Hyvinkää (Swedish: Hyvinge) is a city in the northern part of
Uusimaa. It has a population of about 47,000 (2020) and is the fifth
largest city in the province after Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and
Porvoo. Hyvinkää belongs to Central Uusimaa and the municipalities
of the Helsinki region, and is located along Finland's main line,
Highways 3 and 25, the Vantaanjoki River and the First Salpausselä.
Hyvinkää became independent as its own municipality from the
Hausjärvi and Nurmijärvi areas in 1917 and its area belongs to the
historical provinces of Häme and Uusimaa. The town of Hyvinkää was
founded by separating it from the countryside in 1926. In 1960,
Hyvinkää became one of Finland's first six so-called from the new
city, and in 1969 the countryside of Hyvinkää was annexed to the
city of Hyvinkää.
At the beginning of the 20th century,
Hyvinkää was especially known as a sanatorium city for clean air and
as a place to live and calm for artists such as Helene Schjerfbeck
and Tyko Sallinen. Since then, the city has been known for its wool
and nowadays elevator and crane industries. The city is part of the
growth corridor of the main line and is known as a railway city.
Hyvinkää is a city that grew and built strongly after the Second
World War due to the attraction of the capital region. Hyvinkänkylä,
which is located four kilometers southwest of the city center and is
connected to the agglomeration today, is the oldest inhabited village in
the city and was first mentioned in document sources in 1495. As the
future city grew, the agglomeration inhabited by the working population
first grew around the railway stations and the woolen mill to Tehta and
Mustamännistö neighborhoods, as well as Vierämä, Viertola and
Puolimatka, where relatively little of the old building stock has been
preserved. In the decades after the wars, the neighborhoods of
Sahanmäki, Kruununpuisto, Rääkänpää and, to a large extent, Parantola
were built, in the 1960s the unified apartment block of Kirjavantolpa,
in the 1970s Paavola, Talvisilta and Vehkoja, in the 1980s Hakala, in
the 1990s Martti, in the 2000s Tapainlinna, Tanssikallio and Kruunumaa,
and in the 2010s Metsäkalteva, which includes Kravunharju, where a
housing fair was organized in 2013. The newest district to be built near
the core center is Hangonsilta, which is located near the train station
between the Hyvinkää–Hanko railway and the Läntinen yhytsti. Among other
things, Hyvinkää high school's new building, Kipinä-talo, has been
completed in Hankonsilta.
Perhaps the most notable building in
Hyvinkää is the Hyvinkää Church[45], one of the country's most
significant modernist churches, completed in 1961 and called the "new
church", which has a characteristic pyramid-like figure in the
cityscape. The oldest building in the municipality is the main building
of the Ali-Anttila estate in Hyvinkäänkylä from 1801, and the oldest
building in the central area is the railway station from 1862. Important
old wooden buildings are also the old church (1896, Yrjö Sadeniemi), the
railwaymen's houses in the grounds of the Finnish Railway Museum, and
the railway station on the Hyvinkää-Hanko line from 1873 and the Arena
cinema building from 1914 on Siltakattu. The old building and living
culture of the area is presented by the Vaivero mill farm located in the
northern part of the municipality, which is a museum, and whose main
building dates from 1820.
On the east side of the Hämeensilla
over Finland's main railway line, on Hämeenkatu, on a lot called
Ykköskorttel, there is the functionalist Ahjo business building designed
by Georg Jägerroos, built in 1935 for the Ahjo department store, which
is now mainly used as a restaurant and is known for its advertisement
for the Hopealyht restaurant. The building's tower is from 1957. Ahjo's
first commercial building, designed by Heikki Siikonen, built in a
classicist style in 1924, was located next to the building, which was
demolished in 1991 under the department store's parking lot. In 2012, a
functionalist-style hotel extension was built in place of the parking
lot.
