1941-1980

Territorial expansion and powerful growth

Jyväskylä made it through World War II with relatively little damage. The Soviets did try to bomb the armament factories, but they were off the mark. The transformation of the armaments industry to meet peacetime needs was a great success in Jyväskylä; the gun factory began to make paper machines in the 1950s and the rifle factory started to turn out tractors. Valmet’s paper machine factory became the flagship of the town’s industries with the entire world as its marketplace.

The town developed rapidly in the post-war years. This was guaranteed merely by the increase in the town’s population from the 1941 figure of approx. 10,000 to the 1980 figure of over 60,000! In practice, this growth was evident in the huge number of new buildings. On the other hand, just about all of the wooden houses disappeared from the town centre and blocks of high-rise buildings took their place, and entirely new suburbs were built.

Some of them were located at distances of several kilometres from the town centre. The new building projects were made possible by a large-scale territorial fusion in 1965, following which the area covered by Jyväskylä increased nearly four-fold.

In 1960, Jyväskylä finally became the administrative capital of the new Province of Central Finland, which had a population of 250,000 – the dream originally expressed over a hundred years ago finally came true. In practice, however, Jyväskylä had been the ex officio centre of the province throughout its history.

Another equally significant and long-term project was the transformation of the Pedagogical Institute into the University of Jyväskylä in 1966.

Alvar Aalto’s town

Known as a school town, the Athens of Finland, Jyväskylä has enjoyed other appellations as well during the course of the years. It had become an industrial town already before the war years. Jyväskylä began to attain more credibility as a town of culture with the introduction of an event dedicated to culture in 1955, later known as Jyväskylä Summer.

1969 was when Jyväskylä Winter was arranged for the first time to serve as a counterforce, and subsequently to supplement Jyväskylä Summer.

Modern architecture became Jyväskylä’s new international ace when architect Alvar Aalto’s university buildings, among them the main building, the training school, library and indoor swimming pool, and the town hall of Säynätsalo, were completed in the 1950s.

The following decades saw the completion of the Central Finland Museum, Viitatorni Tower, Alvar Aalto Museum, and the buildings forming the town’s administrative block. As its population grew, it was no longer far-fetched to speak of Jyväskylä as a town of services and commerce, and as the number of events arranged in the town increased, Jyväskylä also evolved into a significant tourist destination.