On the night of October 6, 1810 the expanding town of Raahe was faced with a disaster, a fire broke out. Three quarters of the town was destroyed, about 60 houses, including the town hall and its records. The church, the schoolhouse, a few houses in Rantakatu and some dwellings on the north side of the church hill were saved. The commission’s surveyor Gustaf Odenwall was assigned to draw up a new town plan and a plotting-out plan for rebuilding the town.

The burghers and the town administration agreed upon certain principals for the rebuilding of the town and a new plan, some of these were:

• a new, larger market square at the corner of Isokatu and Kirkkokatu
• the streets would maintain their previous width, widening the streets for the purposes of fire safety was given no support
• a space of three cubits or about 1,5 – 2 meters would be left unbuilt on the boundaries of the plots for fire safety purposes
• because of the enlargement of the plots the town needed to be extended
• two-storey wooden houses could not be built anymore, the stone base could not be too high, the buildings and their stone bases facing the street were to be of a uniform height