Wähä-Sauko

History

The owner in 1800 was a former bourgeois And. Anrin. He also owned a field and meadow, a food barn with two reefs and two barns, half a boathouse and a beach house.

Modification drafts

The old main building of the plot is shown in the 1897 modification drawing by E. Ikäläinen. The residential building on the Vanhankirkonkatu side was extended and raised. The building was lined in neo-renaissance style and also received a stylish gate. What made the building unusual was the fronton motif in the last room on the Vanhankirkonkatu side. The end facing Anundilankatu was treated in the same way, with more decorative panelling on the windows. In the middle of the side facing Vanhankirkonkatu was a double door. The base of the building was of the paired-room type: before the alteration it had had a room and a hall, with a hallway and an antechamber between them. In front of the entrance was a plank porch. Now they wanted to extend the building with a section to create two rooms and a kitchen with a baking oven. In front of the extension was a porch with two entrances. In the old part, the oven was dismantled and the room was divided into two rooms, one of which had a door from the street. An extension was made to the side of the courtyard to replace the porch, with two entrances and a small log section to extend part of the old hallway into a kitchen.  There was a well on the property, conveniently located next to the kitchen stairs.

The outbuilding at the back of the courtyard can be seen in the 1898 drawing of the outbuilding by Arvi Forsman. The outbuilding, partly of log and partly of plank construction, comprised a stable, barn, sleeping quarters, wood shed and latrine. The intention was to extend it with a coach house.

Apparently the modifications to the residential building were not carried out, as there is an alteration drawing by Arvi Forsman from 1902, which shows that the building was still a semi-detached house. The façade was of horizontal brickwork and the six-paned windows were classically framed. Plans were now to open the shop door and display windows into the hall. One of the windows would be next to the door on the Vanhankirkonkatu side and the other at the end of the building on the Anundilaankatu side. A drawing by H. A. Toivonen from the following year shows changes to the alterations planned in 1897. The drawing was drawn in such a way as to suggest that the alterations planned earlier would be carried out, and that the walls and fireplaces planned at that time would now be demolished and new ones built. The extension of the building would now include a room with a large stove and masonry fireplace and a large room. There would be one entrance and no porch. The former sheath would not be extended into two rooms, but an entrance in the middle of the building would be made. The kitchen should have a baking oven instead of just a stove. The 1903 street door and display windows planned for the hall section were not included in this plan.  Apparently, earlier plans had not been realised. First, in 1913, there was a modification drawing by Arvi Leikari, which wanted to change the oven in the extension to a conventional stove. In the adjacent room, a shop door and a display window were to be made. In the drawings, the lining of the building was three-panelled, with a neo-renaissance look, and the windows were T-shaped. In the same year, John Sundqvist drew an alteration drawing to create a sausage-making oven in the kitchen of the extension and two masonry stoves on the courtyard porch.

The exterior was altered in 1912 and in 1915 and 1916. The first phase involved minor internal alterations, but the next was to replace the old wooden room at the end of the building with a brick macadam section with two cellars underneath. The following year, they wanted to extend the brick part so that the end of the brick part reached the street. Both the ground floor and the basement were used as sausage-making rooms. A shop was added to the basement, with access from the end. Stairs descended from the street level down to an entrance with display windows on either side. The plastered end of the building was given an Art Nouveau appearance. The Art Nouveau motif was also repeated in the fence facing the street. Arvi Leikari designed the first and last plans, John Sundqvist the middle one.

The next modification drawing of the main building and the outbuilding is from 1919 by Arvi Leikari. Before the alteration, the main building had both living quarters and a sausage factory, which had been made into living rooms.  In the main building, the former sausage-making rooms had been vacated for housing. In addition, a hall extension was built on the Anundilankatu side, with two rooms and a hallway, and below them a cellar with a stone hearth and masonry floor, with two rooms. Now the commercial building and its shop windows and door were in the places where they were designed in 1902. The building was clapboarded with two, not three stories. The lower part was horizontal board, the attic part vertical board. The moulding on the windows was Neo-Renaissance. The end of the stone building was now shown as sloping, following the street line. There was no shop in the basement according to this drawing, but the façade was still drawn in Art Nouveau style, as was the fence.

In 1938, a central heating system was built in the house using the kitchen boiler and the fireplaces were dismantled. Three separate rooms were added to the attic of the old building, with a height of only two metres in the middle of the room. Although it was forbidden to build fireplace rooms in the attic, two of the rooms were marked with a fireplace.

In 1958, when the property was owned by businessman Erkki Aalto, the sausage factory was extended with a warehouse on the yard side. In 1960, the old wooden building was given additional shop space and display windows. The old windows were altered by removing the T-frame on the lower part, leaving two panels on the window. The lining was also simplified. The partition walls of the store were demolished and the entire 82 m² grocery store became a single, unified supermarket. Refrigeration rooms were added to the porches on the courtyard side. The toilets and changing rooms required for commercial use were built in the attic. A room and kitchen apartment remained in the building. In 1969, the sausage factory was converted into a sausage stall. At the same time, a small sausage stall on the side of the shop building was demolished.

In 1971 and 1972, completely new buildings were planned for the Wähä-Sauko plot and the adjacent Sauko plot. Two two-storey, flat-roofed buildings were envisaged for the combined plots. One was to house shops and a grill restaurant and the other three apartments. The designers were Benito Casagrande and Jyrki Tasa. The project never came to completion.

In 1978, a desire was expressed to create a canteen kitchen in the building on Vanhankirkonkatu.

In 1985, all the old buildings on the site were demolished to make way for the new one. The site was replaced by a commercial building designed by Markus Bernoulli, with three floors of space. In addition to one and two floors above ground, there is a full underground floor under the building.

Current situation

Commercial building
New building in 1985, designed by Markus Bernoulli.

Exterior building
New building from the 1980s

Gate
1980s.