The featureless house, which lost its open glass verandas, tall tower and lace details after Soviet-era reconstructions, was originally the most magnificent wooden villa on Supeluse Street, built by the state councillor, engineer Wassili Nasarow.

In 1881, the ice breakup on the Pärnu River carried away many ships and barges that had wintered there, crushing them and throwing them ashore. It was then decided to undertake a major reconstruction of the port, and the Georgian-born road engineer Wassili Petrowitsch Nasarow (1844-1924) was invited to lead the work, having recently completed similar work in the port of Liepaja.

A new wooden pier was built in Pärnu Harbour and the shipping lane was deepened to 18 feet (about 5.4 m). The second major work was the deepening of the old Swedish moat for the winter storage of ships and the leather bridge. The state support and the personal care of Konstantin Possiet (1819-1899), who originated from Pärnu and was appointed Minister of Roads of the Russian Empire in 1874, played an important role in the implementation of works to improve Pärnu Harbour and trade conditions. Minister Possiet, who stopped at the manor of the land councillor Stael von Holstein in Uulu during his visit in 1886, travelled to Pärnu by steamer on 11 July to personally inspect the construction work in the harbour. He was very pleased with it. As a token of gratitude for the attention paid to his hometown, the town council decided to ask the Minister of Roads to accept the title of honorary citizen of Pärnu in December of the same year.

Builder of the Väinatamm Causeway

At the beginning of 1889, Nasarow travelled on his next assignment to Kuressaare to find out whether it would be more sensible to try to deepen the old port there or to build a new port in Roomassaare. In 1891, construction of the port of Roomassaare started and Nasarow was appointed as construction manager. The port was completed in 1894 and in the same autumn, Nasarow took over the construction of the Small Väinatamm causeway, which had already begun but was facing organisational difficulties. The work was carried out with about a couple of hundred workers both in summer and winter, using stones from the ramparts of the Muhu Stronghold and the walls of the Maasi Fort-Castle, among others. The completed causeway between the island of Muhu and Saaremaa, 6.5 metres wide and 3.5 kilometres long, was opened on 15 July 1896 and was named Zinoviev Bridge in honour of the patron of the undertaking, the governor of Livonia, Mikhail Zinoviev, who had died in the meantime.

On 1 January 1897, a special port construction administration was established with a centre in Pärnu and departments in Kuressaare, Haapsalu and Heinaste. State Councillor Engineer Nasarow was appointed as its head. In 1908, the engineer completed his 30th year of service, and as a token of gratitude, the winter harbour in Pärnu Vallikraav was named “Engineer Vassili Petrovich Nasarov’s Harbour” by decision of the city government and with the official permission of the Governor and the Ministry. The 64-year-old man retired from the service.

In the young Republic of Estonia, Nasarow applied for Estonian citizenship in 1922. The head of state, Päts, personally wrote a resolution to his application, noting that Nasarow was already an old man and had prepared his grave site, and that the old man’s wish should be granted and he should be given Estonian citizenship before his death.

As an old widower, he gave his large property to his three surviving children. After his death in February 1924, it was registered in three notional parts to Maria Vassilyeva, Ekaterina Kamyshev and Peter Nasarow. Wassili Nasarow died in 1924.

Villa Villi and Cafe Elionora

Nasarow’s heirs rented the house out. In 1927, Willem Strickwald (1882-1931) from Saulepi, the owner of the Pärnu Hotel Central, opened the Villa Villi boarding house here. On the second floor, 11 rooms would be ready to accommodate summer visitors. On the first floor was a summer café with two spacious halls and a veranda, named Elionora after his daughter. The café opened on Pentecost Monday with a classical music concert. In the summer that followed, the dining room was praised in the newspaper columns as one of the best places for summer visitors to have lunch. However, the accommodation business seems to have not taken off, and by the autumn of 1929, the business was closed and the owners of the house were looking for new tenants for the rooms.

“Tervis” clubhouse and the first Yo-Yo championships 

Inspired by English sports clubs, the oldest sports club in Pärnu, “Tervis”, took over the first floor of the building as its club premises in October 1929. The football department of the sports society organised the first Estonian Yo-Yo Championships in this very building. In autumn 1932, the yo-yo craze that had conquered the world arrived in Pärnu. One could see yo-yo addicts (who were also jokingly called “yo-drunks”) passionately swinging the discs on the streets in the middle of the day.

At the competition held in the Tervise clubhouse on 6 November 1932, Cesar Andreesen (1914-1941) won the Estonian record and championship title in his name with 5882 yoyo spins in 2 hours and 53 minutes. As always with fads, by the following summer the game had gone out of fashion.

In 1934, the state was considering buying a house as a police rest home, following the example of the members of the Defence Forces who bought Villa Bellevue on Promenaadi Street (Tammsaare Boulevard) as a rest home in the spring of the same year. However, the city government did not support the idea, as a shortage of holiday apartments in the resort had started to slow down the development of the resort.

Natsionalisation

The house at Supeluse 7 was expropriated from Nasarow’s children in 1940. After the war, the house, like all the larger buildings on Supeluse Street, was initially used by the military. In 1952, it was transferred to the balance sheet of the Housing Authority and a total of twelve apartments were built in the house. To this end, the existing glass verandas were converted into rooms. The house lost all its lace details in the course of several renovations.