On the west side of the track, on Uudenmaankatu, Hyvinkää
Keskusaukio is located, which, despite its name, is used by the car
lanes of the streets crossing from six different directions instead of
the actual square. Uudenmaankatu 1, built as banks for Säästöpanki and
KOP, and Hyvinkää's music college, and the McDonald's restaurant built
as a gas station for Shell make up the funky complex of Keskusaukio, and
on the other side of the square is the city's tallest, 10-story
residential building Kymppitalo from 1964. At the end of Uudenmaankatu,
built in the 1950s, towards the center is several commercial buildings
built in the 1950s and 1960s.
The united Hämeenkatu and
Uudenmaankatu form the main street of Hyvinkää, which is several
kilometers long, along or connected to many of the city's most important
business services. Hyvinkää's core center is formed around
Kirjastoaukio, built on the site of the former VR central garden, which
houses the Willa Shopping Center (2012), the city's main library in a
modernist building (Raimo and Ilmo Valjakka, 1968), the Jussintori
business building and the Hyvinkää Art Museum (R. and I. Valjakka 1981)
and Hyvinkää the market square, on the opposite side of which is the
Sampo-talo and Hyvinkääsali (1987), the city's important cultural event
venue. The representation of Hyvinkää's modernist architecture is also
connected to the Swiss swimming pool located on the edge of the Swiss
National Park (R. Valjakka, 1969). Hyvinkää's old important shopping
streets, with many of their former commercial buildings still remaining,
are Hyvinkäänkatu, Siltakatu-Solbonkatu and Valtakatu. On Vaiveronkatu,
which has served as a walking route called Promenade from Parantola to
Switzerland, two villas brought from Terijoki have survived, one of
which is used as the Hyvinkää artists' club's Promenade Gallery. A large
house called Sotalaiva on Kautonkatu has also been brought from
Terijoki. The former Rento shoe factory from 1929 is located on the
corner of Siltakatu. Important demolished buildings in the center are
the city hall built in 1978 and the government office building completed
in 1955, which were demolished in 2011 to make way for the shopping
center.
There is also an old wool factory near the core of the
city, the oldest part of which was completed in 1896, and in 2011 the
premises renovated into Hyvinkää's town hall were completed. The
Hyvinkää sanatorium's original Art Nouveau building from 1906,
surrounded by sanatorium park, was designed by Lars Sonck, but after
being badly damaged in the bombings of the Winter War, it was
architecturally renovated to a considerably reduced form. However, the
facade of the building has also preserved art nouveau details and the
original wall paintings in its interior. The park also houses the
sanatorium's old, wooden building and the house of the assistant doctor
designed by Sonck. Humala and Krapula artist residencies are located in
Hyvinkäänkylä, whose well-known residents included Tyko Sallinen and
Jalmari Ruokokoski. In the village of Länsi-Hyvinkää Kytäjä lies the
historically significant Kytäjä manor, whose main building is currently
in very poor condition, as well as the architecturally notable Kytäjä
church from 1939, designed by the manor owner, architect Väinö
Vähäkallio.
The oldest signs of human activity in the Hyvinkää region are the
primitive ax and chisels found in Ridasjärvi, which are estimated to be
from the so-called From the time of the Suomusjärvi culture, around the
4th century before the beginning of the chronology. There are already
quite a lot of finds from the next comb ceramic period, on the basis of
which it has been concluded that the settlement was concentrated around
Ridasjärvi, Vantaanjoki and Kytäjärvi. Random artefact finds have been
made throughout the Stone Age, but no Bronze Age artefacts have been
found in the Hyvinkää area. Possibly the climate becoming more
unfavorable has forced at least the farming population to move
elsewhere.
The 12th and 13th centuries were the heyday of the
Hämälä fur trade on the coasts of the Gulf of Finland, and around this
time they took over the wilderness along the Vantaanjoki as their
hunting grounds. Judging from the place names, the Hyvinkää region
belonged to the people of Vanaja and Janakkala, who, when the catches
decreased and the fur trade stopped, began to clear their game lands for
new plantations. However, a permanent settlement was hardly established
before the 14th century. According to the land register of 1539, there
were already 40 houses in the area of present-day Hyvinkää.
