Länsi-Herttoniemen pientaloalue (Småhusområdet i västra Hertonäs)

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 Länsi-Herttoniemi small-house area is an exceptionally well-preserved residential area from the post-war reconstruction period in its town plan layout, building stock and setting. The unity of the area is based on the natural environment, garden design, the street space, and residential buildings of a similar scale, which were implemented to individual designs.

The Länsi-Herttoniemi residential area is bounded on the west by the Herttoniemi apartment block area and on the east by Itäväylä. Carefully fitted to and built on varied rocky terrain, the residential area comprises 120 small houses, a few terraced houses and a school building, dating from the late 1940s to the 1950s.

The area has two block parks, abundant natural tree cover and undeveloped rock outcrops. Plots are bordered by hedges and terraced retaining walls. Lush gardens and street lines that follow the contours of the terrain create a varied setting. Under the guidance of the building regulations, the residential buildings as constructed show individual variation, including in the placement of porches and in the facade materials, which include wooden cladding, render or brick.

In the western part of the detached house area, along Karhutie, there are two facing terraced houses completed in 1949, designed by the architects Jorma Järvi and Toivo Jäntti. The wooden parts of the dwellings, which are separated by fire walls in the terraced houses, were supplied by Puutalo Oy.

The two-storey school completed in 1952 on the western edge of the area is scaled to suit the detached house area. The building, whose main entrance has a dramatically shaped concrete canopy, is one of the high-quality schools designed by the architect Jorma Järvi.

History

Herttoniemi manor and its land areas passed to the City of Helsinki in 1919. In the latter part of the 19th century, villa and working-class housing had developed on the shoreline areas of the manor in Länsi-Herttoniemi. The central parts of the peninsula were mainly forested land, dominated by rocky ridges.

Birger Brunila, town plan architect of Helsinki, drew up a layout plan for Länsi-Herttoniemi in 1940. It corresponds in its general features to the plot division and street network that were realised. In the plans, Länsi-Herttoniemi was part of a larger residential area, in which the different building types, apartment, row and detached houses, were designed with the workforce of the Herttoniemi industrial area in mind. After the Second World War the area was incorporated into Helsinki and the town plan was confirmed. Garden-city-style yard plans for detached-house plots were prepared by Elisabeth Koch, garden adviser of the City of Helsinki. Länsi-Herttoniemi became one of the finest and most distinctive ensembles of Koch's output. The wooded character of the area was reflected in the streets named after forest animals.

The first detached houses in Länsi-Herttoniemi were completed in 1946, and the area was mainly built up in the 1950s. Plots were leased mainly by people belonging to the working class and the middle class. The buildings were designed mainly by master builders, and there were few houses built from standard drawings. The standard drawings for Ilveste type houses were prepared by, among others, architect Veikko Leistén.

The apartment block area bordering the small-house area of Länsi-Herttoniemi was built in the 1950s. Construction of the eastern motorway known as Itäväylä, which adjoins the small-house area, began in the 1950s and it was completed in 1962.