In mid-June the covid restrictions were eased and travel abroad was again permitted. On the first weekend of July I and a colleague booked cheap ferry tickets and hotels, boarded a ship and started downing gin tonics.
The distance between the port and the hotel was a few kilometres. My colleague wanted to take a taxi, I wanted to save money, as I still had quite a lot of Finland left to tour. We had it my way and started going by foot.
And once again like so very often before, I spotted something of interest.
It looked very old and very much abandoned. I immediately took a screen shot of the map to save my location for later detective work.
But the detective work proved very little to start with. The house is apparently an ordinary residential house with the landlord’s apartment on the first floor a storage room, laundry and sheds in the basement and two apartments on the second floor. A third floor with two more apartments was added in 1930.
The building was listed as a protected monument in 2003, but has been empty at least since 2007. That was when two large concrete lions cast on the sides of the porch on the back yard of the building were stolen.
There have been different companies promising renovations at least since 2007 and also attempts at demolishing the building and constructing high rise tower blocks instead of it. The authorities haven’t given in and so the building still stands.