Akita Municipal Junior College of Arts and Crafts Training Building No. 1

Akita Municipal Junior College of Arts and Crafts Training Building No. 1: The Northernmost Warehouse

The Akita Municipal Junior College of Arts and Crafts Training Building No. 1 (秋田公立美術工芸短期大学実習棟一号棟) is a single-storey timber warehouse built in 1934 in Araya Okawacho, Akita City, Akita Prefecture, and entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2000.

It is the northernmost of the eight buildings of the Former Araya National Warehouses: timber, single storey, with a sheet-metal roof and a building area of 660 square metres. The name is the one it bore when registered; at the time of registration it served as a studio for craft and industrial design. Today the seven northern buildings are used as Atelier Momosada by Akita University of Art and Design, which opened in 2013.

Why It Was Registered

The Akita Municipal Junior College of Arts and Crafts Training Building No. 1 is registration number 05-0057, listed under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country, and was registered with the other seven buildings on 26 September 2000.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs uses the record for this building to summarise the history of the group: one of eight single-storey timber warehouses built near the mouth of the Omono River by the former Akita Prefecture federation of sales and purchasing cooperatives, donated to the government in 1939 as the Araya National Warehouses, and used to store rice for supply regulation until 1990.

What to Look For at the Akita Municipal Junior College of Arts and Crafts Training Building No. 1

As the end of the row, this is the place to stand and look south: seven more identical gabled roofs follow in line behind it.

Visiting

The Akita Municipal Junior College of Arts and Crafts Training Building No. 1 is a university building, and no official information on visiting the interior was found. Check with Akita University of Art and Design before going.

Directions, and details of the Araya Library at the southern end, which is open to the public, are on the Former Araya National Warehouses page.