Look up! The Helsinki roofline has much to offer
Juhani Niilekselä has taken hundreds of pictures of Helsinki houses and their turrets
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By Antti Manninen
It may not be a city of "dreaming spires" (Oxford), or even of "topless towers" (Ilium, or Troy, according to Christopher Marlowe in Dr. Faustus), but certainly Helsinki has something to offer fans of interesting roofs and turrets.
Quite clearly one such enthusiast is Juhani Niilekselä, 68, a prolific photographer with a hobby that dates back more than half a century. Now retired, Niilekselä has painstakingly catalogued his archives of more than 7,500 photos, all transparencies.
At different times he has been taken with different subjects. The Helsinki skyline - in particular its curious towers and other details - was a source of interest in the 1970s and 1980s, from when most of the photographs here are dated.
"These represent only a tiny fraction of all of Helsinki's towers, even if we do not include churches in the collection", Niilekselä smiles. Naturally the the great bulk of his collection of slides has nothing to do with towers.
He reports that he started taking shots of the city's skyline and other architectural details from the late 1970s, when he acquired his first professional camera. Decades later, he went around checking which tower belonged to which building and the address of the house.
In so doing, he also noticed changes. "I saw that a good many of the buildings had been repainted in the intervening period in brighter colours. Often many were grey before, and they were often in worse shape than they are now."
Another change that has taken place over the last 25 years is the fashion for roof-top apartments and converted attics.
This has meant that a good many of the formerly blind towers have had new windows put in.
"People should be more willing to stop and take a look around them", says Niileskelä as a hint to the typical Helsinki-ite in a hurry, who rushes here and there without ever lifting his eyes from the pavement.
Most of the towers and turrets on the late-19th century neo-Renaissance buildings and those from the Jugendstil (Art Nouveau, National Romantic) style from the first two decades of the 20th century are to be found at the corners of streets and blocks, as the double addresses in many of these picture captions will attest.
Many are also extremely desirable addresses.
Helsingin Sanomat / Edited from an article first published in print 10.4.2005
It may not be a city of "dreaming spires" (Oxford), or even of "topless towers" (Ilium, or Troy, according to Christopher Marlowe in Dr. Faustus), but certainly Helsinki has something to offer fans of interesting roofs and turrets.
Quite clearly one such enthusiast is Juhani Niilekselä, 68, a prolific photographer with a hobby that dates back more than half a century. Now retired, Niilekselä has painstakingly catalogued his archives of more than 7,500 photos, all transparencies.
At different times he has been taken with different subjects. The Helsinki skyline - in particular its curious towers and other details - was a source of interest in the 1970s and 1980s, from when most of the photographs here are dated.
"These represent only a tiny fraction of all of Helsinki's towers, even if we do not include churches in the collection", Niilekselä smiles. Naturally the the great bulk of his collection of slides has nothing to do with towers.
He reports that he started taking shots of the city's skyline and other architectural details from the late 1970s, when he acquired his first professional camera. Decades later, he went around checking which tower belonged to which building and the address of the house.
In so doing, he also noticed changes. "I saw that a good many of the buildings had been repainted in the intervening period in brighter colours. Often many were grey before, and they were often in worse shape than they are now."
Another change that has taken place over the last 25 years is the fashion for roof-top apartments and converted attics.
This has meant that a good many of the formerly blind towers have had new windows put in.
"People should be more willing to stop and take a look around them", says Niileskelä as a hint to the typical Helsinki-ite in a hurry, who rushes here and there without ever lifting his eyes from the pavement.
Most of the towers and turrets on the late-19th century neo-Renaissance buildings and those from the Jugendstil (Art Nouveau, National Romantic) style from the first two decades of the 20th century are to be found at the corners of streets and blocks, as the double addresses in many of these picture captions will attest.
Many are also extremely desirable addresses.
Helsingin Sanomat / Edited from an article first published in print 10.4.2005
ANTTI MANNINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
antti.manninen@hs.fi