Address: Nevsky Ave, 66, St Petersburg, 191023
Phone: 8 (812) 640-44-06
"Knizhnaya lavka pisateley", St. Petersburg
"Knizhnaya lavka pisateley" ("Bookstore of Writers") is one of the oldest bookstores in Russia. The store under this name was created in 1934 by the decision of the First Congress of Soviet writers with the filing of M. Gorky and S. M. Kirov, but its history goes back to a much longer past.
The house is located at Nevsky, 66, where the "Knizhnaya lavka pisateley" is today, and before its appearance there was a very “literary” story. To begin at least from the fact that the first building plot at this place was received by the legendary classicist G.R. Derzhavin - it was still under Catherine II.
True, he did not build anything at this place, but instead sold the land to a merchant Sharov, who built a three-story mansion here (at the end of the 19th century, the house was rebuilt, during which it became five-story). The house was a bookstore M. O. Wolf - a publisher who was the first in Russia to publish a whole series of children's and youth books and special magazines for children; And at the time Andrei Bely and Alexander Kuprin were residents of apartments in the house №66.
Since the opening of the "Knizhnaya lavka pisateley" not just experienced difficult times. During the war, fascist shells hit the building four times (after each hit the shop was closed … for a day or two, which was required by the store employees to repair the damage on their own). After the war, the house survived, but required repair, and by the seventies approached an emergency condition.
Fortunately, from 1975 to 1978, the building underwent a major overhaul, after which the shop returned to its renovated home. It turned into a cultural center: there were poets, prose writers, playwrights, translators, critics, photo exhibitions and exhibitions of paintings by Leningrad artists.
At various times, Olga Bergholz, Fedor Abramov, Yevgeny Vinokurov, Vadim Shefner, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and many others were guests of the Lavka. Today, the tradition is not interrupted: writers' tables and creative meetings are still held in the Bookstore of writers.
Now the "Knizhnaya lavka pisateley" is listed in the Red Book of St. Petersburg (along with, for example, Pyshechnaya on Bolshaya Konyushennaya and other legendary places of Leningrad in St. Petersburg) - which means that no one has the right to repurpose it or even rename it.
But even this did not save the store from another crisis. In recent years, there were trials and litigation around the "Knizhnaya lavka pisateley", and at the time of this writing (June 17, 2014) it became known that the St. Petersburg Arbitration Court allowed the Smolny City Property Management Committee's claim to evict the store from the premises on Nevsky Prospekt 66 .
True, representatives of Smolny claim that the function of the store will continue - it will remain bookish, the tenant will simply change. What happens to the store on Nevsky, 66, in fact, time will tell.
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