Pohjola Insurance Building
An insurance office guarded by trolls, bears and squirrels carved from grey stone — Finland inventing its own face for a new century.
At a glance
The Pohjola Insurance Building stands at Aleksanterinkatu 44 in central Helsinki, built in 1899–1901 by the young firm of Gesellius, Lindgren and Saarinen. It was one of the firm’s first commercial buildings and one of the clearest statements of Finnish National Romanticism: a hard, fortress-like front of rough-hewn soapstone, red granite and serpentine, crowded with carved animals and figures from the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic. On the street corner a tower rises to a roof shaped like a pinecone. The building reads as a small castle of stone in the middle of the modern city.
Key facts
- Architects: Gesellius, Lindgren & Saarinen
- Built: 1899–1901
- Style: Finnish National Romanticism
- Materials: rough soapstone, red granite and serpentine
- Entrance sculpture: attributed to Hilda Flodin, a pupil of Rodin
- Address: Aleksanterinkatu 44 / Mikonkatu 3, Helsinki
History
The Pohjola Insurance Company, a fire insurer founded in 1891, held a competition for a new headquarters that would also house a second company, with the firm condition that the building be of fire-resistant stone. The young partnership of Herman Gesellius, Armas Lindgren and Eliel Saarinen was chosen to design the exterior and the main interiors.
Built in 1899–1901, it was one of the trio’s first major commercial commissions, and it announced a generation determined to give Finland an architecture of its own, drawn from native stone and native myth.
The building later passed to a major Finnish bank and, through a chain of mergers, to Nordea. It remains one of the most photographed facades in Helsinki.
What you see
The walls are of grey soapstone left deliberately rough, banded with red granite and green serpentine. Across them runs a carved menagerie: squirrels and vegetation, bears — the company’s emblem — on the pilasters, and devils, monsters and trolls flanking the main entrance, whose sculpture is attributed to Hilda Flodin. The names of the two insurance companies, both taken from the Kalevala, are cut into the stone.
The corner tower with its pinecone roof anchors the composition. Critics at the time read the building as fiercely “Finnish-naturalistic”; its massing also echoes American architects such as Richardson and Sullivan, whose work the firm admired.
Practical information
- The building is an office address and is generally appreciated from the street.
- The carved entrance and the corner tower are the photographic highlights.
- Time needed: a short stop on a walk through central Helsinki.
Getting there
Aleksanterinkatu is the main commercial street of central Helsinki, a few minutes’ walk from the central railway station and the Senate Square.
Nearby
- Helsinki Central Station by Eliel Saarinen.
- The National Museum of Finland, by the same firm.
- The Senate Square and Helsinki Cathedral.
Sources
- Wikipedia (EN), “Pohjola Insurance building”.
- Museum and architectural literature on Gesellius, Lindgren & Saarinen.
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