Tampereen yleinen sairaala

English translation (from the Finnish)

The text above is the record as published by the Finnish Heritage Agency (Museovirasto), in Finnish. The English below is a machine translation made by TreeAlive, not by the Finnish Heritage Agency (Museovirasto); it has not been checked by a person. Where the two differ, the original is the record. Report a translation error: privacy@treealive.com

Description

Tampere General Hospital represents well the functional, architectural and technical solutions suited to its period of construction. The hospital expressively shows the aims and development features of state hospital construction at the beginning of the 20th century.

The former Tampere General Hospital is a building group designed and built at the same time, at the western end of the Kalevankankaan hautausmaa (Kalevankangas cemetery), comprising a main building with wings forming the letter H, a similar service building, a wooden isolation ward and a smaller sauna and residential building. Impressive in its execution, the complex has taken an architectural form that is closely tied to the modern Finnish architecture of the time of the institution's design. The service building was extended on its eastern side with a new wing in the 1990s.

History

Planning of Tampere General Hospital in Finland departed from the extensive pavilion hospital that had become common there after the 1880s, and followed the block hospital ground plan that developed in the early years of the 20th century, in which the rooms were placed in a more compact group. Behind the development of this hospital type lay advances in medicine, a reduction in internal movement and the rise in land values in towns.

The state regional hospital system comprised the provincial hospitals in the provincial capitals and the general hospitals that supplemented the system, which were established in certain other towns with regard to regional population numbers. Tampere General Hospital began operating in 1848 in a wooden house rented from a private owner along Nalkala tori. Construction of a new general hospital was due shortly after the turn of the century.

The town donated a plot at Kalevankangas to the state in 1906, and plans for the buildings of the 120-bed hospital to be sited in the area were drawn up at the Yleisten rakennusten ylihallitus in 1908. Operations of Tampere General Hospital got under way in the new premises in 1910. The buildings are rendered brick structures, with the exception of a small isolation ward building, which, being of timber construction, could if necessary have been destroyed by burning.

Hospital operations ended in 1963. The building group came into use by Pirkanmaan sairaanhoito-oppilaitos. The new extension built in the 1990s is located on the east side of the building group and forms part of a former outbuilding.