The income house of the First Russian Insurance Society, popularly known as the “House of the Three Benois,” is a huge residential complex with passage courtyards opening onto Kamennoostrovsky Prospect, Bolshaya Pushkarskaya, Kronverkskaya, and Bolshaya Monetnaya streets. It was built in 1911–1914 according to the design by the architect brothers Leonty, Albert, and Yuliy Benois in the neoclassical style with elements of Art Nouveau.

This is one of the most well-equipped houses of the early 20th century, a true “city within a city,” with advanced engineering communications (sewerage, water supply, steam heating, lifting machines, telephones). It had its own power station, boiler room, laundry, garbage incinerator, and snow-melting facility. The complex was maintained by twenty janitors. Each entrance had a doorman. The building featured a novelty — several dozen built-in garages. In total, about 250 apartments were planned here, making the house “the largest residential complex in St. Petersburg at the beginning of the 20th century,” as it was described nearly a hundred years ago.

We are talking about house numbers 26–28 on Kamennoostrovsky Prospect. In fact, this is not just a house but an entire residential complex — it occupies almost an entire block of the Petrograd side.

In the city, this building is called the “Benois House” or the “House of the Three Benois,” since it was built according to the project of three representatives of the famous architectural family — the brothers Leonty and Albert and their cousin Yuliy Benois.

Almost a century ago, the house on Kamennoostrovsky set the direction for urban development. Today, the House of the Three Benois has gained nationwide fame thanks to countless crime TV series — the building is located near “Lenfilm” and the St. Petersburg television studio. Besides its convenient location (film crews of “cop” series save on everything and choose locations close to their technical base), the house stands out for its labyrinth of interconnected passage courtyards — there are more than a dozen of them, intricately connected.

The courtyards are numbered — supposedly for the convenience of visitors, but this numbering, marked with large painted signs at the gateways, is extremely confusing. It’s better to be patient and wander through the courtyards leisurely, without aiming to exit at a specific point.

The address of this huge, solid multi-apartment building could also include the nearby streets — Kronverkskaya and Bolshaya Pushkarskaya — since the side wings of this enormous structure face them. Essentially, this is the largest and most well-equipped residential complex in pre-revolutionary Petersburg.

Commissioned by the First Russian Insurance Society, the design and construction of this residential complex with 250 apartments were carried out by three architects sharing the surname Benois. Their full names were Leonty Nikolaevich, Albert Nikolaevich, and Yuliy Yulievich. Architect Gunst also participated in creating this unique residential building.

The huge house was designed and built in the popular neoclassical style of the early 20th century and received architectural and sculptural decoration corresponding to this concept. The northern and southern wings of the building are connected by a double-row Doric colonnade made of red Gangut granite. The same stone clads the plinth of the buildings, and small fragments of it, laid out as a mosaic, decorate the walls of the first floor in the inner courtyard. Elegant low colonnades, sculptures, mascarons, ornaments with griffins, dolphins, and horns of plenty complement the house’s decoration.

Great attention was paid during the design and construction of the house to creating comfort and coziness. The house had an autonomous power station, boiler room, laundry, garbage incinerator, snow-melting facility, telephone communication, was equipped with elevators, and fireplaces were installed in the apartments. The building on Kamennoostrovsky Prospect was maintained by janitors, guards, stokers, doormen — more than 100 people in total. Renting an apartment consisting of 5–7 rooms cost a decent sum; the tenants were wealthy Petersburgers: urban planners, theater figures, writers, composers, scientists, and officials.

After October 1917, some residents of the “House of the Three Benois” were consolidated, and their apartments turned into communal flats. Some premises were allocated by the new authorities to people they considered more valuable: for example, party officials, including the leaders of Leningrad. Therefore, the house is famous for its outstanding residents. Over the years, famous composers, artists, theater and film figures, writers, architects, scientists, party and state officials, and Soviet military leaders lived here.

Before the revolution, the writer Mikhail Chekhov, the brother of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, lived here and published the magazine "Golden Childhood." The ballet artist Nesterovskaya was joined here by Prince Gavriil Konstantinovich of imperial blood, who moved from the Marble Palace.

