The history of the mansion in the form we can see it today begins more than 120 years ago, in 1896. The first mention of the existing estate in the already established block, bounded by Bolshoy Prospekt of the Petersburg side, Vvedenskaya Street, Bolshaya Pushkarskaya Street, and Gulyarnaya Street (since 1952 — Liza Chaikina Street), dates back to 1796. At the end of the 18th century, the extensive land plot and wooden house belonged to the family of Captain of the Second Rank Kobylinsky. The next owner of the house in 1832 became Nikita Belyustin, a Latin teacher at a provincial gymnasium, but he owned it only briefly.

On August 19, 1838, the house was acquired by the family of Actual State Councillor, Honored Professor of the Saint Petersburg Imperial University, Ordinary Academician of the Academy of Sciences, and Honorary Director of the Cabinets of Medals and Antiquities of the Hermitage, Fyodor Bogdanovich Grefe. The biography of Fyodor Bogdanovich Grefe, as well as the subsequent owners of the house: Ivan Bogdanovich Shteinman (Johann Friedrich Steinmann) — director of the main German school of Saint Peter, founder and first director of the historical-philological institute, his wife and daughter. The last owner of the mansion, during whose time significant reconstruction took place, Yulia Karlovna Dobbert, appeared in the house long before 1896. The fact is that twenty-three-year-old Yulia Shreder married the junior coordinator of the Elizabeth Clinical Hospital for young children, Doctor of Medicine Fyodor Ivanovich Shteinman — the eldest son of the Shteinman family — on September 10, 1883. The young wife was the eldest daughter of the hereditary honorary citizen of Petersburg, first guild merchant, and owner of the piano factory "K.M. Shreder," Karl Ivanovich Shreder. On February 24, 1885, Friedrich Shteinman died at the age of 35 from a stroke.

Yulia Karlovna, having inherited the movable property left by her late husband, and living rather modestly in this house on Bolshaya Pushkarskaya, gave part of it to relatives in memory of her son and brother, part to the poor, and moved with her son to her parental mansion on the embankment of Bolshaya Nevka, 34: "not wishing to allow the sale, even at a free price, of the property left after my deceased husband and valued at 560 rubles in silver, and intending to distribute items subject to spoilage and decay to the poor, and to divide the remainder among the closest relatives of the deceased in his memory, and I humbly ask the noble guardianship to allow me, instead of the amount that could be raised at auction, to deposit at once in the name of my minor son a state bank note for 1000 rubles in silver, which sum is to be raised at the moment, and to exclude the ¼ share of the property amounting to 140 rubles in silver attached to me, but if the noble guardianship encounters any obstacles in granting this petition, then I accept all the movable property for safekeeping until my son reaches majority, with responsibility for its integrity and value."

In 1892, Yulia Karlovna remarried to Fyodor Alexandrovich Dobbert, junior resident physician at the Peter and Paul Hospital, a gynecologist. Fyodor Alexandrovich was a Baltic German from Riga. The Dobbert family moved to Petersburg in 1868 when his father was appointed pastor of the Lutheran church parish in Tsarskoye Selo. He studied at Petrischule from 1871 to 1878, graduating with honors. At the same time, his sister and future wife studied at a girls' gymnasium. Like everyone in the family, Fyodor Alexandrovich graduated from the University of Dorpat, but unlike the others, not from the theological but the medical faculty. He interned in Europe, and upon returning to Petersburg, joined the service as a junior resident at the Peter and Paul Hospital, worked as an off-staff specialist doctor at an outpatient clinic under the Committee for the Care and Relief of the Poor. His main life's work was medical and pedagogical activity at the charitable institution built at the corner of the 14th line and Bolshoy Prospekt of Vasilievsky Island — the Alexandrine Shelter for Women.

In 1895, on the eve of the house's reconstruction, inheritance divisions took place in two families — the Shreders and the Shteinmans. In the Shreder family, it took six years to divide the property of Karl Ivanovich, who died in 1889. A compromise was reached whereby all five heirs — two sisters and three brothers — each owned 1/5 of the family assets, but each was assigned a real estate object for management. Yulia Karlovna received a revenue house at the corner of Kazanskaya Street and Voznesensky Prospekt and probably monetary assets that later allowed her to make financial decisions.

After the death of Inna Fyodorovna in 1893, the family council recognized Rudolf Ivanovich Shteinman as the sole heir, who for unknown reasons did not keep it in his ownership. Yulia Karlovna Dobbert bought it from him. The motives for Yulia Dobbert's decision to buy the mansion that belonged to her first husband's family cannot be definitively clarified. Of course, the family was raising a son, Johann, then a student at Petrischule, and it was probably important to her that the mansion did not leave the family. Perhaps the seclusion of the location, the possibility of having a garden and household attracted her. Y. Dobbert was not even deterred by the fact that since 1894, a paper factory of Otto Kircher existed in the neighboring block.

