The book, which revolves around Käpyläinen housing stock company Kävy, reflects the entire recent history of Helsinki, and quietly manifests the preservation of the old building stock.
The book the back cover already tells the essentials: “How the residents defended their homes when the evildoers wanted to overrun the entire area.”
Nonfiction writer who has lived in Puu-Käpylä for almost 40 years Elina Saksalan city district book published in late autumn 2023 Käpy one hundred years – From the workers' potty nights to middle-class garden parties becomes part of an important string of pearls of history books about Helsinki's neighborhoods.
Little boy Pentti Elone milking in the field in Käpylä after the mid-1930s.
At the same time, the book is a manifesto against short-sighted urban planning and in favor of people-oriented official and political decision-making.
Still on the cover, there is a close-up of the red hut, Puu-Käpylä as we know it. Already with the first aerial view of the inner pages, we fly far back to 1550, to the mouth of the Vantaanjoki, where the core of Helsinki, founded by Kustaa Vaasa, was located.
However, we will soon return closer to the inner pages, directly to the heart of Puu-Käpylä. Follow details too detailed for easy reading: meeting minutes and lists of names.
There is a reason for this: A cone for a hundred years is on one level the anniversary book of Käpy, a housing cooperative founded in the early 1920s. The names belong to people who have played a key role in building and preserving the Garden District.
The view from Nyyrikintie 6. Nyyrikintie and Metsolantie in the foreground, Akseli Toivonen field in the background. The picture is from the late 1920s.
Germany has gone through house books, meeting minutes, archives, literature and newspaper clippings for a hundred years and interviewed Kävy residents from different eras and trade unions. Diligent work creates a solid foundation for the book: instead of a cursory glance, it is a historical study based on original sources.
Saksala's book shows that Puu-Käpylä is not a single and detached piece, but an organic part of the whole Helsinki-sized game. Decision-making is built into the fabric of every site plan. Money and politics are in the structures of every house that rises in the landscape or is demolished from it.
A woman pulled baby carriages in front of Käpylä's labor house in 1950. Various events are still organized in the house.
The book reflects the recent history of Helsinki more broadly. Saksala chronologically traces the development of Puu-Käpylä and the whole of Käpylä, from the era of 72 workers' apartments and Hellakakluun huts, through the wars and the threat of demolition of Puu-Käpylä to the present day.
Puu-Käpylän construction began after the First World War and Finland's independence.
To alleviate the housing shortage for the working class, Helsingin Kansanasunnot oy was founded in 1917. The company began construction in 1920, and in the same year it was joined by two new cooperatives, the housing joint-stock company Kävyn and the housing joint-stock company Käpylä.
Puu-Käpylä began to appear in the fields of Laitakaupunki.
Before the winter war, the second big phase of the construction of Käpylä started. In 1938, the city agreed with the Helsinki Housing Authority HAKA on the construction of 600 apartment buildings. 400 of them were completed before the outbreak of the winter war.
Helsinki's first neighborhood association Käpylä-Seura was founded in 1940. The Soviet Union bombed almost 20 Käpylä houses to pieces, but the neighborhood continued to grow.
Puu-Käpylä got a funk next to it when apartments and services were built in Helsinki for the Olympics. The
wars interrupted the project for more than 10 years. At the corner of Osmontie and Koskelantie, there was a shop and restaurant building completed as part of Olympiakylä in 1940.
The Olympic Village was designed for the male athletes of the Helsinki Games. After the Olympics were moved to 1952 due to the wars, a new Kisakylä was also built in Käpylä, now south of Koskelantie.
In 1948, “Perhis”, a four-story building intended for large families, was completed on the west side of Mäkelänkatu. His own book was published about Perhis, Timo Puumalainen Perhis – The story of the lives of the inhabitants of Perhis in 2010.
in the 1950s due to the lack of repair capital, Puu-Käpylä started to deteriorate. Suburbs were built. Puu-Käpylä was going to be demolished and the place was to be built more compactly like Pihlajamäki, Pukinmäki, Vuosaari, Myllypuro and Kontula.
