Estonian National archives
Building projects in Tartu from the years 1871–1918
The National Archives’ Tartu projects database contains approximately 6,000 construction projects. The projects mainly originate from the archive of the Tsarist-era Tartu city government and cover the period from the 1870s — when the responsibility for reviewing and approving building plans was placed on municipal authorities — until 1918. The structures range from residential and industrial buildings all the way to circuses. It should be noted, however, that planned constructions and renovations were not always carried out, or the finished building could differ from the design.
The data are presented as a CSV table containing, among other things, information about the building’s address, owner, function, and planning date. Since the original database was intended for use without digital images, the descriptions of the planned buildings are sometimes very detailed and may include, for example, wall materials (interior and exterior), number of floors, number of apartments of different sizes, the location of toilets, and more. The descriptions have now also been linked to digital images, which can likewise be used during the hackathon. The data make it possible, for instance, to visualize the development of the city of Tartu at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries — where in the city planning activity was most intense, whether living conditions differed across districts, and so on.
