Stremyannaya St., 11, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 191025
On Stremyannaya Street, there is a house of original architecture that attracts the gaze of passersby and is known to all architecture connoisseurs. This house is recognized as the best example of Northern Art Nouveau. Northern Art Nouveau inspires admiration because it is a lively, plastic, and asymmetrical design in architecture. It features elements of decorative and applied arts, borrowings from natural and national motifs. The uniqueness is created by the naturalness of the building materials. The complex is the quintessence of rains, dampness, and at the same time chthonic power — united by stone and the labor of great masters.
The estate, on the site of which the house was built, belonged to the children of Maria Ivanovna Ugryumova: Konstantin Nikolaevich Ugryumov, Olga Nikolaevna Alexandrova, and Alexandra Nikolaevna Polosukhina, from whom the architect Bubyr acquired it in 1905.
The house was designed and built by architect Alexey Fedorovich Bubyr in 1906-1907. The main facade of the house on Stremyannaya Street was designed by architect Nikolay Vasilyevich Vasilyev, the future architect of the Cathedral Mosque of St. Petersburg. The house is located on a narrow plot, and its main facade faces north.
Bubyr’s house is a narrow U-shaped building in plan with a small courtyard in the middle, and its main facade faces north. The facade is designed in dynamic forms — the bay window is shifted to the left, with a swift change in window shapes. The first floor is clad in red Finnish granite, the bay window and the second floor in gray "pottery" stone, and the remaining walls are covered with plaster, in places glazed ceramic tiles.
The sculptural decoration of the building is unique. The house abounds with a large number of fairy-tale and folk images, depictions of the Sun, ravens, mushrooms, fir trees. On the walls of the lower floors are fish and snakes.
The strange creatures at the entrance have become a kind of symbol of Art Nouveau. In the original project, the authors wanted to place images here executed in a naturalistic manner. Possibly, sculptor Sudbinin, who often worked in Bubyr’s workshop, participated in the works. Above the passage to the courtyard, two masks are carved from stone.
The apartments in the house were arranged with 9, 6, 5, and 3 rooms, all separate. There were 3 apartments on each floor. All apartments, except the 3-room ones, had rooms for servants, bathrooms, and 2 closets (toilets). A laundry was built above the 6th floor, as the city water supply pressure allowed this, even on bath days. Wood-fired basements were placed under the courtyard, raised above street level.
For the lower floor — red Pyuterlah granite, roughly processed, and in a few places smoothly hewn with sculpture near the front entrance and gates; for the second floor, balcony, and partial finishing of openings on other floors — Finnish pottery stone, also partly smoothly hewn, partly with sculpture, as seen on the facade; on the top floor and partly on the third and fourth floors — rough plaster; the rest of the surface is finished with foreign facing bricks; the cap for the balcony-lantern on the sixth floor was designed from copper; grilles and gates are iron, forged.
The house contains an interesting stained glass window "Guardians" with an owl and ravens — by N. M. Goncharova.
After the building was constructed, Bubyr acquired it for himself. The architect and his family occupied an apartment on the 6th floor. According to the project, the house had an open courtyard. But in 1907, another three-story wing was built — Bubyr made a garage for his "Renault" in it.
The house was home to civil engineer, architect of the Kseninsky Institute, member of the commission for the construction of the Peter the Great Hospital — Lev Alexandrovich Ilyin. Later, he became one of the major Soviet urban planners; from 1925 to 1928 he worked as the chief architect of Leningrad. Ilyin died during the shelling of the city on December 11, 1942.
From 1882 to 1935, Andrey Nikolaevich Lavrentyev lived in this house — director of the troupe of the Imperial Alexandrinsky Theatre, future director of the Bolshoi Drama Theater, who moved here from Dmitrovsky Lane, 13.
In the 1950s, the house was home to People's Artist of the USSR Eduard Anatolyevich Khil.
In the 1960s, the house housed the café "Elf," frequented by artists, poets, rock musicians: Oleg Garkusha, Viktor Tsoi, and others.
Currently, in Bubyr’s apartment, oak frames and doors, ceilings with original molding, Dutch stoves, and built-in wardrobes have been preserved in their original form — elements conceived and implemented by the architect during the construction of the house.
Sources:
https://www.citywalls.ru/house617.html?s=rm87c017tlbic59me5ba8f2o7m
