A twelve-horsepower steam engine – the first steam engine in Helsinki – comes into use, at the Ramstedt workshop in Hakaniemi.

Carl Ramstedt, the alderman of blacksmiths, had a workshop in Siltasaari. With his associate, the English engineer Nicolai Smith, Ramstedt began a new era in Helsinki’s industrial history: the Ramstedt & Smith workshop procured a twelve-horsepower steam engine in 1853. The workshop was moved to Fiskars in 1854, and was taken over by merchant J. D. Stenberg in 1871.

By the 1850s Helsinki had a population of 21,000,  270 of whom lived to the north of Pitkäsilta on land leased from the city. What is now Hakaniemi market square was then an open bay. Iso Siltasaari, or Hiirisaari, was connected at its north end to the mainland at Pikkusilta, via Pieni Siltasaari, also called Rottaholma. Five large factory villa areas were located between the Sörnäinen shore and Itäinen viertotie. They were Hagnäs (Hakaniemi), Necken (Näkki), and the adjacent Pannukakku-saari (“Pancake Island”), Aspnäs  (Haapaniemi), Fågelvik (Lintulahti), and Hörneberg (Kulmavuori).

On the other side of Viertotie residential villas were built, which at the end of the 1800s and in the early 1900s this area developed into a worker’s quarter, where wooden houses predominated. Consumer goods in particular were imported to Helsinki in the nineteenth century. The largest factories at the time were the Borgström and Wasenius tobacco factories, the Sinebrychoff brewery, and the Kiseleff sugar refinery in Töölö.