Iisveden tehdas- ja rautatieasemaympäristö

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

The Iisvesi factory and railway station environment grew up around the inland waterway harbour and the railway station as a timber-processing and timber-transport area. The Iisvesi sawmill is one of the best-preserved sawmills of the steam sawmill era. From the point of view of transport history, the Iisvesi harbour, which has been one of the most important inland waterway harbours in the country, and the railway station area are significant. The timber industry and transport environment of Iisvesi includes residential areas that sawmill workers built on their own initiative. Kolikkoinmäki, well preserved and built without close planning or supervision on land that was not zoned, is one of the most distinctive of the cottage villages that grew up around the sawmills.

The varied and well-preserved Iisvesi sawmill and transport environment has formed at the southern end of Iisvesi, a place where the extensive timber floating connections of Pielavesi meet the branch line of the Savon rata between Kouvola and Kuopio. The sawmill building stock of the Iisvesi sawmill on the shore of Jauholahti, which is the Metsä Oy sawmill, dates back exceptionally strongly and uniformly to the steam sawmill era. The building stock of the steam sawmill has survived and been harmoniously supplemented. The steam engine of the old power station adds to its industrial-historical value. Central to the appearance of the sawmill area are the brick chimney and the production buildings with arched roofs.

The dense residential area of Kolikkoinmäki, known as Savonia's Pispala, was built mostly in 1919-1927 by the sawmill workers. Kolikkoinmäki has altogether about fifty dwelling buildings, cottages, which were erected freely on hilly terrain on plots bought from Saastamoinen Oy. Single- or one-and-a-half-storey, mainly plank-built buildings are placed in places only three to four metres from each other on either side of a narrow lane. The later-built northern part in particular is dense, and its plots are smaller than the others. Suonenjoki Kotiseutumuseo presents one courtyard as the Kolikkoinmäki workers' home museum, while the other houses are still inhabited. On the eastern shore of Iisvesi, on a steep slope, a smaller residential area called Venetsia was built in a similar way in the first half of the 20th century.

On the shore of Iisvesi, a harbour with numerous siding tracks and loading areas was built in the 1920s and 1930s for the operations of three sawmills. A seven-kilometre branch line built from the Savon rata leads to the harbour. In addition to the station building, the compact station area has two residential buildings: a double guardhouse from 1887 and another dwelling from 1930, together with their outbuildings, and a shore storehouse from the founding period of the station, which was used for storing shipping and rail freight.

History

The factory and railway station environment at Iisvesi developed in connection with the Pielavesi inland waterway route and the railway, which gave the timber processing industry good transport conditions. The branch line to the Iisvesi harbour was built during the construction of the Savonrata between Kouvola and Kuopio, in 1887-1889. The station building was completed in 1889 in accordance with the standard drawings prepared by Bruno Granholm for the Oulu Line. It had to be extended as early as 1900-1905, again to Granholm's plans. The canalisation of the large waterways north of Päijänne in the 1890-1920s was linked to railway projects and was carried out with the needs of the timber processing industry in mind. The Iisvesi-Pielavesi route was opened in 1895.

Timber merchant and large landowner Heikki Peura founded a sawmill at Iisvesi in 1896. In addition to the sawmill, Peura's business activities included a mill at Iisvesi, a thread-reel factory, a brick factory, a charcoal kiln and steamship transport. The Iisvesi sawmill industry expanded to four sawmills in all, together with a busy harbour and railway station, and a community with village settlements. Timber traffic from the Iisvesi harbour also ran onto the rails, and several timber companies operated in the area.

Sawmilling at Iisvesi became busy and was at its most flourishing in the 1920s. The Iisveden Metsä Oy steam sawmill was completed in 1924 as an institution based on a cooperative of local forest owners. The sawmill industry began to contract in the 1950s, when one of the Iisvesi sawmills, Kymi, ceased operations. Peura's sawmill, which had passed to Rauma-Repola, was closed in 1983. The sawmill of Iisveden Metsä Oy has been in operation up to the present day.

Workers' housing areas grew close to the sawmills. The land around the sawmills belonged mainly to the local Eevala estate, whose owner was unwilling to sell it as building plots. Land was acquired in the name of a forester of Saastamoinen Oy, who staked out the area at the edge of the cultivated fields, an area unsuitable for cultivation known as Kolikkoinmäki, as building plots. Because there was a shortage of plot land, many residents sold the other half of their plot onward, and the residential area became dense. The buildings of Kolikkoinmäki were built by the residents themselves, using materials obtained from the sawmills in return for work.

Concerned about the growth of the area around the sawmills, the Suonenjoki municipal council approved Iisvesi as a densely populated community in 1926 in order to plan the area. A plan drawn up by the Yleisten rakennusten ylihallitus could only be completed in 1938, owing to opposition from the sawmills, by which time a large part of the area had already been built up.