Administratively, the majority of Hyvinkää belonged to Lope's keep,
ecclesiastically, the northern parts first belonged to Janakkala and
Hausjärvi, which was separated from it in 1611, and the southern parts
to Nurmijärvi.
The first mention of Hyvinkää is from the year
1495. At that time, it meant the current Hyvinkäänkylä. There is no
certainty about the origin of the name, but its oldest written form is
"Höffinga". In the years 1559–1561 and again in the years 1616–1629,
there was a mine in Hyvinkäänvuori between Hyvinkänkylä and Kytäjä,
which is called Hopevauori in folklore. The first mention of the
Hyvinkää mine, located along the Helsinki-Hämeenlinna road, is from the
same period, from 1622. According to the document mention, King Gustav
II Adolf visited the Hyvinkää mine during his visit to Finland in 1614
and again two years later when traveling from Helsinki to Hämeenlinna,
when he stayed overnight in Hyvinkää. After the mining stopped, the sale
of agricultural products and the income from the forest remained the
only sources of income for the residents of the Hyvinkää region until
well into the 19th century.
The beginning of the current city of Hyvinkää was the settlement that
was born when the central site of the third construction district of the
railway between Helsinki and Hämeenlinna was placed in an uninhabited
forest area in the hinterland of Hyvinkäänkylä in 1857. A village of
builders' cottages and shacks rose on the site. The group of railway
builders was mixed: its body was formed by the so-called kronunrennigs,
or free workers, of whom there were already more than 300 in Hyvinkää in
the first year of construction, and in addition to them there were
Russian soldiers and prisoners transported to the site from the
construction site of the Saimaa canal. In 1858, the Railway Builders'
Cemetery, located in the current Parantola district, was established for
those who built the railway.
Finland's first railway, the
Helsinki–Hämeenlinna line, was completed in 1862. Hyvinkää was the
middle of the stations, and the train stopped in Hyvinkää for 15
minutes, while it stopped for only 3–5 minutes at other stations.
Hyvinkää station was built on the outdoor meadow of the Nikkilä estate
on the border of Uusimaa and Häme counties. The line from Hyvinkää to
Hanko was built in the 1870s. The railways made the station area a
residential area, but it only really started to grow with the woolen
factory founded by Ossian Donner in the 1890s. Hyvinkää's United Wool
Mills was a major employer in the town throughout the 20th century, and
in the 1930s it became one of the 15 largest companies in Finland. In
1862–1880, the population of the station area was 500–600 people, but in
1900 there were already 1,800 people living in the area. Between 1874
and 1962, VR's central nursery and central garden was located on the
southeast side of the railway station, which produced tree and shrub
seedlings for the needs of all new railway stations built in Finland.
New varieties were also developed there, such as the railway nomena
tree, which got its Latin name Malus Hyvingiensis after Hyvinkää. The
apple tree in question was chosen as the symbol of Hyvinkää in 1996.
The arrival of the railway in the village created conflicts between
the new Hyvinkää region and the old parent Nurmijärvi. Swedish-speaking
railway officials and workers from other parts of Finland settled in the
area of the station, whose only connection to their new home region was
the railway that provided them with a daily livelihood. Furthermore, due
to its remote location, Hyvinkänkylä had never merged with Nurmijärvi.
The railwaymen built a public school in the station area in 1894 (the
still functioning Asema school), and Hyvinkää got a prayer room (now
Hyvinkää's old church) in 1896. Soon the idea of forming Hyvinkää as an
independent parish came up, and in 1909 the Finnish Senate approved
Hyvinkää's separation from Nurmijärvi and Hausjärvi. However, the
separation from Nurmijärvi only took place in 1916 and from Hausjärvi
the following year. The independent municipality of Hyvinkää was founded
on July 20, 1917 in the ballroom of Asema school. Hyvinkää
co-educational school was founded in 1918 and the local newspaper
Hyvinkää Sanomat began to be published in 1924.