As an architect, a close person was invited — son-in-law August Yakovlevich Reinberg, husband of her sister Agnessa, who later became a prominent civil architect, as characterized by his colleagues from the Riga Polytechnic Institute in archival sources. At that time, he was just beginning his career. He worked on the construction of the Baltic Railway, for which he received a silver medal, improved his qualifications at the Academy of Arts, and in 1894 received the title of artist of the second degree.

In Petersburg, he worked exclusively for the Shreder family: he rebuilt the mansion, built a revenue house on Gulyarnaya for Yulia Karlovna, reconstructed the staircase in her revenue house on Kazanskaya Street. He rebuilt the revenue house at 8 Bolshaya Podyacheskaya Street, inherited by his wife Agnessa, and helped build service premises at the piano factory. In Riga, where the Reinberg family moved in 1899, he built the buildings of the Second Russian Theater, the State Bank, his own house in Art Nouveau style, and a building for a mental hospital in Pärnu. In Tallinn, he built the building of the Estonian Noble Bank in the Hanseatic Gothic style.

Reinberg preserved the volume of the old family house, but the appearance underwent significant changes, resulting in a mansion in a romantic style with Gothic elements — faceted towers, a high roof, wrought metal decor, half-timbering, using the then fashionable type of French chalet. The house, located in an urban environment, retained all the features of a country villa.

The mansion was built for three family members — Yulia Karlovna, Fyodor Alexandrovich, and Johann, so the interior space is intimate and well thought out. Two living rooms — bedrooms, a dining room equipped with a dumbwaiter, a living room, the lady's study of Yulia Dobbert, an oak study — a library with a preserved oak built-in cabinet, and an unheated veranda. The interaction inside the house was thought out to the smallest detail. In a way, the mansion represents a prototype of a "smart" house and an example of Art Nouveau functionality, as evidenced by the lifting mechanism connecting the basement, where the service rooms were located, and the dining room, authentic mezzanines connected to the built-in library cabinet.

Although the Dobbert family was wealthy (as characterized in archival documents), the mansion's interior is very restrained. Practicality and functionality corresponded to the trends of the time, and in the absence of other evidence, most clearly characterize the owners' views on life — fulfilling their life purpose and serving people. Fyodor Alexandrovich, during his service at the Alexandrine Shelter for Women, like his colleagues, did not receive a salary for his work. In 1898, Reinberg completed the estate ensemble by building a revenue house in the Hanseatic Gothic style at the corner of Bolshaya Pushkarskaya and Gulyarnaya.

As life would have it, ironically, the Dobbert family had no children together. Hopes were pinned on the son from the first marriage, Johann Shteinman.

After graduation, he joined the District Court service, received his first rank, and died of typhus at the age of 23 in 1907. The Dobbert spouses were destined to live in the mansion for another ten years. In the 1910s, revenue houses on Syezzhinskaya, Gatchinskaya, and Lakhtinskaya Streets were bought and sold in the name of Fyodor Alexandrovich. On August 24, 1918, after packing movable property and covering the furniture, the Dobbert family left the mansion. Almost immediately, in August of the same year, the house was "robbed," as a committee employee for the poor expressed in the act she compiled. The inventory does not allow assessing the artistic or material value of the left items; Yulia Karlovna and Fyodor Alexandrovich planned to return.

Soon, children settled in the mansion — first Children's Home No. 23, then Kindergarten No. 26, and the belongings of the former owners began to be moved. The family itself first moved to the Baltics and in the autumn of 1920 settled in the suburbs of Berlin, in Potsdam. In November 1920, the Dobbert spouses made a will leaving all their property to each other. Yulia Karlovna died on October 24, 1922, at the age of 62. Fyodor Alexandrovich outlived her by ten years.

The historical interiors and facades of the mansion have been well preserved. Some time ago, the city bought the mansion and transferred it for indefinite use to the Dance Academy under the management of Boris Eifman. However, at the same time, the house was removed from state protection (apparently to simplify the donation act). A new building of the Boris Eifman Dance Academy is planned nearby. The wooden mansion was included in the educational complex project in full. Currently, the mansion, fully restored in 2015 with restored historical interiors and revived history, is used for museum and exhibition activities as the Museum of St. Petersburg Ballet at the Boris Eifman Dance Academy.

Sources:

https://lib.kunstkamera.ru/files/lib/978-5-88431-368-2/17_wavinskaya.pdf

E.V. Shchavinskaya: HISTORY OF THE MANSION OF Y.K. DOBBERT (Saint Petersburg, Bolshaya Pushkarskaya St., 14)

https://www.citywalls.ru/house965.html