The Most Important Buildings in Lai Street in Tallinn (0)

Tallinna Mustamäe College
The Most Important Buildings in Lai Street in Tallinn
Report
Supervisor:
Ingrid Teigar
Tallinn 2014

Table of Contents

Introduction 3
Lai Street in general 4
The origin of the name “Lai” 4
1 Lai Street / 4 Nunne Street 5
17 Lai Street 6
23 Lai Street 6
27 Lai Street 8
29 Lai Street 8
30 Lai Street 10
38 Lai Street 10
39/41 Lai Street 11
40 Lai Street 11
47 Lai Street 12
50 Lai Street 13
Summary 15
References 16

Introduction

Pikk Street as the longest and also the main street from medieval times is well- known , but Lai Street that runs parallel to it is not. The aim of the report is to be helpful for the students of Tallinna Mustamäe College who study the history of Tallinn and would like to get additional information about Lai Street, as they need to pass the guide practice exam in form eleven . The report is divided into chapters so that each chapter deals with one of the important houses in Lai Street. In the beginning there are also two introductory chapters about Lai Street in general and the origin of the name “Lai”.

Lai Street in general

Lai Street is 520 m long and begins at a small green patch below the Toompea slope, where a graceful bronze statue of a Roe Deer by Jaan Koort (1883-1935), one of the best -known Estonian sculptors, has been standing for several decades. Lai Street stretches from Nunne Street to Pikk Street. Parallel with Pikk Street, Lai Street, too, ends at the Great Coast Gate ( first mentioned 1359). Lai Street is very wide considering that it was laid out in the Middle Ages. This is because it sprang up on both sides of former city wall .
Lai is quite a peaceful street with few shops. However, it has three museums and two theatres . The main entrance into St Olaf ´s Church also faces the street. Several Lai Street houses have kept their Gothic appearance and even interiors, although we can also notice moderate Nordic Baroque , Neoclassicicm, Historicism and even Art Nouveau .

The origin of the name “Lai”

Lai Street belongs among the oldest streets of Tallinn. Despite its length and width its share in the city’s inner traffic is fairly modest . The extraordinary width of the street is likely due to the fact that the town wall used to be there and the street then sprang up on both sides of the city wall. But that city wall was eliminated in the construction of a new wall to the west . The freed area became a beautiful wide street with local significance, its main purpose was to create a link between the monastery of St Michael’s female Cistercians ( founded in 1294) and St Olaf’s church. Previous names of the street also refer to it: Susterstrate 1361; Platea sororum 1364- 1380 ; 1606 Süsterstrasse and Schwestergasse, all of which include the concept of a nun or a sister .
After the Reformation , the monastery was eliminated and in 1631 a gymnasium was founded in its rooms , but the street name remained in the form of Süsterstrasse and Cisternstrasse. It was not until the 18th century that the name Lai also started to appear. In 1872, when the street names were being fixed , Lai remained the sole name of the street.

1 Lai Street / 4 Nunne Street

A good example of Neo- Renaissance and early Art Nouveau styles combined is Lai Street 1, the present Youth and Puppet Theatre , erected at the beginning of the 20th century as the Nobility Club.
The three-storey building replaces two medieval properties. In 1784 an amateur theatre began playing in a house situated in the same place and soon became a professional German City Theatre. The famous German writer August von Kotzebue (1761-1819), the life and soul of the theatre, lived in Tallinn for several long periods. (Otto von Kotzebue, the son of August von Kotzebue, accompanied explorer Adam Johann von Krusenstern on his Journey around the World of 1803–1806.) Estonian was heard from a theatre stage for the first time.
Early in the 19th century city architect Carl Ludwig Engel (helped rebuild Helsinki and also built the palace at 8 Kohtu Street on Toompea) designed a sumptuous hall for the theatre, but it was destroyed in a fire . Another fire devastated the theatre in 1902, after which it moved out from Old Town. The premises came into the possession of the Puppet Theatre in 1955. In 1991, the whole building was given to the theatre. Renovation works took place in 2001-03.

17 Lai Street

Lai 17, so-called Menshikov House was completed about 1685 in the Dutch Baroque style. The family coat-of-arms on the pediment was added in 1817 by then owner Count Stenbock ( Sweden origin Russian brigade leader and estate owner). It belonged to Prince Alexander Menshikov, the governor-general of Estonia in 1710-19. He was born in the family of a groom at the Russian Royal court , and at the age of 13 became a personal servant and later a close assistant to Czar Peter I. After Peter’s death he helped the czar’s widow, Catherine I, to the throne and became the actual ruler of Russia for a couple of years until he was defeated in the power struggle and banished into exile .

