Tartu Open House tour opens psychiatric clinic, yeast factory and garage home

ERR’s Ringvaade programme reported that Tartu’s Open House architecture festival will offer guided visits to buildings normally closed to the public, including a former psychiatric clinic, a yeast factory, a home converted from a garage and a villa designed by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto.

The guided tours will take place in Tartu on September 19 and 20. Visitors will be able to explore 25 locations.

One of the buildings opening its doors is the former psychiatric clinic on Staadioni Street. Guide Marie Helen Matsina said it was the first purpose-built psychiatric clinic in Estonia and the second in the Russian Empire.

Patients with various diagnoses were admitted there, including people diagnosed with hysteria. Some stayed for rest, while some elderly women were brought there because their relatives wanted to get rid of them. The building had three types of wards, with the most expensive costing 80 rubles, including three meals a day.

The clinic’s best-known patient was writer Juhan Liiv. According to Matsina, Liiv wrote in his memoirs that he expected to be taken to a beautiful place on a beautiful day, but was instead deceived and brought to the psychiatric clinic. His final stage of schizophrenia developed there, Matsina said.

The building, one of Estonia’s oldest and largest wooden structures, operated as a psychiatric clinic until the early 1990s. It is now being converted into an apartment building under strict heritage protection rules, requiring all elements to be appropriate to the period.

The Tartu yeast factory produced yeast from 1883 until the end of 1997. Production of spirits was later added, followed by a hydrotherapy facility, or sanatorium, where by-products from yeast production were used for treatment.

Workers at the factory also lived in apartments inside the building. The two main by-products used at the sanatorium were yeast extract, a yellowish-brown fermentation liquid used for baths, and yeast sediment, a porridge-like substance used for compresses. Treatments were provided for nervous disorders and joint problems.

The tour will also include a home built from a garage. Architect Egon Metusala, who lives there, said the garage was designed for larger service vehicles rather than small passenger cars. He said the project demonstrated the potential of empty garages and sheds in Estonia’s less densely populated towns.

Visitors can also see Villa Tammekann, designed by world-famous Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. The villa’s client, August Tammekann’s wife Anna Irene, made numerous demands during the design process, including changes to the windows and kitchen. She ultimately got a second-floor study with a window facing the evening light, despite Aalto’s objection that a window could not be placed there because it faced another house.