In 1928 the Viipuri Art Society and the city made a preliminary deal of reserving the top of Pantsarlahti Bastion, the southernmost of the two fortress extensions built in the latter half of the 16th Century, to house the new art museum and art school. The city would own the museum premises and the art society the school. The state also gave financial support for building work. Construction work was started in June 1929 and the completion of the building in October 1930 coincided with the society's 40th anniversary.

Contrasting from its fortress environment with stone-supported land walls, the white-stuccoed building commands the view over the South Harbour and the approach from the sea.

The massing of the building is of two wings (the Art Museum on the east wing, Drawing School on the west) placed at an angle with each other, with a wedge-shaped, paved courtyard separating the two. The wider part of the courtyard faces south-west, the harbour, and there is an imposing twin-row Classistic colonnade of pillars with a rectangular cross-section, supporting an equally stylistic curving architrave with half-oculi, doubling as a corridor that connects the two buildings.

The original plans from 1928-1929 were more conventional with a symmetric and rectangular plan, but the chance to use the view to the harbour spurred the change in philosophy. The effect of the worldwide depression on the funding led to downsizing the size of the wings and discarding the planned exhibition hall altogether.

The approach to the museum from the city is through a series of flights of steps leading to an opening, set at an angle, between the windowless north walls of the wings. The walls facing south are almost as austere, with the central colonnade acting as the focal point.

An old gunpowder storage cellar next to the museum approach was converted for the use of the Viipurin Taiteilijaseura artists' association.

The building today

The building was the first completed example of Functionalistic movement in the city, and as such can be clearly seen to still feature Classicist themes in its facades.

The four-storey building has as many rows of distinct, very simplified bands of windows, or rather, more like four very wide windows with very thin mullions. The first floor fenestration consists of a double row of windows, 22 in a row (that are hinged from the bottom, opening downwards), while the upper three only have one. The bold fenestration is enabled by the use of a reinforced concrete columns that free the brick facade of its load-bearing function.

The Classicist background is revealed by the emphasized, recessed entrances with rounded arches on the sides of the facade, the protruding framing of the window bands as well as the twin round oculi in the upper corners of the facade.

The whole building is set back from the neighbouring, stylistically wildly differing buildings' facade lines. The base of the building, below the first-floor window, is made of masonry blocks that extend to the top of the entrances, where the arches begin. The building is located to a sloping street, so the left-side entrance is set considerably lower than the other and there the height of the masonry base top, the base of the first floor window framing and the entrance top all match.

The office spaces of the client were located on the first floor with the three upper floors acting as storage space.

The building today

Located virtually next to the Viipuri Art Museum and Drawing School, the four-storey building also similarly blends Classicism with Functionalistic spirit, although here there is just a hint of the latter. The facade has Classicist fenestration and composition, but the use of high wall on the facade to hide the roof gives the building a cube-like appearance and as such seems only a moderate step back for Ullberg from his Viipurin Panttilaitos Oy Building, completed a year earlier.

The facade composition consists of a ground floor with equidistant, symmetrical openings, tall second-floor windows with thick masonry framing and decorational nichés in-between, topped by two rows of plain windows and a blank "forehead". The western portion of the building "steps down" and shows the roof and the eaves that the high collar of the main facade conceals.

The ground floor and the two top floors housed apartments, the parish hall was in the second floor with its high windows.

From the south side of the building extends a two-storey wing that is set at a 60-degree angle to the main mass, following the bend of Hovioikeudenkatu street.

The building today

The archives building was curiously built on the foundations of an uncompleted Russian garrison church to the protruding head of Tervaniemi, to the south-west of the city. The building of the church (designed by the court architect and famous churchbuilder Vasily Kosyakoff) was started in 1910 but work was halted due to the First World War, when the church walls were completed, but with no roof. As the Grand Duchy of Finland became independent after the Russian Revolution in 1917-1918, the Russian army left, along with the governing bodies -- and also a large number of the Russian-origin inhabitants -- and the church remained uncompleted.

Although the conversion work required removing large portions of the already completed church walls, no new bricks were needed for the construction. The white-stuccoed building stands alone on a hill on the other side of the castle sound, very visible from the city.

The five-storey facades have all a pilastered mid-section that is flanked by sections with expanses of white wall with a few window openings. On three sides, the pilasters extend all the way from the granite base to the top, with vertical stripes of windows with dark spandrels in-between.

The building was completed with a total of 10.5 kilometers of shelf space for storage of documents.

The building today