23 Lai Street

The buildings at Lai 19-23 belong to the City Theatre. It has a couple of small halls as well as some rehearsal rooms, and is planning to build a large auditorium in the present courtyard. All together the theatre has eight stages on which it performs, both indoor and outdoor , including towers and mills along the Old Town walls and Salme Cultural Centre in the nearby suburb of Kalamaja . The theatre performs both world classics and modern drama. It often shines the spotlight on new Estonian productions. Performances are given in different venues , and there is an outdoor stage for summer plays.
Lai 23 is a typical merchant `s house in the Late Gothic style. It is a two- room building, the so-called diele - dornse house, in which a vestibule – diele – is a bigger room at the street side and a smaller living -room – dornse – stands behind it in the depth of the yard.
The central room in the house’s street side part was a large, high-ceilinged entrance hall with a small kitchen under a mantle chimney . This type of chimney was unique to medieval homes , with a bottom section that widened to create a square space that would define the outlines of the small kitchen beneath it.
The house also had one heated living room and several unheated rooms, basement rooms, and rooms upstairs for the storage of goods . The entrance hall typically had a higher ceiling than the adjacent rooms, as well as a staircase leading to the upstairs rooms. Goods were usually hoisted to the upper floors directly from the street with the help of winches that would raise them to hatches visible on the front of the house.
The entrance hallway served as the merchant’s workroom and front office, which he would decorate with ashlars’ stones as fine as his wealth would allow . The doors leading to the interior rooms were also decorated as grandly as possible.
Heat rose into the living room from a stove in the basement. Making a fire in the stove would cause the stones that covered it to become hot; the smoke was vented out through the chimney. Once the heating of the stove was completed, the chimney register was closed, and the warm air was let into the living room through openings in the floor . This peculiarly medieval heating system remained in use in homes as well as public buildings until the 16th century, when tiled stoves began gaining popularity.
The solidity of ashlar and wooden details reflects the characteristic constructiveness of the Gothic style. At the ground -floor level the façade is articulated by the vestibule’s openings. The stoop has been built anew, although it is shorter than the original one.
In 2008 in Tallinn’s City Council a decicion was made as to which project they should first give money to: City Theatre or Kultuurikatla aed. Kultuurikatla aed’s project was chosen over City Theatre’s project.
There is public access to the lobby (diele) of the theatre. Stone slabs in the pavement in front of the house refer to theatre’s most popular productions.

27 Lai Street

On the land between Lai and Laboratooriumi Street there is a building that is the same size as the building that was there before (was destroyed in the war) but it has a new layout and a gabled façade. Beacuse of that it differs greatly from the usual medieval houses.
The office buiding by architect Nikolai Kusmin (one of the first professional architects trained in Estonia) was finished in 1947.
The common yard of houses 25 and 27 Lai Street is one of the most beautiful although it was made very sparingly.

29 Lai Street

Lai 29, is a diele-dornse type merchant`s house built in 1412 . There is a unique 15th century well in front of the building. Today the building is known in Tallinn as “ Hueck House”, because it belonged to that family for almost 250 years. Later the building has been extended several times and it has had a number of eminent residents. From 1683 to 1939 the house belonged to the Huecks, a family that gave the city two burgomasters and six town councillors. Also some famous guests have stayed in the house, such as the 15th century artist Bernt Notke from Lübeck and later the Russian Czar Peter I. Legend has it that the czar planted the two lime trees growing in front of the house.
Numerous Baroque features of interior design have been later added to to the originally Gothic house, including a mythological painted ceiling to the Rape of Europa theme . The main stairs with a balustrade and a small portrait gallery of the Hueck family (actually copies) enhance the cosy diele. Tallinn City Museum has a model reconstructing the original appearance of the building.
With reference to Hueck House, there were a number of spirit and ghost stories and also legends in the Middle Ages. Most of the stories are about the spirit of a monk who was immured in the house and is now restlessly wandering around in the night . Even as late as in 1959 there were still earnest heirs asking "Is the monk still showing himself?" One questioner had heard a story from the people of the house about the beautiful Margaret, daughter of Hueck, who a young monk had had a crush on. However, as Hueck had given his daughter to a rich Lübeck merchant, then the monk had stayed to wait for his love with "eternal fidelity and longing love". Although the legend is based on some historical facts, the truth has become distorted during centuries.