In 1896, a nervous and convalescent sanatorium was established in
Hyvinkää. Until 1905, the customers were mostly Finns. After this, a
new, stone main building designed by Lars Sonck was built at the
sanatorium, and most of the customers began to be Russian. In 1916, more
than 80 percent of the sanatorium's residents came from outside Finland,
and Hyvinkää was a competitor of Crimea's tourist destinations. The
visitors had the opportunity to go outside in a healthy climate in the
"Switzerland" of Hyvinkää. After the collapse of the Empire, the number
of customers decreased. Sanatorium operations ended in 1939, when the
building was damaged in the bombing of the Winter War.
During the
civil war, the Reds took power in Hyvinkää, but in the 20th and 21st
after the Battle of Hyvinkää in April 1918, the Germans took over the
town. During the rule of the Reds, 16 whites were killed in Hyvinkää,
after the change of power, the Germans and the whites in turn executed
around 150–160 Reds, to whom a memorial stone designed by Oiva Hurmee
was later erected in Sahanmäki's Suruje park. In 1925, the station area
was separated into the municipality of Hyvinkää, and the rest of the
municipality remained a rural municipality. Hyvinkää's first site plan
was drawn up by land surveying engineer Arthur Alli in 1909 for the
lands of Hyyppärä farm. In the 1920s, Carolus Lindberg drew up a town
plan for the town, which was sized for 55,000 inhabitants and was not
realized as such. The central thoroughfare of the store was the current
Hyvinkäänkatu, but in Lindberg's plan the main thoroughfare moved to
Uudenmaankatu–Hämeenkatu. In the 1930s, the council wanted to implement
the most central detail of the town plan and started the development of
Uudenmaankatu and Siltakau. The neighborhoods formed before the wars are
Ahdenkallio, Mustamännistö and Rääkänpää on the northeast side of the
main line, and Viertola and Kirjavatolppa on its southwest side.
Kone Oy built a factory in Hyvinkää in 1943. After the war, the company
had a central position in war ear production and the factory was
expanded. 265 hoists, 202 cranes and 108 elevators were manufactured at
the Kone factory as war reparations. Kone continued to operate in the
locality even after the wars: elevator development continued in
Hyvinkää, and in 1976 Kone's lift tower was built to test them. It is
still in test use and is a significant Hyvinkää landmark. After the war,
5,000–6,000 Karelian immigrants were also settled in Hyvinkää. A big
step forward was also the move of VR's locomotive workshop from the
center of Helsinki to Hyvinkää in 1949. In addition to the elevator
industry, the engineering and textile industries were on the rise in the
1960s, and around 70% of Hyvinkää's population worked in industry in
1961. The history of the textile industry in Hyvinkää is presented in
the Valvilla factory museum, which is open during the summer.
In
1960, Hyvinkää's township became a city, and in 1969, the city and rural
municipality merged. Hyvinkää's church served as an old prayer room
along Uudenmaankatu until the church designed by architect Aarno
Ruusuvuore was completed in 1961. The area of VR's central nursery was
taken over by the city of Hyvinkää in 1960, and the Nursery was moved to
Tuusula's Nuppulinna in 1962. In the area of the former nursery, e.g.
city library, city office building and market square. The first
apartment buildings were built in the early 1950s near Sahanmäki and
VR's machine shop, and over the next couple of decades more apartment
buildings were built along Uudenmaankatu and in the areas of
Kirjavatolpa, Kruununpuisto and Viertola. Between 1945 and 1963, the
population of the city of Hyvinkää tripled. During the 1960s, the
neighborhoods of Talvisilla and Paavola were formed. The annexation of
the countryside to the city again brought a considerable population
increase, and at the end of 1970 Hyvinkää had 34,762 inhabitants.
