Niittykumpu
Niittykumpu or Ängskulla is a district of Espoo, a city in Finland. The districts belongs to the major district of Suur-Tapiola. The district, partly located on the eastern lands of the former Gräsa manor, started developing along with the rest of southern Espoo in the 1930s when the street Jorvaksentie was completed. The first significant construction phase of Niittykumpu happened during the 1960s and 1970s, when a large number of terraced houses were built in the area because of rapid growth of the city of Espoo. Construction slowed down during the early 1990s depression in Finland. Construction picked up pace again in the 2000s and increased even further during the construction of the Länsimetro transport line.
The oldest lower stage primary school, the Niittykumpu school, is located in Niittykumpu. The automobile dealership concentration around the street Merituulentie has been called "the automobile street of Espoo", even though some of the dealerships have slowly moved away from Niittykumpu because of further construction of Länsimetro.
At the turn from 2021 to 2022 Niittykumpu had a population of 7,085 and a population density of 3,374 people per square kilometre. Niittykumpu is served by the Länsimetro line belonging to the trunk routes of the Helsinki Regional Transport Authority, and the Niittykumpu metro station is located in connection with the metro centre located in southern part of the district and the shopping centre Niitty.
Geography
Niittykumpu is bordered by Mankkaa in the north, Olari to the west, Tapiola and Pohjois-Tapiola to the east and Haukilahti and Westend to the south. The Gräsanoja stream is located on the western border of the district.The street Merituulentie divides the zoning areas of the district in a north-south direction: to the south of the street are the centre of Niittykumpu as well as the areas of Niittykallio and Niittymaa, which mainly consist of apartment buildings and business premises. To the north of the street is the residential district of Tontunmäki consisting of small houses, on the eastern border of which is located an area of low two-storey apartment buildings belonging to the zoning area of Koivu-Mankkaa. The large industrial area of Orion is also located in the zoning area of Koivu-Mankkaa. The industrial area of Olarinluoma is part of the district of Olari according to the district division of Espoo, even though in the statistical unit division it is located in Niittykumpu.
History
The first inhabitants and the Gräsa manor
The medieval village of Gräsa was located on both sides of the Gräsanoja stream in the Olarinluoma area around the current Olari church. In 1540 the village consisted of two houses and a frälse, which had been founded in the previous century between 1450 and 1460. The old lot and the buildings of the Gräsa manor were located on a hill to the east of the Gräsanoja stream, which was still suitable for water transport at the time, at the site of the current Olari church.The Gräsa manor was originally one of the most significant manors in Espoo, and it was called "the old frälse" of the area. The manor was known as Haldensböle after the man named Halden who controlled it in the 15th century. It is also known as the Olarsby horsestead. By the start of the 17th century, the houses in Olarsby had been annexed to the Gräsa seat farm. For almost its entire history, Gräsa was controlled by the Hammarstierna family. The frälse was revoked in 1683 and the manor became a horsestead. Gräsa changed owners repeatedly starting from the late 18th century. Landowners in Espoo founded many new croft houses on their lands in the 18th century, which were supported by tax relief. Construction was further increased by the lack of workforce caused by the wars in the early 18th century. The large main building of the manor was built in the 19th century and was thoroughly repaired in the early 20th century. The manor had a large courtyard, containing economic yards and a large garden, which contained 45 different species of fruit trees according to a 1936 survey.
The residential area of Tontunmäki in Niittykumpu has developed throughout the yars on the eastern lands of the Gräsa manor located to the west of Niittykumpu. Still in the 1960s the address to the houses in southern Tontunmäki was Matinkylä, Gräsa, Itäpää. The western end of Gräsa was probably located in the current area of Olari.