30 Lai Street

The first reports of a small house date back to the 15th century. In 1495 the house became Hans Pawels house. Hans Pawels was the organizer of St Olaf’s curch’s Mary’s Chapel ’s works. In the 18th century the house was rebuilt into a granary , but the two old adjacending doorways were retained in the southern part of the house. Thus, the building lost the characteristics of a dwelling house façade and interior. The current interior has been simplified. Some of the medieval residential structures still remain : furnace parts, traces of the old ceilings, niches, etc. Along with 28 Lai Street it forms Healthcare Museum.

38 Lai Street

The house on 38 Lai Street deserves attention as "Mr Eggers house (well known Baltic German merchant and industrialist), where the singing society "Estonia" (established in 1865) rented rooms in 1870. Here , the first grand society anniversary celebrations were held .
The society attended the first national Song Festival, where it was awarded with the first grade diploma. In 1871 it also set up an acting troupe. With society’s leadership theatre was estblished in 1906 and theatre and concert hall built in 1913. The singing society “Estonia” and singing society “Lootus” organized the VI Song Festival. The VII Song Festival was organized by society “Estonia” alone.

39/41 Lai Street

The design of the three-storey office- and rental building is based on Neobaroque: the building is designed symmetrically. The center of the façade is emphasized by the stylish hot-forged archcvent, the north wing is divided by flat tetrahedral pillars that are against the wall, the end of the house has triangular gable. The northern wing has a representative arched entrance: next to the vestibule is a hall with large shop windows, on the second floor there are office spaces.
The building was damaged in 1944 and then rebuilt. It has been proposed to rebuild the southern part of the house also according to the same project as the northern wing was built. Currently it is an administrative building.

40 Lai Street

Lai 40 is one of the best-preserved medieval buildings in Tallinn. Its diele has a smoke hood with a corner pillar; in the dornse the visitor will find a piscine ( basin for washing hands), a beautiful window column , the floorboard of a hypocaust furnace with the openings for for heat, inner portals, wall niches, a beam ceiling with some remnants of painting, etc. Along with the neighbouring buildings the house belongs to a group known as Three Brothers.

47 Lai Street

At the end of Lai Street, near the town wall, there is a low round building. It is the town’s former horse -powered treadmill, where grain was ground for the city folk in times of war, when the enemy besieged the city and the watermills at the moat outside the city gates stopped, or in winter when mill wheels were frozen .
The first record of the mill dates back to 1379. It was thoroughly repaired in the first half of the 16th century, in 1701-1702 it was again under repairs and by 1741 once more dilapidated. Then it was turned over to the army as a storehouse. In 1757 the mill and the palace of Peter I in its vicinity burnt down. The ruins were rented out in 1772 to be built into stores. In the late 19th and early 20th century St Olaf’s congregation used the building as a hearse- shed .
Nothing has remained of the mill’s equipment, in general such mills used horses as a power source. Moving in circle they operated the millstone in the basement by means of gear system. Today the building belongs to the city and is used by the City Theatre.

50 Lai Street

The church got its name after king Olaf II Haraldson and was dedicated to St Olaf, who in Estonia was the patront saint of seafarers. The church close to the Scandinavian trading yard was first recorded in 1267 . The exact location of that church is not known but it is thought to have been a bit south -west from the present one, in between the present Lai and Laboratooriumi Streets and built already in the twelfth century. The present location of the church might date from 1330 – a boss with this date and the image of St Olaf was found in the church during the reconstruction in the nineteenth century. The present shape and size probably dates from the fifteenth century. St Olaf’s Church was the biggest building in medieval Tallinn. The interior is significant for the great height of the nave (31 m) and the beautiful asteroid vaults of the chancel.
The steeple with its slender spire was once 159 m high and, as such, the tallest in in the world in the 1500s. This tall spire and a part of the valuable interior was destroyed in the fire caused by the lightning in 1625 and when it was restored in 1651, it was made lower . During the 17th and 18th centuries, the steeple was struck by lightning six times. The present height – 123.7-m – dates back to the restoration of 1820-1840, after the fire of 1820 that devastated the church. The restoration took 20 years and followed the old Gothic style and not the Neo- Classical style dominating in the first half of the nineteenth century and so the restored St Olaf`s introduced the new, Historicist ecclesiastical architecture .
The oblong basilica is a wonderful specimen of Gothic architecture in Tallinn. The fact that the central nave is almost twice as high as the side aisles reveals the basic characteristic feature of Gothic style – aspiration upward. The altar part of the building with magnificent asteroid vaults dates from the 15th century.
The Lady Chapel, built southwards from the chancel just before the Reformation in the early sixteenth century, is one of the most beautiful and noteworthy late-Gothic buildings in Estonia. It erected in 1502 -1514 on donations of a rich merchants and art- lover Hans Pavels . It is the most interesting annexe of the church. On the eastern façade of the chapel is the cenotaph of a citizen merchant, composed like the sixteenth-century winged altarpieces. It is the work of two late-Gothic stonecarvers Clemens Pale and Hinric Brabender (nicknamed Bildensrieder). A skeleton with a toad on its chest and a serpent around its skull has been carved in the lower niche. According to Estonian folklore , Olev, the man who built the church, fell down and got killed when he was putting finishing touches to the spire. A toad and a serpent sprang out of his mouth. Olev was buried on the very spot where he died. A stone block with the carved figure of Olev, a toad and a serpent, was placed on his tomb .
St Olaf’s Church was a Roman Catholic one up to 1524 . The first Evangelical sermons delivered in the church signified the beginning of the Reformation and thus the church belonged to the Lutheran congregation from 1524 to 1950 (up to 1940 the congregation was German). Since 1950 the Union of Evangelical Christians and Baptist Churches of Estonia have used the church. The spire of the St Olaf`s Church has been opened to the public. The view of the Tallin Old Town and its vicinity is magnificent.
Lore has it that citizens of Tallinn pursued two objectives at once when building the tower. Concerned about their sailors and guests of the city, they wished to erect a lighthouse that could be seen even from the shores of Finland. On the other hand, the magistrate and the citizens wanted to use the excesses of their funds to create such an architectural masterpiece for their hometown, the likes of which could not hav been found in any other European city. Tallinn’s architects of the old days probably aimed to reach the Heavenly Father or to defy the skies at least.