Several organizations were also housed here. In the pre-revolutionary period, three infirmaries and the office of the Aral-Caspian Railway were located in the wing facing Bolshaya Pushkarskaya Street, and in 1918 a club and the editorial office of the Finnish communists’ newspaper, as well as the House of Enlightenment, appeared.

On August 31, 1920, a mass murder occurred in apartment No. 116 on the fifth floor of the main building. This was the so-called “Kuusinen Club,” essentially the headquarters of the Communist Party of Finland in Russia, where Finnish communists fled after their defeat in the civil war in their country in 1918.

The majority of the party elite settled in Petrograd and lived a luxurious life, unlike ordinary party members who lived in poverty. The brewing conflict was resolved by an opposition group with weapons in hand with the aim to “remove the leadership and the gap separating it.” Among the victims (8 killed, 10 wounded) were leaders of the Finnish Communist Party, including Jukka Rahja, brother of Lenin’s comrade who accompanied Ilyich to Smolny on the night of the October Revolution. The shooting at the “Kuusinen Club” caused a wide resonance, but the truth was attempted to be concealed. The dead were buried at Mars Field as victims of the White Finns.

Then the first residents were replaced by proletarian leaders. From April 1926 until his death, the apartment with windows facing the prospect was occupied by Sergey Mironovich Kirov, head of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPSU. The memorial museum named after him moved here in 1956 and currently welcomes visitors as a branch of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg.

After Sergey Kirov’s assassination in 1934, mass repressions began. Over four years, residents of 55 apartments in the House of the Three Benois were arrested.

Many residents of the house made significant contributions in various fields, and their names entered the country’s history: Marshals of the Soviet Union Govorov and Shaposhnikov, actors Cherkasov (“Alexander Nevsky”) and Babochkin (“Chapaev”), scientific director of the Institute of the Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences, academician Bekhterev, and others. Memorial plaques on the wall facing Kronverkskaya Street testify to the creative personalities of the house.

Composer Dmitry Shostakovich lived and worked in apartment No. 5 of the wing on Bolshaya Pushkarskaya Street from 1937. In this house, he wrote the first three parts of his Seventh (Leningrad) Symphony. A memorial plaque with a bas-relief of Shostakovich is installed on the Bolshaya Pushkarskaya side, and his bust is placed in the courtyard opening onto Kronverkskaya Street.

Memorial plaques installed on the residential complex on the Kronverkskaya Street side inform passersby about the creative people who once lived here.

After the revolutionary events of 1917, many apartments in this house became communal. The best apartments were allocated to leading party and Soviet workers. In April 1926, the service apartment No. 20 in house 26–28 on Krasnykh Zor Street (formerly Kamennoostrovsky Prospect) was given to Sergey Mironovich Kirov, the first secretary of the Leningrad Regional and City Committees of the VKP(b). He lived here with his wife Maria Lvovna Markus until the last day of his life, December 1, 1934. In 1955, apartment No. 20 became a museum.

The Kirov Museum is a unique monument of the Stalin era. In the memorial apartment, besides five living rooms (in four of which the original furnishings are fully preserved), you will see two hallways, a bathroom, and a kitchen (recreated in the 2000s). In the former maid’s room, there is an interactive game “Take What They Give,” which tells about the ration card system of the 1920s–1930s in Leningrad. Other museum halls feature exhibitions: “S.M. Kirov’s Office in Smolny,” “For Our Happy Childhood…” and the multimedia exhibition “The Entire Kamennoostrovsky Prospect in a Box.”

Since 1999, the “Ostrov” theater has been performing in the basement of the “House of the Three Benois” on the Kamennoostrovsky Prospect side. Its foyer houses a small museum dedicated to the beloved Russian writer and playwright Alexander Volodin.

Walking along Kamennoostrovsky Prospect, it is impossible not to peek into the open parade courtyard of this beautiful house. The rows of columns framing the entrance seem to draw you inside this perfectly organized space from architectural and technical points of view.

Sources:

http://www.ipetersburg.ru/dom-treh-benua/

https://www.citywalls.ru/house559.html

https://www.companybest.ru/publications/24-peterburg/2859-tekhnicheskoe-chudo-dom-trekh-benua.html

https://kudago.com/spb/news/dom-tryoh-benua-ego/