The two-storey shop building on the corner of Supeluse and Karusselli streets has had two addresses throughout its history…. and with good reason − it is actually two separate buildings, joined in 1905. 

In 1880, from the estate of Christian Roller, the property, together with a small house, passed into the ownership of Martha Anna Caroline Popp (1876-?). The house then passed from one person to another until 1900, when the house was bought by Daniel Romanzov, whose family owned the property for almost fifty years. 

Daniel Romanzov (circa 1855-1930), a Russian merchant who came to Pärnu from the Pskov Governorate, had been trading in the Pärnu market building for several years, and it seems he was successful, as in a few years he also bought the neighbouring property at 3 Karusselli Street. 

In 1902, the building project for a new dwelling on Supeluse Street was approved, and Romanzov had the new and old houses joined according to the 1905 project. 

The homeowner’s family with six children moved into a four-room apartment on the second floor. 

Since the corner house had always housed a shop, Romanzov, who continued to trade in the market, also ran a spice shop in the corner house, and occasionally rented out the premises to other shopkeepers. Before the First World War, besides the owner of the house, Alfred Laur ran a shop in Romanzov’s house, and after the war, the Rummi family opened their own shop here. While Johan Rummi (1884-1948) continued to run his shop in Riia Village, which had already been open for a decade, his wife Anna Rummi (1881-1857) began to run the shop on Supeluse Street. 

In addition, the owner had had a butcher’s building and shop built in the courtyard (1903 project), with a door opening onto Karusselli Street. Here, various Pärnu butchers rented premises suitable for business in different periods. Later, during the Soviet period, they were reportedly used as a grocery store warehouse. 

Daniel Romanzov died in 1930 and his estate was inherited by his widow Maria (1866-1946), who continued to live on the second floor of the house, in apartment 3, with her daughter Daria (born 1896, married name Adams), a clerk. 

Pärnu Kaubastu grocery store 

At the beginning of the Soviet occupation, the shop premises were taken over by Pärnu Segakaubastu and Shop No. 1, a food and delicatessen emergency shop, was opened here. This meant extended opening hours − the shop was open every day of the week, from 7:00 until 23:00 (there were four such emergency shops in the city). 

The house was nationalised from Maria Romantsova and was managed by the housing authority. Her son Vassili (b. 1888) left for Germany in 1941 and her daughter Darya was arrested on 27 July 1941 on charges of counter-revolutionary activities, fascist propaganda and membership of the Defence League, sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, and died in April 1944 in the Dzhezkazgan prison camp in Karaganda oblast. Her other daughter, Ksenia (b. 1890), who was married to Alexei Gorbachev, a Tallinn merchant, was deported. Maria Romantsova died in 1946. 

However, the grocery store continued to operate throughout the Soviet period, managed by the city’s Executive Committee of the Trade Administration. In the mid-1950s, the shop got new furnishings, the furniture was designed and made from start to finish in Kaubastu’s own woodworking shop, which specialised in shop furniture. The grocery store, which after the war was simply numbered 5, was renamed “Karusselli“. 

The shop had to undergo another major renovation in 1968. In addition to upgrading the interior, the aim was to “implement progressive forms of commerce”: the shop was converted to self-service to better and faster serve holidaymakers in the resort area. Being almost the only grocery store in the beach area, there tended to be long queues, especially in summer. Instead of being served from behind the counter, consumers were able to choose from the shelves themselves, paying the cashier who sat next to the exit. 

From farm shop to Karusselli cafe 

After the restoration of independence in 1991, two competing and ideologically different associations opened two new grocery stores in the city − the Pärnu Agricultural Producers’ Union, which brought together former socialist collective farms, started trading on Hommiku Street, and the Pärnu Farmers’ Union, an association of farmers restoring farms on returned lands, started trading on Supeluse Street. Both aimed at selling agricultural products directly to consumers, bypassing buyers and intermediaries. While the former socialist collective farms, lacking experience in retailing, were unable to adapt to the market economy, the Farmers’ Union’s “Farm Shop” did well. 

In 1998, entrepreneur Õivo Tammalu and his wife took over the shopkeeping from the Farmers’ Union, and ran it until 2013. By 2015, both the shop and the building as a whole were renovated by Ergo Sartrakov and Taavi Kolts, who lived in the same building. A cafe-bar was opened in the shop premises, still named “Karusselli“, in keeping with tradition.