Summary

The aim of the report was to find additional material about the houses on Lai Street that would be helpful for the students of Tallinna Mustamäe College while doing their guide practice exam in form eleven. In conclusion , we can say that although there is literature available on this subject , it is mostly found in the Estonian language, or written many years ago, and no longer entirely accurate. There is certainly a need for up-to-date literature on the subject. The author proposes to create a database that would have a list of all the buildings in the Old Town with a short summary of the history of each building and an explanation why the building is important.

References

Mäeväli, S. 1986. Architectural and Art Monuments in Tallinn. Tallinn: Perioodika (lk 54, 103-107)

Raam, V. 1995. Eesti arhitektuur I. Tallinn: Valgus. (lk 97-111)

Tarand , K. 1998. I'd Like to Show You My Town. Tallinn: Remall (lk 48-49)

Viirand, T. 2009. Tallinn. Tallinn: Koolibri (lk 68-71)

Kivi, A. 1972. Tallinna tänavad. Tallinn: Valgus (lk 62-63)

Kuuskemaa, J. 2012. Legends and Tales of Old Tallinn. Tallinn: Aleksandra (lk 103)

Väinsalu, K. 2011. A DAY IN TALLINN on Foot and by Bus: Travel Guide. Tallinn: Greif (lk 70-71)

Hallas , K., Kodres, K., Kaim, M. 2000. 20th Century Architecture in Tallin. Tallinn: The Museum of Estonian Architecture (lk 26)

Tallinn Churches: History and Restoration. 2009. Koostanud O. Liivik, B. Dubovik. Tallinn: Pakett AS. (lk 19-23)

Tallinna Legendid . 1991. Koostanud I. Goldman, P. Kaldoja . Tallinn: Perioodika (lk 37-40)

Lai 30 http://www.eestigiid.ee/index.php?CatID=135&ItemID=4918 (12.04.2014)

Lai 38 http://www.eestigiid.ee/index.php?CatID=135&ItemID=4918 (12.04.2014)

Otto von Kotzebue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Kotzebue (24.04.2014)

Adam Johann von Krusenstern http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Johann_von_Krusenstern (24.04.2014)

Carl Ludwig Engel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Ludvig_Engel (24.04.2014)

Tallinlasi sunnitakse valima: Linnateater või Kultuurikatel http://uudised.err.ee/v/kultuur/107656fd-be4e-40c4-bb45-bb05f96f857b (24.04.2014)

Nikolai Kuzmin http://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Kusmin (24.04.2014)

Estonia (selts) http://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia_(selts) (24.04.2014)

Hobuveski http://www.linnateater.ee/teater/mangukohad/hobuvesk i (24.04.2014)

Jakob Pontus Stenbock http://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Pontus_Stenbock (25.04.2014)

Eggers, Georg http://entsyklopeedia.ee/artikkel/eggers_georg (25.04.2014)

Põllumajandusministeeriumi ajaloost http://www.agri.ee/ministeeriumi-ajaloost/ (25.04.2014)