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House with owls

House with owls in St. Petersburg

Adress: Sadovaya St., 55-57 / Voznesensky Ave., 40-42


The building was built according to the design of the architect Alexander Lvovich Lishnevsky in 1904-1907, in its architecture elements of modernist style, pseudo-gothic and other styles are combined.

The building was intended for urban institutions, so the author of the project decided to design it with a hint of European town halls with a tower made in the spirit of the Middle Ages. The house is one of the 5 best buildings of St. Petersburg of the early 20th century, among which are the mansions of Kshesinskaya, I. Lidval and E. Zarudnoy-Kavos and the House of the Singer company. Description St. Petersburg at the beginning of the 20th century experienced a construction boom, the city not only grew in breadth but also restructured in the old territories. Earlier on this site there were two other buildings, but with the transition to the city property, it was decided to build a building in which a number of city institutions would be located.

The Imperial St. Petersburg Society of Architects announced a competition for the building project. The program of this competition and the proposed projects were published in 1903 in the architectural magazine Zodchy The victory was gained by the project of architect Alexander Ivanovich Dmitriev, the second place was taken by the development of Alexander Lvovich Lishnevsky. But, despite the results of the competition, they decided to start construction just as Lishnevsky intended.

The idea of ​​A. I. Dmitriev assumed that the parameters of the building were unacceptable for the organizers: the height planned by the project exceeded the norm of 11 fathoms set in St. Petersburg at that time. Bringing the building into compliance with city laws — reducing the design height — would entail a change in proportions and a decrease in the volume of the building.

On May 31, 1904, the City Council approved the draft proposed by Alexander Lishnevsky. The house was solved in a mixed architectural style characteristic of that period, individual elements of the facade can be attributed to modern, pseudo-gothic and other stylistic directions. The construction of the building lasted 3 years and ended in 1907.

In the spring of this year, members of the St. Petersburg Society of Architects visited the newly rebuilt building with an excursion. The report on this event, along with photographs of the finished building, as well as the house execution drawings were published in Zodchy magazine. In the autumn of the same year, during a competition organized by the Board of St. Petersburg, architectural solutions of the last 30 new buildings of the capital were compared.

As a result, it was decided to select and highlight five nominees: the mansions of Kshesinskaya, I. Lidval and E. Zarudnoy-Kavos, the House of the Zinger Company and the House of City Institutions. After the 1917 revolution, the 32nd single labor school and, shop No. 3 of the 1st State oil-cloth and granite factory, evening shift school No. 105 of the Octobersky district of Leningrad were located in the former home of city institutions. For many years, the October District Committee of the Communist Party and the Executive Committee of the District Council of People's Deputies were located in the House of City Institutions.

Currently, the building houses offices of various organizations and city institutions, including the State Multifunctional Center for the Provision of Public Services.

During its existence, neither the volume-spatial structure of the house, nor the decor of the facades underwent any special changes, except for some losses. In 2009, owls were recreated on the forceps of the facades; they were made of artificial stone, one is located on Sadovaya Street, and two on Voznesensky Avenue. The sculptors of the Sov - Pavel Ignatiev and Denis Prasolov. The height of the sculptures 1.8 meters …

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