1881-1910

The first public buildings

On entering the 1880s, Jyväskylä fulfilled all the requirements of a town. As symbols of an “autonomous” town, several public buildings were built in different parts of the town. The new town church became a symbol of congregational autonomy and the handsome red-brick building group of the teachers’ college at the southern end of Harju (the esker overlooking the town) for its part demonstrated that educational life had established its place in the town.

The value of forests rose rapidly at the close of the 1870s as a consequence of a global increase in demand and industrialisation. The accrual of wealth in the forested region of Central Finland in the 1880s also enabled the realisation of such projects which had been out of the question in the town’s early years.

A lovely, profusely ornamented restaurant building was built in the shoreline park and an observation tower called Ihantola was built on top of Harju. The hospital and fire brigade building were among the most significant of the other public buildings.

The cradle of finnish-speaking culture

The reputation of Jyväskylä as a town dedicated to Finnish-speaking schools gradually became established and recognized throughout Finland. The cultural life of the town began to flourish largely thanks to the schools and the teachers’ college. Part of the foundation for this development was provided by the short-lived newspaper “Kansa”, founded at the end of the 1860s, and its successor “Keski-Suomi.”

The incentive for these publications was aptly “the enrichment of Finnish education.” This goal was shared by the publications of K.J. Gummerus, the best known of them being “Kyläkirjaston Kuvalehti.”

Visits by touring theatrical companies struck home in Jyväskylä; two local inhabitants, who had attended these performances, Minna Canth and Robert Kiljander, became inspired by them and evolved into playwrights themselves. And, indeed, it was from their pens that the texts for the most popular plays of the end of the century came. Other Jyväskylä literary figures also renowned for their works were the poets Isa Asp, Irene Mendelin and Kaarlo Kramsu.

The local musical life, which came into being at the initiative of E.A. Hagfors, senior lecturer in music at the teachers’ college, took off in the form of modest concerts and choir performances and reached its peak in the late 1800s with several musical festivals arranged by Kansanvalistusseura in Jyväskylä.

The thousands of guests attending these events spread the concept of song and music in their home districts throughout Finland. The best known local names in music are P.J. Hannikainen and the male choir Sirkat, which was established in 1899.

Contacts with the world

With the turn of the century approaching, the daily rhythm of the small town of a little over 2,000 inhabitants began to be increasingly influenced by outside forces. One extension to the outside world was the telegraph line built in 1875 from Tampere to Jyväskylä, and another major event was the telephone installed by shopkeeper Helminen. But the completing of the railway in 1897 joining Haapamäki and Jyväskylä had the single biggest impact on the life of the town.

Until the building of the railway, goods and passenger traffic to and from Jyväskylä had depended almost entirely on steamships, which had begun to serve the town’s needs in 1856. Particularly the 1890s were the golden age of ship traffic between Jyväskylä and Lahti. The ship timetables were drawn up to coincide with the timetables of trains going to St. Petersburg and Helsinki. The winter, however, was a time of relative isolation for Jyväskylä. The train service was a welcome improvement to the situation.

The arrival of the railway influenced not only people’s travel habits, but also the internal structure and look of the town. In the early years of the railway, some 40,000 passengers per year passed through the railway station; i.e. this was a ten-fold number of people compared to the population of Jyväskylä then. The local entrepreneurs soon realised what the new market situation meant and the town’s commercial centre quickly shifted from the teachers’ college end of Kauppakatu to the Asemakatu intersection.

Likewise, Asemakatu itself came to have a distinctly commercial look. The significance of the street increased at the beginning of the new century when the handsome lycée building was built at the top of the street, to be followed a few years later by the commercial college.

A change particularly visible in the look of the town in the evenings and at night took place in 1902 when the new “electricity factory” began to deliver electric power to homes and street lamps. The building of a water supply network, a water reservoir and a pump station in the early 1910s were also signs of the development of municipal engineering.

The long-awaited extension of the area covered by the town plan was approved in 1910. The growing Jyväskylä was externally ready to face new challenges.