Kallio Library

Karl Hård af Segerstad, then serving as Helsinki's city architect, designed the Kallio public library in 1912 in a late Art Nouveau style tempered by classical detailing, drawing on American library layouts he had studied for their so-called "butterfly" floor plan. The red-brick building has a winding main staircase and a columned rotunda topped by a loft originally used for newspaper reading, and it was the first library in Finland to be funded entirely from public money. It broke lending records in its first year open and remains one of the busiest branches in the Helsinki city library network.