The allocation of building lots for villas

Following the opening of the health spa, a special company was formed to allow villas to be built on the higher ground to the northeast. A carefully worded contract was drawn up between the building company and the health spa. Instead of charging rent on the lease of the land, a road toll was to be enforced. Other conditions were made: firstly during the spa season, rooms were to be used or rented out only to guests of the spa. Secondly, as the spa company was under an obligation in its lease to develop the parkscape, and -without private investment to help – would have gone bankrupt, owners were given deadlines to bring in topsoil and plant flowerbeds. Thirdly, vegetable gardens were strictly prohibited.
Fourthly, initially fences were not allowed, as the lots were still classified as parkland; and finally new villas were expected to be well presented and maintained.

Lots were sold and named in the traditional method used by the City, allocating to them name of a flower or animal. The first lot to be sold for building was called 'Päivänkakkara' meaning daisy, and its villa completed in 1839. In the 1850's it was bought by the Kaivohuone restaurant manager, Louis Kleineh and since then has been known as the 'Kleineh's house'. The house, said to have been haunted, was occupied by a British monitoring commissioner after the last war and, according to the story, this was the last time the ghost, referred to as 'the lady in white', was seen by the terrified English parlour maid. The villa, now no.7 on Itäinen Puistotie, still exists and at present is occupied by the Netherlands Ambassador. An illustrated history of this building and its restoration was published by the Netherlands Embassy in 2001.

Villa Rauhaniemi

The third lot of land sold was quite large and called 'Lumme', meaning water lily. It was bought by Princess Zaneida Yusupoff, a well-known celebrity in social circles and member of one of the wealthiest families in St. Petersburg. She was also a guest and shareholder of the health spa company, which raised its credibility and social significance tremendously. The villa she built was called 'Rauhaniemi' (headland of peace) and was completed in 1844. It was built directly where the British Residence now stands. There was a strong rumour circulating at the time that the Princess bought the lot because it was so near to the island of Suomenlinna – site of Helsinki's offshore naval fortress -where her lover Isakoff, a demoted captain, was billeted at the time.

A Russian architect designed the first drawings for the villa, with final construction drawings being completed by the architect A.F. Granstedt. The four-storey villa, characterised at that time as 'a monstrous extravaganza in the eastern tradition', had roof terraces and elongated arched windows. There were 15 rooms and one large salon. The rooms, adorned with chandeliers and French wallpaper, were decorated with gypsum ornamentation to almost distasteful excess. The garden housed a smaller villa, and a stable building in the neo-gothic style. This stable, containing four stalls, a carriage shed, one room downstairs and one above, still exists today at the open-air museum of Seurasaari in Western Helsinki, where it was brought in 1918.

The villa was eventually sold and changed hands several times, first to Captain Topelius in 1869, then to Consul Borgstrom in 1874. In 1878 it was sold again to the manufacturer F .W. Gronqvist and, during his ownership, the City Authorities took over the whole of Kaivopuisto, reducing the size of the lot by dissolving a third of it back into the park.

From the mid-19th century Helsinki began to attract those people interested in new business opportunities. German merchants moved from Lubeck to Finland, among them Frank Stockmann and Eduard Paulig, whose businesses are still in operation today.

In 1898 Karl Stockmann, who had married Gronqvist's daughter in 1890, moved into the house with his wife to join his father-in-law, who was by then a widower. Karl Stockmann bought the house and grounds from Gronqvist in 1908. He divided the land into three plots - now the sites of the British Embassy, the British Ambassador's Residence and the French Embassy, and built his own house, designed by Lars Sonck, on the plot now occupied by the British Embassy.