In 1822 a glassworks with the status of a half-manor was founded on Vändra manor land on the bank of the Käru River; the place was called Võidula in Estonian and Karolinenhof in German. The glassworks office, which served as the manor house, was built in 1872 as a two-story Historicist timber building. Its abundant wooden fretwork and outward-bulging convex window panes, made at the local glassworks especially for this building, make it unique.
The glassworks office, which served as the manor house, survives practically unchanged and holds the Võidula community center. Many of the glassworkers’ houses also remain in altered form, but little survives of the factory buildings.
Good to know
The glassworks first made bottles and later window glass.
Its signature product was specially treated photographic plates, sold in the early 1900s across the Russian Empire and Western Europe.
The glassworks closed during the economic crisis of the late 1920s.
