Heinolan seminaari

English translation (from the Finnish)

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Description

Heinola Seminary is one of the seminaries founded at the end of the 19th century, which were the results of the Crown's nationwide building project and the planning of the Board of Public Buildings. The seminary area is located in an urbanistically significant place, at the end point of Heinola's Maaherranpuisto, Perspektiivi.

The exterior architecture of the seminary buildings in the park-like setting, completed at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (the main building, the director's residence and the service buildings), has features of Swiss villa architecture, but also ancient Scandinavian decorative motifs. The ground floors of the two-storey buildings are of brick and the upper floors of wood. In addition to the old seminary buildings, the area contains a newer functionalist seminary building and a building designed as a student canteen.

The complex of Heinola seminary buildings also essentially includes the newest seminary training school, a pavilion-type building completed in 1957, designed by Bertel Saarnio. The area also includes the present music institute block, in whose buildings, constructed in the latter part of the 19th century, the Heinola Seminary training school operated.

History

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the seminary buildings differed from their predecessors above all in that they were no longer joint seminaries: Rauma and Kajaani were intended for male students, Raahe and Heinola for women. They also differed in architecture from earlier ones. Whereas in Jyväskylä large stone buildings were erected, and in Sortavala they were built entirely of wood, the seminary buildings of chief architect Jac. Ahrenberg in Heinola are partly of brick and partly of wood. In addition to fire safety, great attention was paid in the buildings to hygiene improvements (ventilation, light, corridors). At this stage the seminary students no longer lived on the seminary grounds but in town, so dormitories were not needed at these seminaries.

Of the buildings in the block that served as the seminary's practice school, the first to be completed was the classicist building on Kymenkartanonkatu, completed in 1884 as a kansakoulu. The neo-Renaissance style upper kansakoulu was built along Savontie in 1898, and a Jugendstil head teacher's residence was built in the central part of the block in 1901. The buildings in the block passed to the seminary as practice schools in 1902, in connection with which the older kansakoulu was extended with a wing building.

The so-called new seminary building, completed in 1939, was designed as a model school after the former old kansakoulu building had proved too cramped. The architect was Selim Savonius of the Rakennushallitus. The model school is a three-storey, austere-looking school building executed mainly in the spirit of functionalism. The building was extended in the 1950s. The single-storey pupils' dining hall, designed by architect T. Salervo in the same spirit, was completed in 1931.

Teacher training was transferred to the universities in the early 1970s, whereupon the seminaries' original independent status came to an end.