors.

The outbuilding at the back of the courtyard was a gabled building built in 1847 of new materials. It was painted red brick, but not boarded. There were stables, a barn and a feed store. In addition, a double board gate was insured, together with an access gate and a fence around the property.

In 1863 the insurance policy was renewed. The land was then owned by the merchant G. Willenius. The main building was painted with yellow oil paint on the south and east sides and red on the other sides. The roof was made of boards. The rooms had remained the same, but now the building had two porches with windows. No major changes had been made to the other buildings. A separate building, a latrine, has been kept on the site. A cattle yard has been separated from the barn.

In 1879, the insurance company was informed that a distillery had been built in the chamber of the bakery building. The tiled oven had been replaced by a brick-built stove with a fixed still. The inside of the room was plastered with clay mortar. In addition, the front of the stove was covered with iron cladding. There were three wooden stills in the room. The distillery was not long-lived, as in 1883 it was announced that the distillery had moved away and the room had been turned into a laundry room with a brick tiled stove. In 1887, it is revealed that a bakery had been added to the building.

In 1899, the insurance was renewed. At that time the house was owned by a merchant, M. E. Eriksson. The main building had a felt roof and the remaining walls were now boarded up. In addition, the floors and doors had been refinished, the wallpaper replaced and the interior painting continued. The condition of the bakery building was fair, and the building was still unplanked, painted with mixed paint and with a boarded roof. The building now contained a hallway, a bakery room, a pantry and a large store room. The fireplace was a wall of the bakehouse with a stove, a bread oven, and a sauna oven. It turns out that the baking oven was rebuilt, the walls of the baking room were lined with brick and plastered with lime plaster on the inside, and the floor was made of brick. The other buildings were as before.

In November 1901, the house had suffered a fire accident. The building in which the bakery was located was damaged beyond repair, and the macasin between it and the main building was found to be so badly damaged that its remains were sold for removal. It was not desirable to build a new one in its place, as the site was already cramped. A local representative of the fire insurance company wrote that, although he had been involved in fire matters for thirty years, he had never before seen a fire as threatening as this one extinguished so quickly and so well. Police questioning had revealed that laundry had been washed and water heated in a masonry bath in the bakehouse of a house owned by the bankrupt Eriksson estate on Monday and Tuesday. The worst burnt part of the chamber wall was found to be the wall of the masonry bath. The walls of the bakehouse were brick-lined and so did not catch fire, but apparently the stone wall of the stove wall, against the chamber wall, was too weak to withstand two days of continuous heating.

Investigation reports show that the house had a beer shop, and the laundry that was brewed had belonged to Fanny Wikberg, the miller’s wife. Her maid, who lived in the adjoining building, had been the first to wake up to the ringing of fire bells and discover the fire was out in the same property. By then the fire was already shooting out of the roof of the bakery building. Two sailors’ widows and one sailor’s wife had been washing the laundry and said that the water was heated until 6 o’clock on Tuesday night. Apart from the buildings of this house, the fire had also damaged the residential building at the back of the yard of the neighbouring house, No 61, which was located very close to the burnt building.

Modification drafts

There is an alteration drawing of the plot from 1882. There was a residential building along the street, a residential building and an outbuilding on the western boundary of the plot, and another outbuilding and a barn on the northern boundary. The building on the western boundary had a hall, a baker’s pantry and a pantry, and at the northern end a board shed. The barn was to be replaced with a log section that would become a tanner’s shooting room. The building is drawn with six-paned windows.

Arvi Forsman’s alteration drawing of the buildings on the site dates from 1903. The house belonged to Fr. Strom’s carpentry shop. The residential building on the street side was to be extended along the entire length of the courtyard and an extension was to be added to the east end. Prior to the alteration, the building had two entrance porches. One porch gave access to the entrance hall, from which there were two large living rooms and a stairwell. The entrance to the staircase was apparently already at this stage the entrance to the shop from the street. The second entrance led to the kitchen and the pantry.

After the change, one of the large rooms was extended into a carpenter’s workshop, accessed from the courtyard. The kitchen was added to the new part of the courtyard, which also housed another kitchen and a pantry. A brick sauna was added to the new part planned for the end of the house, with access to the hall from the street. Apparently a sauna for rent had been envisaged. The façade of the building had a three-part neo-renaissance lining, with appropriately turned button mouldings by a carpenter’s shop. The carpentry shop’s name was placed on the roof. The gate followed the same style. The outbuilding at the northeast corner of the property was extended on both sides.

In 1904, changes were planned to the layout of the rooms in parts of the building. The following year, a room and kitchen apartment was built to replace the apparently unfinished sauna. In the same year, rooms in the adjoining apartment were being combined to make way for a carpenter’s machine shop. At the same time a small porch was built in front of the new dwelling. Fireplace modifications were also made in the kitchen and the adjoining living room. A new porch was also added in front of the kitchen, and a new partition wall separated the hallway from the kitchen.

In 1913, brick painting rooms were added to the side of the courtyard. The premises now belonged to the F. Vainio bicycle factory.

In 1924, a brick, two-storey workshop building was planned for the courtyard as an extension to the outbuilding. The project was eventually realised as a much larger building. Both the old outbuildings on the Tasala plot and the adjacent Perttla plot were demolished and replaced by a two-storey stone hall, which also housed a barn. The building was placed on the plots at an angle and followed the direction of Nummenkatu, as shown in the new town plan. A new outbuilding was built on the western boundary of the plot for the perthla.

In 1949, a large part of the street-side building was used as storage and office space for the shop. What remained was a room and kitchen apartment. It was now converted into a toilet. The old paint shop parts on the courtyard side were demolished. Washrooms and a boiler room were added to the basement of the building. In 1951, the street-side building underwent façade alterations. Door and window locations were changed.

In 1966, two large display windows were added to the street-side building. At the same time, the interior of the building was altered to increase the number of living spaces.

In 1997, the building was converted into a reception area and the shop at the eastern end of the building was reduced in size. The display windows were changed to smaller squares and the roof doors were changed to the old style. An old-style gate was also designed for the roof. The plans were drawn up by Markus Bernoulli.

Current situation

Street-side building
Residential building with long corners, partly commercial, built in 1841, neo-renaissance lining from 1903, saddle roof, shop windows

Outbuilding
Small stone building.