Pietarsaari machine shop

Piispanmäki Pietarsaari

 

Piispanmäki (or Piispansaari) has been an area with busy industrial activity. In addition to a brewery, it had a bone mill until the mid-1800s.  As from the late 1800s, there was a machine shop north of the old graveyard. The footings of the machine shop were still visible in autumn 2018.

 

The machine shop was established by Birger Serlachius (1874–1934). Its lines of business first included shoeing, the manufacture and sale of vehicles, and the sale and repair of bicycles. The small smithy had been extended by building a foundry, a boiler forge, and a filing and turning shop. Soon it also specialised in brewery machines. Serlachius lived in the residential section of the adjacent brewery with his family and served as the property manager of the brewery. Due to the approaching prohibition of alcoholic beverages by law, the manufacture of brewery machines would not have been wise. Agricultural tools and simple machines, instead, were increasingly needed, so they became the principal products of the machine shop. In the early 1900s, the most important of these was the harrow. At its peak, the firm had about a hundred employees. In the early 1910s, at the latest, all the production of the machine shop was moved next to the railway in town. Through a diverse chain of events in the late 1930s, the machine shop became part of the Wärtsila group.