Zverkov's House

Griboedov Canal Embankment, 69, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 190031

This is Zverkov's house. What a place! So many people live in it: so many cooks, so many visitors! And our fellow officials—there are as many as dogs, piled one on top of another.

Another address in St. Petersburg where Nikolai Vasilievich lived from 1829 to 1832. The house is vividly described in Gogol's "Diary of a Madman."

“I opened my umbrella and went after two ladies. We crossed Gorokhovaya, turned onto Meshchanskaya, then to Stolyarnaya, finally to Kokushkin Bridge and stopped in front of a large house. ‘I know this house,’ I said to myself. ‘This is Zverkov’s house.’ What a place! What a crowd lives here: so many cooks, so many visitors! And our brethren of officials—there are as many as dogs, piled one on top of another. I even have a friend there who plays the trumpet well. The ladies went up to the fifth floor. ‘Good,’ I thought, ‘now I won’t go in, but I will remember the place and at the first opportunity I will not fail to take advantage of it.’”

Besides this, it was here that Gogol wrote his immortal story "Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka." Built in 1828 for the wealthy merchant and moneylender I. D. Zverkov, the house was the first five-story building in St. Petersburg and appeared quite tall to contemporaries. Recall that previously, buildings in the city on the Neva were only permitted to be up to four stories high.

It is worth noting that Gogol also lived at the end of 1828 on the Griboedov Canal in the Trut tenement house, located at the then address—Embankment of the Catherine Canal, 72. If you wish, you can drop by and take a look at this place (the original building, unfortunately, has not survived), which is only a 4-minute walk from the previous point on our route. At house number 72 on the embankment of the current Griboedov Canal, Nikolai Vasilievich also lived immediately upon arriving in St. Petersburg.

This house, built in 1827, stands at the corner of the canal and Stolyarny Lane (house number 18 on Stolyarny). A very tall building for those times (5 floors), it became one of the largest tenement houses in St. Petersburg at that time; previously, only four-story buildings were allowed. Gogol lived on the fifth floor.

Instead of a memorial plaque, a simple paper poster hangs in one of the first-floor windows on Stolyarny Lane, reminding us all that Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol lived in this house, and it also features a quote from his "Diary of a Madman."


Sources:

https://peterburg.center/ln/ekskursiya-peterburg-gogolya-2-marshruta-n-v-gogol-v-sankt-peterburge-k-210-letiyu.html

https://www.visit-petersburg.ru/ru/showplace/197022/

http://family-history.ru/material/biography/mesto/gogol/kanal69/

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