Helsinki Central Station
Saarinen won the competition in 1904 with a National Romantic design but simplified it during construction. The result is a building in Finnish granite with a tall clock tower and four large figures holding lamps at the entrance. The station marks the path from National Romanticism towards modernism.
At the turn of the century Finland was a grand duchy under Russia, and the new central station in Helsinki became a question of national identity. The 1904 competition was won by Eliel Saarinen with a design in the National Romantic style, with echoes of medieval castles and rich natural ornament. The design was criticised by younger architects who wanted a more rational building, and Saarinen reworked it in a more austere direction. Construction lasted from about 1909 to 1919 and was delayed by the First World War, and the station opened to traffic at roughly the same time as Finland became independent. The façades were clad in Finnish granite, while the structure and vaults inside the building were largely made of reinforced concrete, which made it possible to create the large, airy halls.
The station has an asymmetrical composition, with the tall clock tower beside the great main entrance. The entrance takes the form of a huge arch, flanked on each side by two granite figures by the sculptor Emil Wikström holding spherical lamps. Behind the arch lies the ticket hall, covered by a high barrel vault. The building has several wings for restaurants, waiting rooms and administration, among them a special waiting room for the head of state. Details in copper, granite and wrought iron have been simplified into geometric forms. Saarinen also designed the furnishings and lighting, and the large windows let daylight flood into the halls. It is a building in which massive granite and modern concrete meet, and in which the weight of National Romanticism gradually gives way to the clarity of modernism.
The station became one of Helsinki’s best-known buildings, and the lantern bearers have become symbols of the city, appearing in countless contexts. Saarinen emigrated to the United States in the 1920s, after attracting great attention with his second-placed entry in the Chicago Tribune Tower competition, and there became head of the Cranbrook Academy of Art. His tower design influenced American skyscrapers in the interwar years. The station has been renovated and adapted for increasing traffic but has retained its character. It belongs to the same Nordic National Romanticism as Stockholm City Hall and the Engelbrekt Church, and architects in Sweden and Finland followed each other’s work closely. The building shows how National Romanticism changed into a simpler, more monumental form just before the breakthrough of classicism and modernism in the Nordic countries.