Hyvinkää is located in Uusimaa province. Its neighboring
municipalities are Riihimäki and Hausjärvi in the north, Mäntsälä in the
east, Tuusula and Nurmijärvi in the south, and Vihti and Loppi in the
west.
Hyvinkää's bedrock is old bedrock that has been worn flat.
A wide zone of reddish granite runs through the municipality in a
southwest-northeast direction. On both sides of the zone there are
widely igneous rock types. In the area of Kytäjä and Usmi up to the east
side of Erkylä, the bedrock is gabbro. This area has steep cliffs with
marshy lakes and streams in between.
The city's population is
concentrated on the southwest-northeast-oriented Salpausselkä ridge.
There are north-south oriented ridges in Sveitsinrinte and Jätinluko.
The sea has softened the southeastern edge of the ridge, but the
northwestern side, the current area of the Swiss Alps, remained steep.
The storms of the Baltic ice lake wore away the earth from the highest
cliffs and because of this the cliffs of Usmi are still bare today.
About 9,500 years ago, heath and clay plains were formed in the southern
and southeastern parts of present-day Hyvinkää, where the first fields
of the locality were later cleared.
Hyvinkää has six lakes over a hundred hectares in size: Hirvijärvi,
Suolijärvi, Kytäjärvi, Sykäri, Ridasjärvi and Sääksjärvi. There are 49
lakes and ponds larger than 0.10 hectares but less than 50 hectares.
Especially in the Usmi and Kytäjä regions, most of them are surrounded
by swamps and their water is brown. The shores of the ponds in the area
are mostly undeveloped and there is no road to them. The shores of the
largest ponds, Jauholami, Urolammi and Usminjärvi, are inhabited.
Usminjärvi has a city beach. There are several natural ponds in the
catchment areas of Hirvijärvi, Kytäjärvi and Suolijärvi. Although their
water quality is mostly good, the water is often very brown. The
exception is Valkealamimi, which has a visibility depth of three meters.
On the banks of Märkiö and Vihtilammi in the Sääksjärvi area, there are
course and camp centers and many leisure settlements.
The Vantaan
River flows in a north-south direction through Hyvinkää for a distance
of about 20 kilometers. In Hyvinkäänkylä, it passes through the
Salpauselkä ridge. The longest tributary of Vantaanjoki, Keravanjoki,
starts from Ridasjärvi. It runs ten kilometers from north to south in
Itä-Hyvinkää. The twelve kilometer long Kytäjoki, which descends from
Kytäjärvi to Vantaanjoki, doubles the flow of Vantaa. Keihäsjoki starts
from Keihäsjärvi in Lopen, Kurkisuo is in the middle of it, and it goes
down to the middle of Kytäjoki. Keihäs and Kytäjoki flood almost every
year. Hyvinkää does not have any large natural streams. The streams in
the area are mostly inlet and outlet ditches of lakes, which usually run
along the edge of the field and are drained. Especially in the Kytäjä
region, many streams are forest ditches. The streams of Hyvinkää are,
among others, the Paalijoki flowing into Vantaanjoki in Hyyppärä, the
Kurkioja and Lepänoja in Kurkisuo, the Aulinjoki, Panninjoki and
Parikaanoja flowing into Ridasjärvi, the Välioja flowing into
Suolijärvi, and the Palojoki continuing to Tuusula from the forest
streams of Taka-Marti and Tehtaansuo.
Most of Hyvinkää's springs
are no longer in their natural state. Mainly they have been used as
wells or dried up due to forest drainage. The groundwater formation area
in Hyvinkää is 19 square kilometers. 13,000–19,000 cubic meters of new
groundwater is formed every day. There are a total of 24 groundwater
areas suitable for water procurement or important for water procurement,
eight of which are shared with neighboring municipalities.
Hyvinkää is part of the southern boreal zone, which is characterized
by conifer-dominated blueberry forests in northern Uusimaa. Demanding
plant species also grow in the Kytäjä region, as the bedrock contains
many alkaline rock species that are rich in nutrients and rich in
calcium. Due to the decrease in grazing, many keto plants have declined
in their traditional places of growth, but, for example, elk's bell,
ketomaruna and ketone carnation have spread to road and railway
embankments.
