Hyvinkää (Hyvinge in Swedish) is a small town in the province of Uusimaa, approximately 50 km north of the capital Helsinki. The town was chartered in 1960. Hyvinkää belongs to the Province of Southern Finland. The population was 43,169 (in 2004).

Highways and rail connections make it one of the suburban commuter centers of Greater Helsinki. The city planning has had an emphasis on recreational facilities, acknowleding the fact that the modest city center cannot compete with the shops and boutiques of the capital.

History

Hyvinkää village was gradually formed in latter half of the 19th century. The construction of railways through Finland in 1861 marked the starting point for the rapid growth. The air quality of Hyvinkää was considered healthy due to dense pine forests, and in the 1880s a group of physicians from Helsinki opened a sanatorium for patients seeking rest and recuperation.

The industrialization brought a wool factory, the Donner family's Hyvinge Yllespinneri, to Hyvinkää in 1892. The factory ceased its operation in the 1990s, but the red-brick halls still remain.

Famous People from Hyvinkää

• Tauno Kirves , mayor of Hyvinkää
• Esa Saarinen, philosopher
• Helene Schjerfbeck, painter

External links:

• Hyvinkää - Official site

Hyvinkää (Swedish: Hyvinge) is a town in the county of Southern Finland, in the province of Uusimaa. It got the town rights in 1960. The population at the end of the year 2002 was 42,997.

Since the 1500's there has been a tavern in the area now known as Hyvinkäänkylä, which lies approximately half-way between Helsinki and Hämeenlinna. The first tax catalogs also marked the existence of some houses in the area around the same time.

Hyvinkää was known as a railway town, and the location of its present centre was indeed determined by the construction of the Helsinki-Hämeenlinna line. Hyvinkää's railway station is one of the few original stations still in use. From Hyvinkää the railway also branches off to the port of Hanko. In the early 1900's the station village was an intermediate stopping point for many immigrants leaving from Hanko for a new life in America.

In the 1800's a wool factory was founded in the locality and it indeed was a boost for the locality. The textile industry in the town has died away, but the buildings of the wool factory have found seeral new uses including as an exhibition centre.

Hyvinkää also had a reputation as a town of clean air. A special sanatorium was built there, attracting wealthy Russians and Finns for care and rest.

Some of the more well-known buildings in Hyvinkää are, among others, the Church (1961) of Hyvinkää and the manor house of Kytäjä.

Hyvinkää airfield served as the country's main airport for a short time after the second world war while the airport at Malm was under the control of the Allied Powers. There is now a motorsports centre near the airfield.