This house may be plain in appearance but is not so plain in its history. Firstly, it is probably the oldest building in the quarter, although its original construction date is still unknown. 

The earliest known owner was Jaak Moses (1839-1898), a teamster from Vana-Vändra, who married in 1878 and had the house enlarged in the 1880s. Then the house changed owners several times until it was bought in 1895 by two spinster sisters, Natali and Eliisabet Kaurow. After the sisters died, their brother Alexander became the heir in 1923. 

Pharmacist Kaurow 

Aleksander Kaurow (1850-1939), born in Cesis, Latvia, was educated at the University of Tartu, married Pauline Martha Pope, an Austrian from Riga, and established a pharmacy by the Voltvet-Allikukivi Factory. When the Allikukivi Broadcloth Factory burned down in 1894, he moved to Kilingi-Nõmme with his pharmacy. He ran it there for more than 35 years and moved to Pärnu to spend his old age, living on the second floor of this house. 

Their son Woldemar Kaurov (b. 1890) became a drawing teacher and painter in Pärnu, while their daughter Irene (1889) was married to Georg Köösel, the long-time headmaster of Pärnu Girls’ Gymnasium. 

The pharmacist Kaurow died shortly before World War II, on 12 February 1939 in Pärnu, and was buried in the Pärnu Alevi Cemetery. 

Sculptor Adamson’s widow 

In 1940, Eugenia, the widow of Professor Amandus Adamson, rented an apartment on the second floor of the Kaurow heirs’ house. Due to the agreement on military bases made with Soviet Russia, all the inhabitants of Paldiski were forced to leave, including the sculptor’s family, who used to live there. Ida Eugenia Gertrud Adamson (1881-1964), with her younger daughter Maria Maddalenna (born 1922) and her elder daughter Corinna’s (1910) family decided to settle in Pärnu. The sculptor, who died in 1929, was buried here at the Alevi cemetery at his own request, right next to the War of Independence monument, whose sculpture group the sculptor had modelled after his family. 

The sculptor’s creative legacy of more than a hundred sculptures was brought to Pärnu from his home in Paldiski, where Amandus Adamson’s studio was also located. It was received here by Elsbet Parek, director of the Pärnu Museum. 

The objects were placed in the museum building on Elevandi Street. A few years later, during the German occupation, the Mayor of Pärnu, Arthur Peetre, opened the Amandus Adamson room on 30 August 1942 as part of the museum’s permanent exhibition, where most of the works of the artist were exhibited. In addition, there were drafts and sketches from the end of his creative period, when the sculptor created several War of Independence monuments in Estonia. 

Unfortunately, on 23 September 1944, retreating German troops set fire to the museum building, destroying most of the works of Amandus Adamson that had been brought to Pärnu. His daughter Maria and son Peeter left for Sweden in autumn 1944. Eugenie managed to return to Paldiski with their eldest daughter, where she lived in her house until she died in 1964. 

Nationalisation 

Since Alexander Kaurow’s widow and heir, Pauline-Martha Kaurow, left for Germany in 1939, the ownerless house was taken over by the state. First, the military was housed here, and then it was managed by the Housing Authority. 

In the 1960s, the house underwent a major renovation, another floor was built, and the house received featureless windows and a flat roof. The old veranda on the seaward side of the house was closed off and became a room in one of the first-floor apartments, with a total of three apartments on each floor. 

After the restoration of independence, the house was privatised as apartments for different families.