The whole of Ridasjärvi, Järvisuo and Ritassaarensuo
is a nationally significant FINIBA bird area. Lake Ridasjärvi is home to
a particularly large number of laughing gulls, but also reed grebes,
coot hens, terns, willow birds, aspen birds and bullbirds also nest
there. Ridasjärvi is the only nesting place for the little gull in
Hyvinkää. Hundreds of migratory birds rest on the lake in the spring.
The most common are swans, in addition to which, dozens of forest geese
and a few individuals of Canadian, sea and tundra geese are often
observed. Ritassaarensuo is mostly home to common southern Finnish bird
species. Kytäjärvi and its surroundings are also a regionally
significant bird destination. Waders, seagulls, ducks, geese, swans and
coot hens rest there. According to data from 2010, 59 different bird
species have been observed in the Swiss park, the most common of which
are the willow bird, finch, redbreast and warbler.
The flying
squirrel occurs in dozens of different areas in Hyvinkää, also in the
central area. There are about 250 white-tailed deer, 150–200 roe deer,
about 150 moose and about 100 red deer. About 15 lynxes and 5–10 otters
live permanently in the municipality.
There are fifteen nature
conservation areas in Hyvinkää (2010). Their total area is 1,012
hectares (2009), or three percent of the municipality's area. The
largest protected areas are the Kytäjä nature reserve (295 ha),
Järvisuo-Ritsaarensuo (250 ha), Ridasjärvi (175 ha), Matkunsuo (103 ha),
Sveitsinpuisto (96 ha) and Antinlempi (15.5 ha). The Natura 2000 network
includes the Kytäjä-Usmi forest area (2,266 ha), Kalkkilammi-Sääksjärvi
(976 ha, part in Nurmijärvi), Järvisuo-Ridasjärvi (686 ha), Petkelsuo
(284 ha), Kivilamminsuo–Pitkästenjärvet (220 ha, most of it in Mäntsälä
) and Mustasuo (214 ha, most of it in Hausjärvi).
Hyvinkää's history as an industrial city is long, and compared to the
country's average, industry is still of great importance to the city. In
2011, 30% of the residents of Värnkää were public sector employees, and
the city employs approximately 3,000 people. However, more than a
quarter (27%) of men working in the city were employed in industry in
2013. Still in 2017, the two largest industries for men living in the
city were industry and construction. The municipality has the
headquarters and factories of the crane manufacturer Konecranes and the
food group Mylly Parhai. In addition, Kone's elevator factories
established in 1942 (including Kone's elevator tower used for testing
elevators, which is a landmark of the locality) and the factories of
Isover and Reka Kaapeli operate in Hyvinkää. Transval, which serves
industrial companies, has a prominent logistics center in Hyvinkää in
the premises of the former Hyvinkää machine shop. Locally significant
industrial areas and business concentrations in Hyvinkää are, for
example, in Sahanmäki, Hiiltomo and Hakakallio.
Hyvinkää's
workplace self-sufficiency rate in 2017 was 95.4%. There were 19,690
jobs in Hyvinkää that year, and 29.2% of the working population was
employed by the public sector. The most important industries of the
well-to-do were the social and health sector, industry and wholesale and
retail trade, each of which had 3,000–4,000 jobs. Hyvinkää's
unemployment rate in August 2020 was 12.9%, which is the highest of the
municipalities in Central Uusimaa after Kerava, although lower than in
the capital region of Helsinki or Vantaa.
In 2016 and 2017, the
economy of the city of Hyvinkää was in surplus, although in 2018 it
turned into a deficit and was also in deficit in 2019. In 2020, the
city's deficit was 19.4 million euros, which is a record high.
