Text: Per Erling Bakke

Adapted and translated into English by Ivar Teigum

The fruit shop moving to the pavement outside on a hot day in the 1970s.

The Mostugu building is remembered by many for housing the local Fruit shop. The building itself, Storgata 24, stands at the west side of the railway line, at the corner between the Main Street and Ola Dahl Street.

It was built around 1900 on a site belonging to the Mostugu farm. Actually, the building stands where the farmhouses had to be removed when the railway needed the space in the 1890s.

The first cooperative shop was established in the Mostugu building in 1919. A baker rented rooms on the first floor.

The Mostugu building stands at what was the very centre of Otta in the early part of the 20. century. The Main Street was 800 metres long from the Lågen River to Ottekren.

Closing in on the Main Street and the railway station there were parks, petrol stations, lawyers, a doctor, a photographer, a watchmaker, a baker’s shop, other shops and cafes, the fashionable villa West End, postoffice, police, and public offices.
 

The Mostugu building in the 1980s with the fruit shop and to the right a clothes shop.

When a cooperative shop was established at Otta in 1919, its first location was rented premises in the Mostugu building. The owner was Sigurd O. Blekastad, one of the important local people in his day. From a modest start with the shopkeeper and a helping hand, after a year they were three people running the business. On the first floor a baker started his business. Lack of space made him the first to be forced to leave.

Then in 1924 the cooperative got quarters of its own east of the railway line, and moved out.
 

Mostugu is the brown building with the art nouveau façade.

After the cooperative shop left, the building served additional functions in the community.

A tailor had his workshop there, in the 1950s a lawyer had his office in the building, and at various times also a doctor, a goldsmith, and by the turn of the millennium a chiropractor with his clinic.
 

Sara was a shop where local crafts were on offer.

Throughout the years the corner shop which provided the locals with fruit, came to be called the Merry Corner. When its time was up in the 1990s, others moved in with a firm promoting innovative ideas, and became the Creative Corner.

In 2012 the Mostugu building with its art nouveau façade underwent renovation.

Large showcase windows from a clothes shop period were removed and replaced by traditional frames, and the building got back some of its original look.
 

Otta: A view from 1938. The Main Street was 800 metres long from the Lågen River to Ottekren.