Another small rural village, another former commercial building abandoned. As you clearly can see, it’s a former co-operative grocery store. And how do I know this. Well that’s because it looks like this one. They are definitely drawn by the same architect, Erkki Huttunen, in the late 1930’s or early 1940’s.
What I found rather strange was its location. It was by a strangely wide road, which was a bit aside from everything else in the village. The road ran alongside the main road and led to a dead end.
I had to do quite some digging to find out what happened here, but luckily Facebook groups with old people remembering long lost times are a real treasure.
Until the early 1960’s this was the main road through the village. In the early 1960’s a new road was constructed with a bridge over the railroad behind me in the photo above. That didn’t put the co-operative off, as the lower annex was constructed in 1966.
Back then this was still a thriving street. There were lots of stores, even the restaurant run by the state alcohol company was right next to the large co-operative store. But slowly the bridge started changing things. The municipal centre shifted to the other side of the railroad, where new, larger and more modern business buildings were being built.
The co-operative stayed in the old premises until the 1980’s. After that it hosted several small businesses, but the area was getting emptier and emptier. The building housing the state alcohol company was demolished around 2010, and by then many more former stores were down too. The former co-operative was still hosting some actors.
In fact there was still some acitivity in the 1960’s wing by the time of my visit, but the old one was empty. And the municipality had plans to demolish the whole complex.