Müller’s Street – named after the first district doctor
(Norwegian version) Müllersgate, a side street east of the railway line, is named after Reidar Müller, the first district doctor in Sel municipality. From the farm Formo he bought a large log building, which he got rebuilt at Otta as a lasting home for himself and his family.
Text: Per Erling Bakke and Ivar Teigum
Reidar Müller (1869–1935) – a portrait by the painter Axel Revold.
As soon as the annexes Sel and Heidal were established as separate local authorities in 1908, they were granted their own district doctor together.
And the same year Reidar Müller moved to Otta with his German born wife.
Turmo, Müller’s villa in 1915, the doctor sits below the window and at his right side at the table his second wife Maria, whom he divorced the same year, at the doctor’s left side his son Rolf.
In the same year he bought Turmo, previously a small croft, and a two story loghouse from a local farm. There the family settled down, with a nurse in their household and a female servant to look after horses and cart, and with the doctor’s clinic near by.
1915, Müller and his wife Maria in the sittingroom, the doctor was a notable art collector.
Doctor Müller was a notable art collector, and specialized on contemporary and upcoming painters, one of the foremost, Axel Revold, being his son in law. In the spring of 1935 the collection was exhibited in Kunstnernes hus – the House of Art – in Oslo.
Reidar Müller remarried for the second time in 1924, this time with Ida Formo. She came from Formo farm where he had bought his house. The couple had no offspring. Ida was a trained teacher, and she had a long career at Otta. Doctor Müller died in 1935 and is buried in the churchyard at Selsverket.
Otta 1910: The Loftsgard bridge in the foreground with Turmo, doctor Müller’s villa.