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20. Augusti (0)
Opened on 2011-08-20, commemorating the day in 1991 when the Republic of Estonia’s independence was decided and restored, now a national holiday: Taasiseseisvumispäev (Day of Restoration of Independence). Place-name (väljak), not street-name, covering essentially the same plot as Harjumägi, and not easy to tease the two apart (this is the superstructure on top of the hill). NB: not to be confused with Independence Day (Eesti Vabariigi aastapäev or Eesti iseseisvuspäev), which was 1918-02-24.
1. liin (0)
1st line. Streets 1. liin to 5. liin are calqued on the ‘Lines’ of Saint Petersburg’s Vasilyevsky Island, where each one was originally the line of houses either side of a canal (later filled in). Tallinn’s 1. Liin today is in a sorry state: an abandoned wasteland of burned-out houses, shipping containers and a sense of desolation. But take heart, like its more thoroughbred thoroughfares, it will be redeveloped. As a reminder on the Estonian concept of street (see Introduction), 1. liin is actually two streets parallel to each other, although ‘streets’ is stretching things a bit too.
Also, as another reminder, if the street name is already in the nominative (rare), its usual place in brackets is left as ‘0’.
Tornimäe (Tornimägi)
Although it means Tower Hill, there’s neither one nor tother in sight. Apparently named after a certain Adam Tornimäe (or Adam X from Tornimäe in Saaremaa), a worker who rented a property from Jaani Seek, St John’s Almshouse, in the early 17th C, long enough for it to become known as Tornimäe Maja (house). In the 19th C, Tornimäe was also the place to go for autopsies. See Mäe for discussion.
Villardi (?)
Uncertain, known as Willase in 1875 after local peasant farmer Karl Willase (from willane/villane, woollen?) or Wilas, but recorded as Villari in an 1885 Tallinn guide book. Later, the Germans used Willarstrasse and Willertstrasse believing it named after local landlord Willert (wrong, he wasn’t around then). The street appeared as Villardi in a gazetteer of 1923, one year after a physical map of Estonia drawn by a certain Ad. Villard was published in Tallinn, suggesting a sequence of minor copying errors. Soviet occupation renaming (1950-1991]: Laari J.
