Karelskaya St., 19, Sortavala, Republic of Karelia, Russia, 186790
The building was constructed in 1913 based on the design of Finnish architect Uno Werner Ulberg for the United Bank of the Nordic Countries. In addition to the bank branch, it housed apartments for bank employees and a bookstore. Currently, it houses the Sortavala Post Office of the Federal Postal Service Administration of the Republic of Karelia — a branch of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Russian Post".
The bank building is one of the valuable elements of the development of the central street of the city of Sortavala — Karelskaya Street, and at the same time forms its main square. The structure is brick, two-story with attic rooms, L-shaped in plan, consisting of two volumes shaped like parallelepipeds. The volume facing Karelskaya Street is covered with a gable roof, while the volume perpendicular to it has a half-hipped roof. The roofing is tiled. On the western end facade, a semicircular volume with a flat roof protrudes. The main facade has an asymmetrical composition: instead of a large display window located on the right side, the main entrance to the building is arranged on the left, and the display window next to the main entrance is smaller in size than its symmetrical counterpart on the right side of the facade. At the edges of the building rise two turrets with bases at the level of the second floor: on the left — pentagonal, on the right — quadrangular, topped with four-sided spires, with narrow vertically elongated windows. The windows on the first floor of the building are large display windows with arched tops; on the second floor, they are grouped in pairs and vertically elongated. The entrance to the building is recessed relative to the facade plane, and access is through an arched opening. The volumetric-spatial composition of the building is complemented by a stone fence with gates, attached to the ends, under a single-pitched tiled roof.
The compositional center of the building’s interior layout is the bank’s transaction hall. The rooms on the first and second floors are connected by three two-flight staircases. In some rooms on the second floor, colored tile stoves have been preserved. Especially notable is the stove in the large vaulted room facing Karelskaya Street with its windows. Its tile relief in golden ochre colors features motifs of Karelian flora and fauna. Colored stained glass with geometric patterns has been preserved on the windows of the former bank vestibule.
The building’s decor indicates its affiliation with Neo-Romanticism (Finnish National Romanticism) in architecture, and the building itself is a characteristic example of this style. The building has a protruding granite plinth, above which granite slabs clad the height of the door. A special decorative effect is given by the high roof of the main volume with red tile roofing, as well as the tiled roofs of the turret spires with ribs highlighted by special tiles. The main entrance is decorated with a cartouche bearing the monogram “SF” and images of flowers and cornucopias, placed on a column that supports the arches of the passageways. The entrance doors are decorated with metal grilles of circular shape.
Comprehensive restoration work on the monument building has not been carried out; only routine repairs of the facades, roofing, and interior rooms have been performed. Also, during the adaptation of the building for the post office, partial replanning of the premises was carried out (installation of wooden partitions).
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