Tolwane

History

There are two Tolvase plots on the 1756 status map. One was owned by Henrik Ståhl and the other by Grönlund’s heirs. In 1800, house number 245 was owned by the chaplain Erik Levan. He also had a small field sown and a granary.

Fire insurances

The fire insurance was taken out in 1847 by the widow of the vicar, E. A. Amnell. At that time there were four buildings on the property. The main building was located along Kuninkaankatu, on the western boundary of the plot. Another small, square residential building was located on the side of Koulukatu, near the gate. The third, tall building was on the side of Koulukatu. There was also a small building on the northern boundary of the plot. There were two gardens on the plot: one at the corner of Kuninkaankatu and Koulukatu and the other on the western side of the courtyard, at the northern end of the plot.

The main building was old and built of logs, boarded and painted with green oil paint. The building had six rooms: an entrance hall, a hall, three chambers and a kitchen. The floor plan of the building followed the Carolingian central hall plan. In the centre was the hall and the hallway, at the ends two rooms, one with two chambers, the other with a chamber and a kitchen. The ceiling was of board. Under the building was a vaulted stone cellar. The building had five six-paned windows and two four-paned windows. There were four windows in the attic. The outer door was a double board door. The building had wooden eaves gutters and three eaves gutters of tinned sheet metal. The external doors were half-transomed and there were six of them. There was also one single board door. Four rooms and the hall had paper wallpaper and oil-painted skirting and ceiling tiles. There was one square tiled stove with brown tiles, one square tiled stove with green tiles and one round tiled stove with brown tiles. There was also a kitchen stove.

The small residential building was old and two-storey, in good condition and painted in red water based paint. The building had a dormitory downstairs and a chamber upstairs with a square green tiled stove. The building included an outdoor patio made of sheet metal. The small building still had a cupboard with a board door. There were three four-paned windows and one attic window. The exterior door of the building was a simple board door, the interior door was a board door with a semi-transomed mirror. This building had apparently originally been a barn that had been converted into a dwelling.

The long residential building facing Koulukatu was old, unplanked but painted red. The rooms consisted of a hall, pantry, baker’s and sauna, as well as a barn, a shed, a wooden staircase and a gateway. There were three slightly larger windows and one smaller square window. There were two semi-transomed partition doors and five simple board doors. Fireplaces included a baking oven with a stove and a bread oven, a sauna oven and a brown glazed tiled oven. The small building at the back of the courtyard was an old, square log building that served as a feed store. The gate, the board fences on the boundaries of the property and the trellis fences and gates around the garden land were also insured.

The insurance policy was renewed in 1892, when the house was owned by Hjalmar Ridderstad. The dwelling had a wing on the garden side, which was a temporary photographic studio. The studio part was not insured. The small building was boarded up and painted with oil paint. The buildings were still tiled.

Modification drafts

There is an alteration drawing of the plot from 1891. There was a residential building with a central hall along Kuninkaankatu. There were two rooms on either side of the hall, one of them facing the courtyard being the kitchen. On the courtyard side was a hall with a hall-width entrance hall and a porch in front of it. The windows were six-paned and the building had a hipped roof. Now, as an extension to the house, a photographic studio was to be built in the garden area. Along Koulukatu there was first a small, square dwelling, then a gate, and then a semi-detached dwelling with a baker’s shop, sauna, hall and pantry. At the other end of the building there was an outbuilding. Then came the second gate on the plot, followed by a square-built outbuilding in the corner of the plot and, in the inner part of the plot, on its northern boundary, another square-built, smaller building. There was a large garden on the plot and a well next to the fence opposite the neighbour.

In 1901, changes were made to the building facing Koulukatu. There had been a bakehouse at one end of the semi-detached building and a sauna at the other. There had been a small chamber and hall in the middle, and a porch in front of it. Now it was decided to convert the sauna into a living room and to replace the sauna stove with a tiled stove. At the same time, the tiled stove in the adjacent chamber was moved from the roof to the centre of the building and a door was made between the rooms.

In 1904, plans were made for extensions. According to the drawings by Arvi Forsman, the residential building on the street side was to be extended towards the garden, so that there would be one large chamber on the street side and two chambers instead of one on the courtyard side. There is no sign of the photo studio on the drawings. The porch on the courtyard side was also to be extended slightly, which would certainly mean building a new porch. The bakery building was to be extended on the courtyard side to provide a small kitchen and two entrances. The baking room was to be moved into a room that had been used as a sauna. The outer part of this building was to be demolished and the outbuildings at the corner of the plot were to be joined by a shed and a latrine, and a new storage room was to be built on the street, at the former gateway. The gate would replace the demolished part of the building.

In 1920, two shop doors and a shop window were planned for the street front of the building facing Kuninkaankatu. It turns out that the extension planned the previous time had not been realised. Two years later, it was decided to replace the doors with standard six-sash windows and to make a shop door in the middle of the shop window. In the same year, plans were made for a small side entrance on Kuninkaankatu. An entrance was added to the extension. In 1924, the building on the side of Koulukatu was extended and at the same time the small shed along the street was demolished. A kitchen chamber was added to the new part and a cellar and washroom to the basement. The 1929 plan shows the Kuninkaankatu façade transformed into a twentieth-century classicism: the pilasters are accentuated and an arched row is added above the two shop windows. All the original partitions were proposed to be demolished. A single commercial space was created on the roof side, with a warehouse and a small office behind it. In addition, a brick warehouse was to be built on the courtyard side, with a basement level. A drawing from 1932 reveals that the extension was never built. Changes were made to the fireplaces in the buildings: a baking oven was removed from the building on Koulukatu. A living room was added in its place.

In 1941, the building on Kuninkaankatu and the small square residential building on Koulukatu were demolished. Helsingin Osakepakki built a stone office building on the site with a special permit, which is two-storey on the roof side but three-storey on the courtyard side. When the basement is used, there are actually four floors. The designer is architect Frans Nyberg.

The wooden residential building that will remain on the site will be partly residential and partly office. In 1961 there were plans to take over the attic space and to build a row of windows in the roof overlooking the courtyard. In 1995, the attic office space was converted to residential use, and the office downstairs was converted to residential use. The second floor of the stone building, formerly occupied by bank staff, was also converted into residential accommodation. In 1997, a separate sauna building was planned for the courtyard.

Current situation

Stone building
Plastered 2-storey stone house from 1941(Frans Nyberg), originally a bank and commercial building with apartments

Wooden building
Residential building with long corners, neo-renaissance lining, saddle roof

Outbuilding
Short-cornered outbuilding, vertical boarding.