Uudenkaarlepyyn seminaari ja Seminaarikatu (Seminariet och Seminariegatan i Nykarleby)

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

Uudenkaarlepyy Seminary is a seminary site built in the first phase of the establishment of teacher training seminaries in the 1870s, and its original building stock is very well preserved. The buildings of the Swedish-language men's seminary in Uudenkaarlepyy, founded in 1873, are a key townscape element in a historically multi-faceted area that developed in the latter half of the 19th century on the western bank of the Lapuanjoki, outside the old town structure of Uudenkaarlepyy.

The architecture of the Uudenkaarlepyy Seminary buildings repeats, for example, the building style of Heinola Seminary. The main building is a two-storey wooden building whose two wings are joined by a hall. The uniform building group of the seminary also includes two-storey side wing buildings placed on both sides of the main building, one of which originally served as work premises and the other as a dining building. A yläaste and lukio operate on the seminary grounds.

Along Seminaarikatu, which leads to the seminary, there is a row of single-storey wooden residential buildings, most of which date from the latter half of the 19th century. At the end of the bridge leading into the town stands Brostugan, a small Classicist building from the early 19th century, the house of the town's bridge guard. The bridge guard, whose duty was to collect the bridge toll from those arriving in the town from the countryside and to open the barrier, lived in its cottage until the end of the 19th century, after which the bridge cottage served, among other things, as a waiting room for the steamboat that travelled on the river. Brostugan, whose walls are decorated with wall paintings by Gunnar Clement from 1941 depicting the history of Uudenkaarlepyy, has been used as a café and meeting place since the 1930s.

History

Uusikaarlepyy was an old school town, where a trivial school was established by Pietari Brahe in 1641. Even before this, the town had an elementary school. The trivial school was moved to Vaasa in 1684, and a pedagogio continued in Uudessakaarlepyy. Finland's first seminary was founded in Jyväskylä in 1863, and soon after, the first Swedish-language seminaries were established in Tammisaari and Uudenkaarlepyy. The decision to found the men's seminary in Uudenkaarlepyy was made in 1871.

Professor and writer Zacharias Topelius was an active advocate for the establishment of the seminary in Uudenkaarlepyy, and among the possible locations for the seminary was the Kuddnäs estate, which belonged to Topelius. However, the seminary was decided to be founded on a plot bought from Captain P. Högdahl on the western bank of the river, where construction had begun after the town fire of 1858. The seminary operated from 1873 to 1971.

The drawings for the school buildings were prepared under the direction of provincial architect Theodor Granstedt. The first two buildings of the Uudenkaarlepyy Seminary, the work premises and the dining building, were completed in 1873. The main building was completed in 1875, and the boarding house and the rector's residence were built in 1881-1882. In 1876, a normal school was established as the seminary's practice school, to which the pupils of the elementary school were transferred. The practice school received a new building in the town centre in 1908. The seminary had a park and kitchen garden attached to it, and a wooded area to the west, and horticulture was still practised there in the 1930s.