Along with the stores, the shore between the Uitonsilta bridge and the ship pier began to fill up with granaries and warehouses.
Shopkeepers Wiljam Vihavainen and Akseli Holopainen bought a shared lakeside warehouse, in front of which they built a ship pier. In this way, the trade goods brought by a ship could be loaded directly into the warehouse and did not have to be transported from the port with a cart. Shiploads of grain, salt, sugar and other trade goods were brought to the warehouse from St. Petersburg and Vyborg, and later also from Savonlinna.
In the autumn, during the open water season, the storages were filled to the brim. In the winter, stocks were replenished from Kallislahti, to where e.g. grain and flour came by train. There could be up to 14 men from Sulkava with their horses and sleds unloading the train’s wagons. The grain was taken to the mill in Kuhakoski to be ground and then sold to the store.
This warehouse is the last of the lakeside warehouses of which there were many between the road and the shore. It has served as Enso Gutzeit’s log storage. As a reminder of that, the logo used by Enso Gutzeit, a white star, is at the end of the building.
Tar steamships
By 1917, there were 16 tar steamships in Sulkava, which was more than in any other rural municipality of the Mikkeli Province. Almost all of Sulkava’s tar steamships, except for their engines, were built in the village. When tar steamship traffic expanded, most of it passed into the hands of peasant entrepreneurs and merchants.
While traveling the waterways with their ships, the merchants also acted as a kind of “door-to-door” service providers of their time, taking the goods needed by their customers to the shores near them.
Rectory fire
In April 1922, a fire broke out in the provost’s rectory located on the opposite side of the river. The fire quickly spread along the ceiling, destroying the building completely. The sparks flew far to the other side of the Uitonvirta river and many houses on Alanteentie road were in danger of being destroyed.