Kari Varvikko says in his book Vallila of wooden houses (Publisher Laaksonen 2019), how the public authorities and the Grinders wanted to demolish Puu-Vallila in the 1970s, and how the persistent resistance of the residents finally led to the preservation and renovation of the garden district.
The debate about preserving or dismantling Puu-Käpylä was also intense and long. Finally, in 1971 Puu-Käpylä was protected. This is how it avoided, for example, the fate of the demolished Puu-Pasila.
Another Käpylä book published in 2023 also tells about the community spirit of the residents and the effectiveness of mass power, Sinika Vainion It's better with a flock – Community spirit Asunto-osuuskunta Käpylä before and now. Asunto-osuuskunta Käpylä was founded in the same year as Käpy in 1920.
8,000 people live in the current middle-class Käpylä.
The rising standard of living had brought television to Käpylä as well. The photo shows Lauri Hallasaari's living room at Tapiolantie 3 in Käpylä in 1967.
In the initial writing Saksala tells the reader that during the research work, he noticed a certain point: “Everything has changed – a lot still seems to remain and repeat itself.”
There were dozens of cinemas in Helsinki in the 1960s. Pictured is Kino Käpylä, which started in 1958, in Pohjolanaukio around 1960.
A lot seems to repeat itself. That sentence makes you think about today's urban planning, for example compaction construction, demolishing entire groups of houses to make way for a new one.
Do we see the great arcs of history and the small values hidden in their shadow any more clearly than those who in the 1960s wanted to demolish Puu-Käpylä or a little later Puu-Vallila?
Are we any different from those forces whose most visible footprints of the world of values roped into their time were piles of stones exposed after the dust clouds settled? All that was left were the photos, which you can look at, for example Antti Manninen from a classic book Demolished houses – One hundred stories from Helsinki (HS books 2005).
A cone for a hundred years -book searches for and finds the original roots and identity of Helsinki and neighboring municipalities, which is constantly and violently expanding. It should be mentioned as parallel works Laura Kolben Kulosaari – a dream of a better future (Otava 1988), photographer Matti Koivumäki picture book Puu-Vallila's face (Helsinki-Seura 2001) or Jari Auvinen Puu-Pasila – Idyll along the railway (Publisher Laaksonen), among many others.
The tram was renovated on Pohjolankatu in Käpylä in 1927.
Käpylä tram K turning from Pohjolankatu to Mäkelänkatu around 1950.
Espoo and Vantaa, for example, should be mentioned Jussi Helamaan Once upon a time there was Espoo Garden City (Parus Verus 2021) and Jukka Hakon delivered by Louhela – Human-sized (Kellastupa 2008).
Although you can mourn the lost world with a cotton handkerchief with a lace edge, the greatest value of the books is not in the nostalgia. Those exemplary notes on the history of urban planning, where and how we got here, partly through mistakes and partly through successes. A cone for a hundred years -book belongs to the latter.
Elina Saksala: Käpy one hundred years – From working-class potty nights to middle-class garden parties, NTAMO 2023, 156 pages, 31.90 euros. The pictures in the story are partly from the book, partly from the archives of the Helsinki City Museum.
On Tuesday, January 9, a writer's meeting at 6 p.m. in Käpylä library, Väinölänkatu 5: Elina Saksalan's Käpy for one hundred years – from working-class potlucks to middle-class garden parties and Sinikka Vainio Porukalla better – Community housing cooperative in Käpylä before and now.
In the summer, the garden district of Puu-Käpylä looks its greenest. Apple trees had been planted in the garden at Osmontie 20. Photo from 1964.
Read more: An unknown treasure is hidden behind this door – In a basement in Espoo, the rock dream was lived in a way that the current generation can only dream of
Read more: In the middle of the forest, a fairy-tale village of apartment buildings, loved by children, arose – A form of living was born, which those who experienced it remember with fondness
Read more: One of the big mistakes of the 1970s was the great wave of demolitions, and now the houses of the 70s are facing the same fate
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