Mäntykankaan puutaloalue (Tallåsens trähusområde)

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 town plan of the Mäntykangas wooden house area in Kokkola reflects the organic urban planning of the early 20th century and the building methods and ideals of the uniform townscape of the 1920s.

The free-form street network was laid out in 1909, following the longitudinal ridge forms of the terrain. Streets coming from the Neristani grid plan area fan out westward on the west side of Kustaa Adolfinkatu, and small squares have been opened at street intersections as meeting places for townspeople.

The street scene of the residential area is uniform. The wooden building stock dates mainly from the 1920s, and one-and-a-half-storey residential buildings stand along the street line. Katariinantori is surrounded by classicist building stock, such as the parsonage of the Lutheran parishes designed by architect Matti Björklund.

On the eastern edge of Mäntykangas there is a striking series of public buildings. The wooden elementary school Renlund from 1909 was built as the result of an architectural competition won by Valter and Ivar Thomé. The red-brick water tower was completed in 1920 to the winning designs in the architectural competition of Selim A. Lindqvist. The classicist Civil Guard house Vartiolinna from 1928, drawn by Ole Gripenberg, has later served, among others, as the town hall and the city theatre.

Pine trees grow on many plots in the leafy district, as well as on Mäntykangas-katu, which is named after them. Lime trees have been planted on Herman Renlundinkatu on the western edge of the district.

The old cemetery founded in 1779, the so-called Katariina cemetery, is located in the southern part of Mäntykangas, in the area of Länsipuisto, which was established in the late 19th century. The brick burial vaults, plastered white, date from this period.

History

On the treeless hill that is now the Mäntykangas area stood windmills belonging to the town of Kokkola in the 18th and 19th centuries. The hill was also used as a place of punishment. Clearing the hill for fields had begun in the 18th century.

The area was zoned as a residential area in 1909. The background was the growth of Kokkola's population at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The town plan drawn up by architect Lambert Pettersson followed the zoning principles of Camillo Sitte's urban design ideas, and the plan defined the building volumes as well as the land use of the area. The Sittean school was characterised by artistic ambition directed at urban space and by a free-form town plan that took the shape of the terrain into account, seeking to break away from the regular grid plan and from the formulaic nature of the street network and squares. The town plan for Mäntykangas was not implemented in its entirety.

The residential buildings zoned for the area were single-family houses, and families from different social classes moved to the area. The designers were master builders Alvar Åkerman and Karl Forsström, and Frans Wiklund.