Land parcelling and construction in the early 20th century
The rapid growth of the population of Helsinki and the construction of the Rantarata railway also caused the population of Espoo to increase in the early 20th century. The growth was mostly located near the new railway connection, as transport connections between southern Espoo and Helsinki were still weak. Travel to Helsinki from the Niittykumpu area was by train or bus, but as the area was not near any major traffic hub, people first had to go along local streets to the train station in Kauniainen or to the bus stop along the Turuntie road in Kilo, and from there onwards to Helsinki.The Gräsagård village also grew in population: according to a 1865 census there were 61 inhabitants, but in 1920 the number of permanent residents had grown to 145. The village consisted of the manor and its croft houses, and of parcel lots taken mainly from the manor lands in the archipelago. New villa lots were separated from the Gräsa lands in the 1870s, and by 1917 these lots numbered 28. The manor changed ownership to the Finska Agrarbolaget company in 1911, and the limited company Gräsa Gårds Aktiebolag was founded six years later, starting to divide the manor lands into parcel lots in the 1920s. In 1924 the manor lands had been divided into a total of 22 lots, and the area of Haukilahti was separated from its southern part, first divided into 14 lots. Parcel lot activity increased in the 1930s as transport connections in the area improved significantly as the street Jorvaksentie was completed. New road connections coupled southern Espoo better to the centre of Helsinki and allowed it to develop further.
Construction from the 1960s to the 1980s
Together with the rest of Espoo, construction in the Niittykumpu area increased rapidly in the decades after the war. The first significant phase of construction happened in the 1960s and 1970s, when many new terraced houses were built in the area because of rapid growth of Espoo. The inspiration for the new apartment houses designed by architect Osmo Lappo near the current metro station came from the buildings designed by the French architect Le Corbusier in the 1960s.New construction was partly done on unbuilt lots, but there were also cases where old villa buildings were demolished to make way for new construction. The city of Espoo bought the main area of the Gräsa manor in 1967. As road connections improved, the geographical connectivity in southern Espoo improved in the 1960s. In the 2010s there were some old buildings and gardens remaining in the Tontunmäki area in Niittykumpu, some dating from before the war, some from the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1960s there were two separate grocery stores in the area.
The 1990s and 2000s
Construction decreased significantly during the early 1990s depression in Finland, but has since improved since the early 2000s as production of new apartments tripled compared to the depression years.Länsimetro and the new construction phase
Construction of the Niittykumpu metro station started in November 2011. Complementary construction of the metro station started in autumn 2012, when Skanska started the construction of the new Liberti residential block in the area between Merituulentie and Länsiväylä. At the start of the Länsimetro construction, Niittykumpu was only supposed to have a preliminary reservation for a metro station, but in October 2013 it was decided to build a full-scale metro station in Niittykumpu, as postponing the construction would have caused the cost of construction of the station to double.Construction of the metro centre started in March 2014, and it was opened to the public three years later in June 2017. As well as the metro station, the metro centre contains the shopping centre Niitty and the apartment buildings Niittyhuippu and Niittytori, of which the former has 24 floors and the latter has 12 floors. When the 90-metre-high Niittyhuippu building was completed, it was one of the tallest buildings in Finland and the tallest apartment buildings Espoo. The old shopping centre Niittytori was dismantled in late summer 2017, and a new apartment building block was built in its place. The immediate surroundings of the metro centre, the Liberti block and the apartment buildings along Haukilahdenkatu, part of the first construction phase of the Länsimetro project, were completed in the early 2020s, when complementary construction of Niittykallio and Merituulentie. The complementary construction of the former Outokumpu office area had reached planning stage. The gas station in front of the Olari church will be dismantled and replaced with a paved Gräsanaukio square, with an underground parking garage for connection transport to the metro station and the church built underneath it. The automobile dealerships Länsi-Auto, Toyota Espoo and Delta will also be moved out of the way of the new apartment buildings. The population of the district is expected to double by the year 2025.
Services
Niittykumpu includes the Niittykumpu school, which is the oldest lower stage primary school in southern Espoo.There have been many automobile dealerships in Niittykumpu, and their concentration along Merituulentie has even been called the "automobile street of Espoo". The area includes the automobile dealerships Länsi-Auto and Delta-Auto. The shopping centre Niitty includes the grocery stores K-Supermarket and S-market, an Alko store, an R-kioski convenience store and a couple of restaurants. The nationwide small-scale storage company Cityvarasto also has a branch in Niittykumpu.