WW (Wassili [Semjon] Woinoff, 1877-1942)

Wassili Woinoff, full name Василий Семен Воинов, businessman and one-time owner of the underlying real estate (1910s) plus the Grand Marina cinema (which also showed circus performances, possibly explaining details below) at No.5 Mere puiestee (built 1912? to entertain the Tsar’s soldiers, later returned to the people as a Soviet naval officers’ [only] club, today the Russian Cultural Center), reputedly the wealthiest man in Estonia prior to deportation to the Urals on assumption of counter-revolutionary tendencies. Named by his grandson, one of the mall developers, Oleg Sapožnin, honorary president of the Eesti Jalgratturite Liit (Estonian Cyclists’ Union), son of Vladimir ‘Boba’ Sapožnin (1906-96), who began his professional life in a circus at the age of five, progressing to polyinstrumentalist and, later, violin virtuoso as well as friend of David Oistrakh, violinist and one-time volunteer of the Soviet Union’s wartime Moscow Home Reserves. Not exactly a street, WW Passaaž  mini shopping-mall was opened after much brouhaha from the antiquities department in 1997-04-19.