Coastal spas were popular health resorts in the early-nineteenth century. The Ullanlinna Spa and Well Room Company was founded in 1834. The company leased the present Kaivopuisto area from the city for 50 years for the construction of a spa and a park. The seafront spa building, designed by the architect C.L. Engel, was completed in 1836. There were 25 bathing rooms on the ground floor and an apartment on the first floor for when the Empress happened to visit. After Emperor Nicholas I had forbidden his citizens to travel abroad on account of the political unrest, Russians travelled to neighbouring Finland. Wealthy Helsinki residents too tended to their

health at the spa.
     The busiest summer at the spa was in 1841. Approximately 300 visitors, almost half of them foreigners, took the water treatments in Kaivohuone. The heyday of the spa was to be shortlived however. The cholera epidemics in the years 1848-49 and 1853 drove the visitors away. The end of the travel embargo and the Crimean War further reduced the number of visitors. The coastal spa gradually began to fall into disrepair and the buildings were totally destroyed during the bombings in 1944.