The massive apartment building was built by ETKVL’s Fishery for its employees. To achieve this, an old, archaic wooden house formerly belonging to the Blumenfeldt family had to be demolished.

Housing problems in the post-war city 

During the war, a large part of Pärnu’s residential areas was destroyed, while the number of city residents began to grow rapidly, both because of the Russian soldiers who needed housing and the rural population fleeing collective farming. Initially, the city leaders could not do much about it, and therefore the larger industrial companies in Pärnu had to provide housing for their employees themselves − apartment buildings were built on all kinds of vacant plots or in place of buildings destroyed in the war. 

One of them was the ETKVL Pärnu Fishery, founded in 1948, whose main task, apart from catching fish, was to market its products − both fresh and smoked or canned. In 1958, when the number of fishery employees had increased to 250, construction of an apartment building started at the address of Nõukogude 13. By the end of the same year, the foundation of the new building was laid, and the building was completed by October 1960. The contractor was the Pärnu construction office of Ehitustrust, also part of the ETKVL group. Upon completion, it was considered the most attractive building in Pärnu and the building company received national recognition for its high construction quality. The first to move in were Ilmar Hendrikson, forwarder at the Fishery, and his wife, Ellen. 

Captain Blumenfeldt’s house 

However, before the apartment building could be built, the old wooden house on the site had to be demolished. Miller Anton Blumenfeldt (see Supeluse 11) had had it built as a second residence on his property. It was a residential building with an attic floor, which, after Tõnis died in 1912, was owned by his son, ship captain Oskar Georg Blumenfeldt (1868-1922). 

Barely a decade later, Oskar also died of kidney failure at the age of 53, having been captain of the passenger and merchant ship “Thorsten”. The house was inherited by his widow, Eugenie Alide Marie Blumenfeldt (née Dreyer), and two minor children − daughter Sigrid (born 1904) and son Kurt (1906). The family continued to live in the same house, but the spacious building was also sublet. From September 1933, the Pärnu sports club “Vaprus” had its premises here. 

Pärnu Youth Sports Association “Vaprus“ 

The sports society’s origins go back to 1890, when a gymnastics section was set up within the temperance society “Valgus”. After Estonia’s independence, the association was re-established in 1922, now as the youth temperance sports association “Vaprus“. 

The association went down in sports history: a relay race was organised during the 1928 Summer Song Festival that started at 4:00 in the morning on 1 July. A member of the association, William Puust (1898-1982), started from Pärnu Stadium towards Tallinn, carrying a baton with a greeting from the Mayor of Pärnu hidden in its hollow. It was the first event of its kind in Estonian sports history. A total of 20 competitors took part in the relay race, covering the 146-kilometre distance to the Tallinn Stadium in 9 hours and 12 minutes. 

The sports club, which was mainly made up of Pärnu’s working-class youths, got suitable premises in the Supeluse Street building to organise lecture evenings, dance courses and parties. In addition, the Pärnu Esperantist Society, largely made up of the same young people, was brought along. Later, Vaprus operated in various rented premises. In November 1936, it was merged with the Pärnu sports clubs to form a new city-wide sports club, which became the Pärnu Kalev. 

Café “Kaskede all” (“Under the Birch Trees”) 

In 1934, Gustav Tölp, who had a falling out with his former landlord, moved his café Silvia here, but it didn’t last long. In 1936, the family of musician Ferdinand David moved into apartment 1. His wife, Alice David (1895-1974), had until then run a small shop on Roosi Street. Now she was given permission to open a grocery shop in this building, and on 10 January 1937, she opened a new café, advertised as having radio music and several social games (billiards). The naming of this café was left to the visitors, and after a small naming contest, the café was named “Kaskede all” (“Under the Birch Trees”), an apparent reference to the tree-lined avenue on Supeluse Street. The café is said to have been quite spacious, but the premises were not exactly suitable for a modern café. Her husband Ferdinand David continued to work as a musician, as well as offering private violin lessons in his home. 

The David dynasty 

In the 1870s, Adolf-Norbert David (1849-?) arrived in Pärnu from Bohemia, and was hired by the city to conduct the city orchestra. In the 1890s, his son Gustav David (1872-1936) continued conducting the city orchestra. Gustav David’s brother Ferdinand David (1888-1959), who lived in the house, was also a musician. As all three were also teachers at the Boys’ Gymnasium, the schoolboys gave them nicknames to distinguish them: Adolf-Norbert David, or “Old David” as he was known, taught wind instruments, his son Gustav David, or “Mr David”, taught the violin, and his brother Ferdinand David, who, although not officially a teacher, was active in the school orchestra, was nicknamed “Little David”. After Gustav died in 1936, his brother Ferdinand David took over the conducting of the orchestra at the Boys’ Gymnasium. 

Before the Soviet occupation, Ferdinand David left for Germany with his wife and the entire local Baltic German community here. From the Hanau Camp, the Davids moved to Australia, where Ferdinand died in Adelaide in 1959. His wife Alice then moved to New York to live with her daughter’s family. 

Palmists, fortune tellers and prophets 

Like the practicing doctors who rented out the larger apartments on Supeluse Street in the summer, combining holidaying in the summer capital with earning money from treating wealthy summer visitors, all kinds of palmists, fortune tellers, and prophets also came looking for clients. In the second half of the 1930s, “Professor” Peep held sessions in an apartment at Supeluse 13. That things didn’t always work out easily is shown by a report in the newspaper’s crime news from June 1935, according to which Mr Orav, who lived at Tori Railway Station, had asked to draw up a report for fraud − the palmist Peep had described his past completely inaccurately and then charged him an extremely large fee for it. 

Emigration and nationalisation 

Immediately before World War II, the premises on the first floor were rented by the Pärnu Drama Theatre Society, whose founder and one of its leaders was Kristjan Hansen from Pärivere. The purpose of the society was to involve schoolchildren in acting by organising performances, theatre days and performing arts courses. In 1939, Eugenie Blumenfeldt, the owner of the house, also left for Germany, along with the David family. Her son Kurt, who had followed in his father’s footsteps and became a long-distance captain and had recently been serving on foreign ships, also decided to stay in the West. 

In 1940, the Soviet authorities nationalised the buildings. In the years of the German occupation that followed, a rehabilitation centre and a rest home (Erolungsheim) “Langenstrass” for soldiers was opened here. After World War II, in the early 1950s, it was decided to demolish the old building, which was supposedly very dilapidated by then. It made way for a new apartment building.