Kaisaniemen puisto ja kasvitieteellinen puutarha (Kajsaniemiparken och botaniska trädgården)

English translation (from the Finnish)

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Description

Kaisaniemen puisto is the first public city park in the capital. In the north-eastern part of the park, the Botanic Garden of the University of Helsinki has, in addition to scientific teaching and research, been of major importance to the country's garden culture.

Kaisaniemi already appears in the town plan of 1812. The park's first building phase is based on C.L. Engel's plans of 1827. The park has been renovated often. According to the plans of city gardener Svante Olsson, architect Bertel Jung and architect Birger Brunila, the old landscape park with its network of paths was renewed in the early decades of the 20th century, and on the site of the earlier swan pond there is now an architectural water basin.

The main axis of the present park, running from east to west, is formed by a birch avenue planted in the 1910s, on the north side of which are the tennis courts. A north–south road connects Rautatientori with the restaurant built in 1839, originally located at the tip of Kaisaniemi, which is one of the oldest in the city. Alongside the road is a sports field dating from the 19th century.

An area bordering the northern end of Unioninkatu has been separated from the public park for the University of Helsinki's botanical department and its garden, which has been open to the public since 1833. The buildings of the botanical garden include the garden's large iron-and-glass palm house with its wing buildings, dating from the late 19th century, and a Jugend-style institute building dating from 1903. In the botanical garden, plants are displayed in groups that show their relationships, following the practice of the garden's founding period. The garden has the status of a national collection.

To the north, the park borders Kaisaniemenlahti, along whose shore road single-storey Empire-style buildings have been relocated.

History

Governor H.H. Boije leased land from the city of Helsinki in 1763 along Hämeen maantie in Porvarinhaa. He established a garden in Haka, which passed to the gardener Erik Edbom in 1773. In 1812, when Helsinki became the capital and J.A. Ehrenström's reconstruction town plan was completed, Edbom's garden was designated as a public park of the city.

Before the land filling required for the railway was carried out, the park was located on a peninsula. Engel's plans of 1827 gave it two parts: a regular promenade garden cut through by straight rows of trees, and an "English" landscape garden with winding paths and ponds. The ponds were remnants of a cove of Kluuvin lahti.

The park's name, Kaisaniemi, derives from a restaurant that Catharina Wahllund had built at the tip of the peninsula in 1839. Over the decades, a large part of the park's western edge has been left under the railway yard, but the restaurant has survived. The construction of Kaisaniemenkatu in the 1910s narrowed the park's eastern edge and separated one corner from it, Varsapuistikko. The plans of Bertel Jung and Svante Olsson from 1911 were implemented south of the botanic garden, except for Birger Brunila's decision in 1925 to replace the ornamental water features with tennis and playing fields.

The botanic garden of the Turku Academy was destroyed in the Turku fire of 1827. The fire accelerated Nikolai I's plan to move the university to Helsinki. Only four months after the fire, a site had been allocated for the new botanic garden in the northeastern part of Kaisaniemi park, at the northern end of Unioninkatu. Franz Faldermann, chief gardener of the Pietari botanical garden, designed the ground plan of the Kaisaniemi garden and sketched the drawings of the greenhouse building.

The first wooden greenhouse was completed in 1832, and the garden was opened to the public in 1833. The wooden main building was completed in 1832 on a hill in the middle of the area, according to plans made in Pietari. The building was raised in the 1850s according to plans by Jean Wiik. Later the main building was demolished, and a two-storey residential building was built of logs at the far end of the area; it was thoroughly renovated in 1979. The new main building of the botanical institute and museum, designed by architect Gustaf Nyström, was completed in 1903 on the site of the old main building. In addition to teaching spaces and collections, the building housed a library and the apartments of the professor of botany, the caretaker and the stoker. The renovation of the building was completed in 2003.

The garden's earliest buildings have not survived. The palm house designed by architect Gustaf Nyström was completed in 1889 on the site of the large greenhouse; the wing buildings were completed in 1896. The garden and greenhouses were thoroughly renovated in 1996-1998. The garden became an operating unit of the Luonnontieteellinen keskusmuseo and received the status of a national collection in 2004. After the university's botany department moved to Viikki in 2002, the plant museum remained in the main building; it is open to researchers.

In the part of the garden facing Kaisaniemenranta, three empire-style wooden houses dismantled from Punavuori in Helsinki were erected in 1986-1991, beside the small empire house drawn by Jean Wiik in 1843.