In 1932, the architect Pauli E. Blomstedt sketched a museum building for the recently formed Museum of Central Finland Association adjacent to a possible future scientific library in Ruusupuisto park. The project foundered, however, because of the limited funds of the Association and the Museum commenced operations in a small brick building in Cygnaeuksenkatu.
The acquisition of their own building again became topical in 1954, when the Jyväskyla City Council approved an alteration to the town plan and the Ruusupuisto area was zoned for museum purposes. Ruusupuisto was well-suited as a location for a museum because of its park-like nature and its proximity to the university. In 1953, the Museum of Central Finland Association had already turned to Alvar Aalto and final drawings were completed in 1959. Aalto donated them to the Association “as an indication of the attachment I feel towards my home town”.
In 1976, Aalto drew some preliminary sketches for an extension to the Museum, which had become too small, but because of financial reasons and town-planning difficulties, construction of the extension was shelved for ten years. When the extension was to be built, the original plans were no longer appropriate for implementation as they stood. In 1990, Alvar Aalto, Architects planned a major renovation of the Museum and an extension to it in which the Museum entrance was moved from the Keskussairaalantie side to the Seminaarinkatu side.
The spaces on the ground floor that were formerly in use for the collections and for residential purposes were converted to public museum spaces. The extension included an entrance foyer, an auditorium, a space for temporary exhibitions and a lift. The old workers’ houses that had been moved to Ruusupuisto before the Museum was built, were moved again, out of the way of the extension, first to the other side of Seminaarinkatu and then, in 2010, to their current location at the corner of Hannikaisenkatu and Cygnaeuksenkatu.
