Maly pr. P.S., 32, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 197198
Established in 1905 under the Society for Assistance to Former Pupils of the Imperial St. Petersburg Commercial School and their Families, the Joint-Stock Partnership for Housing Development was one of the first enterprises founded for the construction of cooperative housing in St. Petersburg and Russia. House No. 32 on the Malyy Prospect of the Petrograd Side was built in 1907-1908 according to the design of architect Alexander Ignatievich Vladovsky to provide housing assistance to former pupils, impoverished families, and elderly pupils of the St. Petersburg Commercial School. This five-story building is one of the interesting examples of Art Nouveau style in St. Petersburg. The building is adorned with a large amount of stucco and reliefs. Below the window openings of the fifth floor runs a molded frieze with an alternating pattern of drooping laurel leaves and mascarons depicting owls; below it is a shield with the head of Medusa Gorgon, an attribute of the goddess Athena, and the head of the god Hermes — symbols of trade, embodying wealth. The central figure of the facade decoration of the Commercial School partnership’s house is the genius of glory in the form of a beautiful young girl standing on a sphere and holding a garland of laurel leaves. The winged genius of glory is called the "guardian angel of this place," and the house itself is known as the "house with the angel."
For the construction of one of the city's first housing cooperatives, the partnership did not invite Vladovsky by chance. He himself graduated from this educational institution, after which he entered the Academy of Arts; the architect’s father was also a teacher at the commercial school. The project was inexpensive for the partnership, as Vladovsky requested only one thousand rubles for all the drawings and subsequent supervision of the house construction.
The house occupies an important corner plot and looks great from all sides. The rounded bay window ends with a turret and resembles a medieval fortress. The facade finishing uses smooth and rough plaster. The house is richly decorated, and the decoration carries symbolic meaning: in the center of the facade, between the windows of the third and fourth floors, a girl with outstretched wings standing on a sphere symbolizes the Genius of Glory, which can also be interpreted as a symbol of the unity of people.
Interestingly, the original version differed somewhat from the final one — the Genius of Glory was depicted without a sphere but with a ribbon on which the short Latin word "Pax" (peace) was written.
The main goals of the partnership were to assist fellow pupils of the school and their families by providing apartments for a small fee or free of charge. On the first floor, it was planned to arrange two shops and three apartments, one of which, apartment No. 1, was occupied by the architect himself. The second and third floors had two- and three-room apartments, and on the two upper floors, there were 18 rooms with a common kitchen and dining room. Six apartments on the fourth floor were provided to a shelter for the poor.
One of the residents of the house for some time was its creator himself — architect A. I. Vladovsky. He worked in Petersburg for a short time, only five years.
The building’s architect, Alexander Ignatievich Vladovsky, was the author of buildings in Narva, Reval, and Astrakhan. He was also the founder of the Estonian Academic Society. In Tallinn, he built several Orthodox churches and residential buildings. In Petersburg, the architect built only a few buildings: at 34 Mokhovaya Street and in the Petrograd district — 11 Blokhina Street.
Sources:
https://www.citywalls.ru/house1267.html
