Salus Building
The Salus building, donated by Ida and Maria Rytkönen, has served the Wihuri Foundation for decades – first as a hospital, then as the Wihuri Research Institute, and most recently as the foundation’s office.
Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation operates in the former Salus Hospital, completed in 1929, located at Kalliolinnantie 4 in Kaivopuisto, Helsinki. Salus was designed by architect Kerttu Rytkönen at the request of her nurse sisters, Ida and Maria Rytkönen. The building represents Nordic Classicism of the 1920s.
In addition to the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, the Salus building also houses the Finnish Lifeboat Institution (Suomen Meripelastusseura ry), the Reijo Rautauoma Foundation, the Civil Protection Foundation (Väestönsuojelusäätiö), the Finnish Cultural and Academic Institutes (Suomen kulttuuri- ja tiedeinstituutit ry), the Finnish Institute in the Middle East Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York Foundation, the Finnish Institute at Athens Foundation, the Finnish Benelux Institute Foundation, the Ibero-American Foundation, and the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae sr.
Donation to the Foundation
Maria and Ida Rytkönen, who ran a hospital in Helsinki in the early 1900s, donated Salus—both the building and the hospital activities within it—to the Wihuri Foundation in 1944. Ida Rytkönen hoped that under the foundation’s ownership, Salus would serve as a place for scientific research and as a hospital providing free medical and nursing care.
The hospital, which specialized in childbirth, women’s diseases, and surgery, continued to operate at Salus until 1983, alongside the Wihuri Research Institute, which focused on basic research into cardiovascular diseases. After hospital operations ended in 1983, the Wihuri Research Institute continued to operate in the Salus building until 2013—a total of 68 years.
In 2013, the Wihuri Research Institute moved to Biomedicum Helsinki, a center for medical research and education located in Meilahti. This prompted the foundation to decide on a new purpose for the historic Salus hospital building.
From hospital to a house for Foundations
Since 1964, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation had operated in a property it owned at Arkadiankatu 21 in Helsinki. Moving into Salus felt like a natural continuation of the Wihuri Foundation’s story. The building also held sentimental value — Antti Wihuri, the foundation’s founder, had passed away there in 1962.
With the relocation to Salus, the foundation’s new premises would reflect even more clearly its dual identity as both a stable, tradition-rich institution and one firmly oriented toward the future.
During a renovation project that lasted just over a year, Salus was thoroughly refurbished down to its structures and restored to serve the foundation and the various foundations and associations operating there as tenants for decades to come. The renovation also aimed to preserve the spirit of the old building. For example, the foundation commissioned a color study to determine the original hues of Salus, which were then restored on the walls of the renovated building.
The Salus sign at the building’s entrance serves as a reminder of its original purpose as a hospital. The hospital founded by Ida and Maria Rytkönen specialized in childbirth, surgery, and women’s diseases.
Ida and Maria Rytkönen spent a long time searching for a suitable plot for their hospital, which they eventually found in Helsinki’s Kaivopuisto district. From the outside, the building still closely resembles how it appears in this old archival photograph.