Tokila

History

There were two plots called Tokila on the 1756 map. One was owned by Juhani and the other by Henrik Tocklin. In 1800, plot 250 was owned by the bourgeois Simo Tocklin. He owned more than a barrel of arable land and two and a half acres of meadow, a food shed and half of a reef.

Fire insurances

The fire insurance was taken out in 1857 by the squire N. M. Canth. There were three buildings on the plot at the corner of Kuninkaankatu and Koulukatu: a residential building along Kuninkaankatu, a residential and outbuilding along the northern boundary of the plot and the northern boundary of Koulukatu, and an outbuilding on the northern boundary of the plot. The main building was partly old, but largely built in 1853. Only new materials had been used in the renovation. In the summer of 1857 the building had been panelled and painted with oil paint. The rooms consisted of a hall with a closet and a staircase to the attic, two halls, one of which had a boarded wardrobe (afplankad) and three chambers. The windows were six-paned and there were nine of them. There were five attic windows. Two of the intermediate doors were full-panel and three half-panel, while the wardrobe door was panelled. The outer door to the entrance hall was double boarded. Three rooms had paper wallpaper. Two of the tiled stoves were white-yellow and square, one square and brown, two white-yellow and round. There were three chimneys. The ceiling was of board.

The second building had two wings. It was built in 1857. It was an unplanked and unpainted log building with an entrance hall, a baking room, a threshing floor and two dormitories. There were three square windows and four attic windows. The building had one half-transomed intermediate door. The other doors were double and single board doors. In addition to the baking oven, there was a large brick tiled oven in the threshing floor.

There was also an old log outbuilding at the rear of the property, on its northern boundary, with a recent boarded addition. The building had three storage rooms. The garden fence, drive gate and well deck structures were also insured. The gate was on the Kuninkaankatu side and the garden on the Koulukatu side.

In 1862 a new insurance policy was taken out. It was taken out by the surveyor C. G. Kordelin. The neighbouring plot was now joined to the plot, and the buildings on plots 250 and 254 were treated together. The buildings on the western side, i.e. plot 250, were the same as when the previous policy was taken out. On the eastern side, plot 254, the main building was on the corner of Kuninkaankatu and Koulukatu and the outbuilding was on the northern boundary of the plot.

The main building on plot 254 was old on the Kuninkaankatu side, but had been extended in 1859 on the Isokirkkokatu side. The old building was planked and oil-painted, but the new part was unplanked and unpainted. The house had a tiled roof. The rooms consisted of a hall, three chambers, a kitchen, a shop and a boarded porch. There were five tiled stoves and a kitchen stove. There was a vaulted cellar under the building. The shop had a fixed interior consisting of shelves, counters, drawer frames and cupboards. The shop had a wooden staircase in the corner of the building.

The outbuilding on lot 254 was built in 1844. It was unplanked and unpainted. The building contained a stable with a hayloft, barn and chalk. The buildings on plot 250 had not undergone any significant changes.

There were two gates from the plot: one between the buildings on Kuninkaankatu and the other on the side of Isokirkkokatu. The front of the barn was fenced off as a separate cattle yard.

In 1893 the property was owned by the merchant J. L. Enlund. The building at the corner of Isokirkkokatu and Kuninkaankatu had been completely renovated in the same year: raised, redecorated and covered with felt. The building was still unplanked. The building now had five rooms, two of which were boarded and the kitchen had a stove.

Modification drafts

In 1880, a shop entrance was opened on the opposite side of the Tokila building to Kuninkaankatu. The door was a double door with a diagonal glass panel at the top. The door was positioned opposite the window of the room, and a window was therefore opened in the previously windowless end of the building and paired with a false window. In front of the shop door was a three-step staircase. Before the alterations, the building had two halls, two chambers, a hallway and a kitchen. The room to be converted into a shop was fitted with a counter and shelving on the walls. The Tokila residence was symmetrical. The windows were six-paned with a two-paned attic window above them. The window moulding was classical. The roof was gabled at both ends. The high gate was located along Kuninkaankatu.

The main door was in the front of the building, with a large gable in front of the main door. A modification drawing by John Lindegren was found in 1893. It shows that there was a residential building facing Kuninkaankatu and an outbuilding on the northern boundary of the plot. The residential building was a perfectly symmetrical paired building. There was an entrance hall and kitchen in the middle, large rooms on either side and narrower chambers at the back. Each room had one window on the street side and one on the courtyard side. In the middle was an entrance and a plank porch.

Now they wanted to change the layout. The positions of the partitions between the rooms were changed so that a partition wall was placed in the middle of the building. On one side was the hall, at the end the kitchen and the kitchen hallway. At the other end was a smaller room and hallway, and at the end two small chambers. In front of the main entrance was a porch. The street façade of the building was divided into two symmetrical halves. There was a pilaster in the centre and two windows to the right and left, following the room division, a pilaster, a window and a corner pilaster. The panelling of the façade had emphasised the outermost windows by creating cassette-shaped fields below them. The cladding was a three-tiered Neo-Renaissance cladding. The four-paned windows were panelled in list, dentil and square patterns. The attic floor was coffered and the eaves brackets were decorative. The symmetry of the building was further enhanced by the gabled roof and two chimneys. The façade was finished by John Fredr. Lindegren’s symmetry. In the same way, the façades, divided in two halves by a central pilaster, appear in his other designs.

A modification drawing of the building by Arvi Leikari dates from 1913. The residential building was extended by a wing running the length of the plot, parallel to Koulukatu. At the end of the old outbuilding there had been an outhouse, which was now attached to the residential wing. Rooms were built in between to create a ten-room dwelling. The kitchen and adjoining pantry were separate in the wing. There was also a separate room with a masonry bench and stove in the wing, which was probably used as a laundry room. It was not connected to the other rooms in the building. Part of the old outbuilding was demolished. What remained were two sheds and a new stone two-roomed part. The street façade of the extension followed the style of the Kauppakatu façade in terms of cladding and windows.

In 1932, there is an alteration drawing, according to which the roof was to be raised and turned into a pitched roof. The brick pitched roof was fitted with shutters on the street and courtyard sides to allow light into the attic. The attic was not yet proposed for residential use. Although the plan never came to fruition, the idea of a two-storey building remained alive.

First, in 1955, there is a plan for large display windows and commercial entrances. The basement and mezzanine were dropped to make the building two storeys high. The partition walls were repositioned to accommodate the commercial space. Storage space was added on the second floor. A couple of months after the first plan, a new plan had been drawn up, replacing the narrow attic windows with large windows in the living room and replacing the last two windows in the apartment, which were still on the Koulukatu side, with large shop windows. In addition to storage space, a large apartment was added on the upper floor. In the basement there was a boiler room.

Further changes were made in 1964. One room at the Koulukatu end of the building was demolished. The rooms had already been combined for shop use. Previously there had been four shops, but now the partition walls were demolished so that the whole building became a single shop space. Only a few toilets and a small office room remained separate. The attic floor had previously contained two apartments and storage rooms. Now there is only one apartment. The remainder was used as storage rooms for shops and staff welfare facilities.

Current situation

Street-side building
Long-cornered residential building, now a commercial building, street-side vertical planking, ribbed horizontal planking on courtyard facade, south wing extensively repaired 1853, hipped roof, display windows. On the Koulukatu side, the two buildings were joined in 1914 (Arvi Leikari). There are still hints of the 1893 Neo-Renaissance style (John F. Lindegren) on the roof and courtyard façade. Converted to two storeys without raising the building in 1955. The façade was altered in 1964 to reflect the aspirations of the time.

Exterior building
Concrete exterior

Exterior building
Exterior building made of concrete.