The House with Owls is rightly considered one of the most striking examples of Northern Art Nouveau in St. Petersburg – its prototypes are two of the most famous buildings associated with Finnish National Romanticism. First and foremost, this is the Telephone Company building in Helsinki, constructed between 1903-1905 by architect Lars Sonck. Sonck’s influence on the House with Owls is more than obvious; Pretro borrowed too many elements from there. These include the corner tower, the pointed stone-clad portals, the round window of the flat bay window, and the spindle-shaped bay window located on the side facade of the House with Owls (the latter is set much deeper into the building than in the original, which completely deprives it of any functionality). The second prototype of the House with Owls, though now somewhat outdated, is the building of the Pohjola Insurance Company, erected in Helsinki by the architectural bureau of Saarinen, Gesellius, and Lindgren.
A monolithic building in the Northern Art Nouveau style with pointed Gothic portals and a courtyard well.
Also, there are owl figures on the facade located on either side of the main portal, and it is precisely because of them that the building is known as the House with Owls. This kind of decoration places it alongside Northern Art Nouveau houses in Riga, Helsinki, and Stockholm.
You can learn more about the building here: https://reveal.world/story/dom-t-n-putilovoj-dom-s-sovami
Sources:
https://journal.tinkoff.ru/list/modern-spb/
Written by Jermaine
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