Story

Architect Eliel Saarinen (1873–1950) was just 31 years old when he won the design competition for Helsinki Central Railway Station in 1904. However, due to various delays, the station was not inaugurated until 15 years later, in 1919. During its construction, the station bore witness to Finland’s transformation from an autonomous grand duchy of the Russian Empire into an independent state. At the same time, the railway station became a central landmark and focal point for the capital of an independent Finland.

In Eliel Saarinen’s original design, the station’s tower was envisioned with a sharp, pointed top, similar to the National Museum. As the design progressed, the tower evolved, and illuminated clocks facing all four cardinal directions were added. In the 1920s, Helsinki was far from brightly lit, so the city’s tallest tower provided a way to display time, even in the dark. Initially, the mechanism of the three-meter-wide clock faces were wound manually. In the 1930s, the clock mechanisms were electrified, and in 1980, the clocks were connected to a quartz-controlled central clock.

During the First World War, the unfinished railway station served as a military hospital. In the Second World War, the Lotta Svärd volunteers conducted Helsinki’s air surveillance from the clock tower. The railyard and tracks suffered from bombings, but the station building itself escaped major damage. A dramatic moment occurred on December 19, 1940, when the war-weary President Kyösti Kallio passed away from a heart attack in the arms of Marshal Mannerheim outside the Presidential Waiting Room. Another dramatic event took place in June 1950, when a fire, producing a threatening cloud of smoke, destroyed the station’s attic, roof, and platform canopy.