In
2019, the city's financial dependency ratio was 60.3, meaning that for
every hundred 15-64-year-olds in Hyvinkää, there were approximately 60
people of non-working age. The maintenance ratio was slightly better
than the national average (61.4), but considerably weaker than the
Uusimaa province average (51.6) due to the large elderly population.
In 2012, the shopping center Willa was completed in the center of
Hyvinkää. It employs about 700 people. With more than a hundred stores,
the shopping center is one of the largest in Finland.
There are
123 farms in Hyvinkää (2007). Ten are dairy farms and 13 stables. Mostly
in Hyvinkää, oats, spring wheat and malting and feed barley are
cultivated. The municipality has a total of 58 square kilometers of
arable land. Due to afforestation and construction, the arable area has
decreased by 800 hectares in twenty years.
There are 16 soil
extraction areas in Hyvinkää. Their area is 280 hectares. The importance
of rock mining and crushing has increased in recent years, but the
number of excavations has decreased. The usable sand and gravel
resources have mostly already been utilized. The largest soil extraction
areas are in Astrakan and Suomiehe.
Railway
Hyvinkää is known as a railway town, and the location of
its center was determined based on the construction of the
Helsinki-Hämeenlinna railway. The station building is one of the few
original station buildings that is still in its original use. The city
also has a Railway Museum and a VR machine shop, which ceased operation
in 2018. Between Hyvinkää and Karkkila (about 45 km) there was a
narrow-gauge Hyvinkää–Karkkila railway, which was discontinued on August
8, 1967. The Hyvinkää–Karjaa railway also branches off from Hyvinkää in
the direction of Hanko ( opened for traffic on October 8, 1873), and at
the beginning of the 20th century, the then station village was a
stopover for many American immigrants who left Hanko for the other side
of the Atlantic. Passenger traffic between Hyvinkää and Karja was
stopped in September 1983, but the line is still used by freight
traffic. Also, the nearly 150-year-old Hyvinkää Hanko railway station
still exists and is now part of the Finnish Railway Museum. The Hyyppärä
line used to run from the railway station to Hyyppärä. The Finnish
Museum Agency has classified the Hyvinkää railway station as a
nationally significant built cultural environment.
A monument to
the railway builders carved by Wäinö Aaltonen was unveiled in 1957 near
the railway station. When the statue was unveiled, one hundred years had
passed since the establishment of the Hyvinkää railway site. German
soldiers who fell in the Finnish Civil War in 1918 are buried in Asema's
park.
Road traffic
Hundreds of years ago, an important road
from Helsinki to Hämeenlinna passed through Hyvinkää. In the 1930s, the
road became part of highway 4 between Helsinki and Jyväskylä. When
Finland's main road network was rebuilt after the wars, the new
alignment of highway 3 was completed west of the center of Hyvinkää. The
highway was built as a highway in the 1990s and the old highway was
changed to regional road 130. The route of the old highway 4 also
follows the route of the current highway 45 from Tuusula Hyrylä, which
joins the current highway at the southern border of Hyvinkää. Highway
25, completed in the 1970s, runs through the southern part of Hyvinkää.
Local traffic is served by the highways to Hausjärvi, Jokela, Mäntsälä,
Nurmijärvi Rajamäki and Lopen Läyläi.
Bus companies operating in
Hyvinkää are Ventoniemi Oy and Hyvinkään Liikenne Oy.
Airport
Hyvinkää airport was established during the peacetime in 1940 for the
air defense of Helsinki. After the Continuation War, it served as the
country's main airport from 1944 to 1947, when Helsinki-Malmi Airport
was used by the Allied Control Commission. International traffic to
Bromma in Stockholm was also flown through it. Finnair's DC-3 pilots
were trained for the aircraft type at Hyvinkää airfield in 1948.
Nowadays, there is a lively recreational aviation activity on the field,
such as gliding and motor flying, which, among other things, are offered
by the Hyvinkää aviation club, founded in 1948, and the Mäntsälä
aviation club, which was started in 1989.