Jūrmala · Latvia
The Estate
The historic heart of Majori Manor
A house of about 1910 at the centre of its own park, and the work of bringing it back is under way.
The manor
A house, and the ground it stands on.
Majori Manor stands at the centre of a private park of 2.4 hectares, in the middle of Jūrmala. The main residence dates from around 1910. The ground under it has been on record since the sixteenth century.
The house is under restoration. What follows is what is standing, what has survived, and what is known about how it came to be here.
Architecture
What the house has kept
The facade
None of it is reconstruction. It is what was still here when the house came back into private hands.
The residence was designed by Wilhelm Bockslaff, a leading figure of Latvian Art Nouveau and Historicism, and built around 1910. The staircases are wooden, with curved balusters. The decorative columns were made by hand, and the marble ones are original to the house. The floors are oak parquet in some rooms and marble in others.
Which is why the work now is a repair and not a rebuild.
Inside
Walk through the manor.
- 01 The hall Marble underfoot, walnut to shoulder height, and a chimneypiece that was here before the century turned.
- 02 The chandelier Forty-odd candles in gilt brass, under a coffered ceiling that has never been painted over.
- 03 The marble The chequerboard runs from the doors to the foot of the stair, unbroken.
- 04 The staircase Wooden, with curved balusters and a carved column at its foot. It is the piece the house is known by.
- 05 The glass A stained window on the half-landing, and the only colour the stairwell has.
- 06 The landing Coffers overhead, an arch through to the next room, and the balusters turning with the stair.
- 07 The doors Glazed, hung on their original fittings, and standing open onto the park.
Detail
What a century of other uses usually takes.
The fireplace portals are authentic and several of the historical tiled stoves are still in place; the artistic metal fittings are still on the doors. These are the first things to go, and the work is being planned around keeping them.
The record
The house, in five lines.
- Built
- c. 1910
- Architect
- Wilhelm Bockslaff
- Park
- 2.4 hectares
- Restoration
- Since 2024
- Location
- Jūrmala, Latvia
The restoration is led by the architect Ināra Caunīte, and it is under way now.
Origins
The lands, and the century that followed.
The earliest records of the Majori lands date to the sixteenth century. For centuries the territory belonged to the von Fircks family of Kurzeme, who spent their summers at the manor and left a steward to keep it through the rest of the year.
After the agrarian reform of 1920 the manor became state property, and through the twentieth century it served a succession of public functions. The architectural identity survived that century largely intact — which is not the usual outcome, and it is the reason there is something here to restore rather than to reproduce.
The park
Ground of its own
The park front
It is the boundary of the estate in the plainest sense. Everything the manor is, is inside it.
The park is 2.4 hectares — twenty-four thousand square metres — and it is private ground rather than a garden the house happens to have. What is unusual about it is not the size but the address: this much of it, in one piece, in the centre of Jūrmala.
The tiled stove
In 2024 the manor returned to private ownership, and a comprehensive restoration began.
What the house is being restored for is a private estate and a members' club — the same rooms, kept, and put back to the use a house like this was built for.
There is no date on that, and there will not be one here until there is one.
Majori Manor
Some places are visited. Others, you belong to.
The house has not opened. When it does, it opens to a company kept small.