History

At the end of the 19th century, Tuusula began to stand out amidst other rural municipalities of the Uusimaa region. When the Russian Empire strengthened its defenses on the southern Finnish shores, Hyrylä Garrison was built near the village center. The garrison provided builders with numerous jobs, increased trade in the area, and prompted migration into Tuusula from as far as Russia, once the Helsinki – St. Petersburg railway was completed in 1870.

The Finnish use of land and business were liberated in 1879. The landowners of Tuusula began not only selling farm product and timber, but also plots of land, which were especially popular among the Helsinki-based officials and businessmen who built their villas on these properties. Some even moved to them permanently.

At the end of the 19th century, many Finnish-minded artist groups began feeling a longing for the Finnish countryside. Tuusula was the nearest Finnish-speaking municipality to Helsinki. Due to its beautiful scenery and easy access to the shore of Lake Tuusula, the writer Juhani Aho and his artist-wife Venny Soldan-Brofeldt moved into the Vårbacka house in 1897, located in the lands of the Järvenpää Manor and owned by the Westermarck family. They were followed by painters Eero Järnefelt and Pekka Halonen, and soon even the composer Jean Sibelius and his family. Around the same time, the poet J.H. Erkko settled to live on the southern side of the lake. The artist residences of Pekka Halonen, Eero Järnefelt and J.H. Erkko – Halosenniemi, Suviranta and Erkkola, respectively – were built in 1901-1902, and Sibelius’ Ainola followed their completion in 1904.

In the progression of the 19th century, especially with the pressures of the era of Russification of Finland, Finnish intellectuals came up with an idea of bringing the people together to create a national Finnish identity. In that spirit, the land was to be developed financially and spiritually. The end of the century saw the rise of many national movements, such as public education work, societies for young people, sobriety, and sports, as well as the labor- and women’s rights movements.

Vuorineuvos K.A. Paloheimo bought the estate of Kallio-Kuninkala in the transition of the 19th and 20th century. Following the example of his agriculturalist brother, Senator H.G. Paloheimo, he began modernizing the manners of farming and animal husbandry at the estate. He had Ayrshire-livestock brought in from Scotland, bought horses and sheep, and even attempted growing wild rice. The conservation of the estate’s fields was improved with the region’s first brushwood-based method of underground draining.

A large orchard of over two thousand apple trees was planted around the house and in the nearby fields, and many of the unique species are still, to this day, found in the Kuninkala garden. K.A. Paloheimo nurtured the fish stock of Lake Tuusula in numerous ways, for example by planting in zander and tench.

In 1935, ownership of the Kallio-Kuninkala estate was given to K.A. Paloheimo’s youngest son, Yrjö A. Paloheimo, who was an American citizen at the time. After the war, in 1946 Yrjö Paloheimo founded the Kerttu Paloheimo Orphanage Foundation, which he named after his mother. Its purpose was to cooperate with the Save the Children -organization to provide an agricultural boarding school education for orphans of the war. The boys’ school of agriculture and gardening began its operations at Kallio-Kuninkala in 1947, and in the beginning K.A. Paloheimo served as its principal. The year-long vocational education was mainly for boys between the ages 14-18 and involved both theoretical and practical studies. Yrjö A. Paloheimo supported the school’s operations financially and delivered machinery and sports equipment for its use from the United States. In addition to that, the school received some amount of funding from the state. The school’s teaching positions were filled by experienced teachers from the nearby Normal School of Agriculture, which had been founded in the lands of the Järvenpää estate that was transferred to state ownership in 1925.

The school of agriculture and gardening operated in Kallio-Kuninkala until 1965, teaching a total of 360 students in its time of activity. A memorial plaque for the school stands in the courtyard, attached to a natural stone that was lifted from the middle of Ristinummentie. Later, the premises of Kallio-Kuninkala were rented for the Congregation Institution as spaces of education and housing, and afterwards a catering restaurant operated in the main building. On several summers at the end of the 1970s, the Art-Tuusulanjärvi society organized an art event, displaying the works of tens of artists in the park and the barn. Music performances were held at the event as well. In 1987 the buildings of Kallio-Kuninkala underwent a complete renovation, turning them into the Sibelius Academy Musical Centre. After the founding of the University of the Arts, as well as the unification of three universities of arts, Kallio-Kuninkala now functions as the Järvenpää campus of the University of the Arts Helsinki, providing education- and practice spaces for all of the University’s units.

Ala-Kuninkala, a red villa relocated from Syväranta in Tuusula (now known as the Lotta museum) to the proximity of Järvenpääntie in 1918, was in the Paloheimo family’s private use until the year 2000.

Around the time he gained ownership of the estate of Kallio-Kuninkala, K.A. Paloheimo (1862-1949) became the first chief executive director of the fire insurance company Pohjola. The name Brander was changed to Paloheimo on 12.5.1906, the 100th birthday of J.W. Snellman, a date when many personal names were changed from other languages to a Finnish form in the process of Finnicization. Aside from the insurance company Pohjola, he was also involved in establishing other Finnish-minded insurance companies, banks and factories.

Olli Paloheimo was Jaeger Colonel in the army, and at the end of the war served as the Commander of Eastern Karelia’s military government. After the war, he acted as the CEO of H.G. Paloheimo Oy and its subsidiaries, later gaining the Finnish honorary title of Vuorineuvos (Mining councelor).