Universitetskaya Embankment, 9, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 199034
In 1840–1842, the building on the embankment was purchased for the needs of the Saint Petersburg Imperial University and rebuilt according to the project of architect Shchedrin, who decorated the building’s facades in the Petrine Baroque style. A little later, the university’s rector became the botanist Andrey Beketov, who lived with his family from 1876 to 1883 in a wing near the university, where on November 28, 1880, his grandson—the future poet Alexander Blok—was born and spent his early childhood. Alexander Blok’s father, Alexander Lvovich Blok (1852–1909), a lawyer and professor at Warsaw University, came from a noble family; his brother Ivan Lvovich was a prominent Russian statesman. His mother, Alexandra Andreyevna, née Beketova (1860–1923), was the daughter of the rector of Saint Petersburg University, Beketov. The marriage, which began when Alexandra was eighteen, was short-lived: after the birth of their son, she broke off relations with her husband due to his extremely jealous and despotic cruelty and never resumed them thereafter.
In the Rector’s House, Sasha Blok’s favorite room was his grandmother Elizaveta Beketova’s bedroom. Its windows faced the Neva River. According to memories, often when entering the grandmother’s room, one could see a small fair-haired boy. He would stand on a table or chair, supported by one of the adults, and look out the window, waiting for the noon cannon shot from the Peter and Paul Fortress. On the third floor of the Rector’s wing of SPbSU, the house church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul has been preserved, where Alexander Blok’s parents were married in 1878. The future poet was also baptized in this church and later betrothed to Lyubov Mendeleeva there.
Alexander Blok would write many warm words about the Rector’s House in his poem “Retribution.”
Sources:
https://www.kp.ru/russia/idei-dlya-otpuska/mesta-svyazannye-s-aleksandrom-blokom-v-sankt-peterburge/
