The house received its name — Hauswald Dacha — from the surname of its first owners. A bakery master built it for his wife, Evgenia Karlovna Hauswald, following the design of architects Vladimir Chagin and Vasily Shene. The bakery master and happy husband Hauswald was no ordinary man, having engaged fashionable architects to build his own dacha on Kamenniy Island. At that time, Kamenniy was both a former property of the imperial family and a super-elite cottage settlement. Among its residents were merchant Eliseev and industrialist Putilov, lawyer Planson and professor Bekhterev, and Harbin’s founder engineer Sviyagin.

Just two years after the construction of this mansion, in 1900, Vladimir Ivanovich Chagin — a graduate of the Imperial Academy of Arts, a technical inspector for the Ministry of the Imperial Court, an architect with several major projects behind him, and later the owner of two income houses in Moscow — began serving in the cabinet of His Imperial Majesty. This did not prevent him from staying in the USSR after the revolution and working on major projects: including the reconstruction of residential buildings and the restoration of the interiors of the Sanduny Baths in Moscow. In 1948, the architect was buried at the Vvedenskoye Cemetery in Lefortovo. Most of his works in the style of St. Petersburg Art Nouveau, of which the Muscovite Chagin was one of the founders, were realized together with architect Vasily Ivanovich Shene. Little is known about Shene. His own mansion and a small park on Krestovsky Island were confiscated in 1916 due to debts. The date of his death is unknown; various sources indicate "after 1935." But Shene’s works are still alive: four dachas on Kamenniy Island (including his own, unfinished one), the income house of N. V. Chaikovsky on Nevsky Prospect, 67, the Kelkh mansion on Chaikovsky Street, 28, and several other income houses in the historic center of the Northern capital.

The architects approached the project with imagination: they emphasized the expressiveness of geometric shapes — cones, cylinders, and cubes — combining all elements together. Stone slabs, gray brick of the tower, yellow plaster walls and windows coexist with wooden carved elements of the pediments, which give the entire structure complexity and elegance. The building is almost devoid of sharp corners, smoothed, asymmetrical, allowing it to be revealed from all sides. But let’s return to the dacha. The Hauswald mansion — a very rare example of St. Petersburg Art Nouveau in wooden architecture — embodied many characteristic features of the style: emphasized asymmetry of the building’s silhouette, a complex, broken line of the roof and portals. A one-story part with a semicircular portal adjoins the wooden two-story part of the building. From the south, the complex is complemented by two wooden terraces decorated with four stone columns, and from the north — a semicircular stone turret with semicircular windows. The basement floor is made of rubble slabs (rubble or broken stone is made from limestones and sandstones). By the way, this slab is a kind of "business card" of mansions on Kamenniy Island; it was used in the decoration of almost every second building in one way or another.

The owners’ living rooms were located on the first floor, the second was allocated for guests and an office. The dacha was divided into two parts: service — southwest and residential — northeast. The kitchen, buffet, and servants’ rooms had a separate entrance. It is believed that the layout, some decorative elements, and the functional division of the building were borrowed by the project creators from the architecture of classic English cottages. Some architectural historians, however, consider the prototype style of the Hauswald dacha not "English," but "Bavarian." Which, in principle, changes nothing; stylish and imposing from the outside, the cottage remained cozy and thoughtfully designed inside.

Evgenia Karlovna Hauswald’s dacha became the first building in Petersburg where the structural principles of the new style were embodied. It is located in a well-visible place at the intersection of Bolshaya and 2nd Berezovaya Alleys, near the Big Canal. At the request of the owners of Kamenniy Island, the Dukes of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Princess of Saxe-Altenburg, free plots of Kamennoostrovsky Park were granted the highest permission to be leased long-term (for 90 years). In the same 1897, a plan for dividing the territory into plots was approved. To preserve the park landscape, new houses were prescribed to be built "in the middle of the garden," without enclosing them with solid fences, which unfortunately is completely violated today.

In 1898, a dacha and two service buildings were constructed deep within its polygonal plot. This was a milestone in the development of St. Petersburg Art Nouveau. Shene himself noted: "the style of the dacha is new, with a predominance of motifs of American wooden buildings." The influence of late 19th-century American architecture is traced both in the overall structure of the building and in such characteristic features as a cylindrical tower with a conical top, an arched portal, a terrace and veranda, and imitation of shingles in the wooden siding. At the same time, the half-timbered motif, pointed gables, and turrets liken the dacha to a miniature castle. But in its romantic appearance, there are only allusions, not direct imitation of the historic style. The free compact plan of the dacha was distinguished by a flexible interconnection of rooms. The spatial center was a two-story dining hall connected to the billiard room. The dining room was decorated with half-timbered elements and ornamental painting with plant motifs. The interiors and external appearance of the dacha have come down to us with changes and losses.

In the 1900s, its owner became Demidov, Prince of San-Donato; in 1910 — lawyer Mandel; in 1916 — the wife of actual state councilor Schwartz.

In 1910, civil engineer Lipavsky added a second floor to part of the house, and six years later extensions were made, disrupting the integrity of the original composition.

The plot is fenced with a low openwork wrought-iron grille outlined with plant scrolls. The service buildings of 1898, located in the southern corner of the yard, were expanded and rebuilt in 1910 and 1916. They echo the dacha building with their half-timbered pattern and gable silhouette. Sometimes this object is called the Hauswald-Schwartz dacha, adding the adjacent Schwartz building. (Its author is not documented but is quite likely Shene again. This is supported by the proximity of location, time (1900–1901), and, most importantly, the style of the construction.) The mansions shone and pleased the eye until the 1917 revolution.

In the first years after the October Revolution, Kamenniy Island, renamed the Island of the Workers, became depopulated. The former dacha residents disappeared, and the actual workers had not yet appeared — war, devastation. However, the once elite district gained new "owners" — homeless children. Perhaps this is why the Soviet authorities decided to nationalize the mansions at once and transfer them to the care of a children’s colony. So to speak, no need to go far. Thus, the Hauswald dacha became the home of the 3rd Lunacharsky Children’s Colony.

One of the wards, Beynar, writes: "The height of the window in the dining room was two stories, the inner frame of which was decorated with colored glass pieces depicting flowers with green leaves in a thin lead edging. Of course, these beautiful glasses did not rest in the hands of children. They were pried out of the lead edging. The lead was used for fishing weights, and the beautiful round, thick glass pieces of different colors found use in some game or were exchanged for something..." The dismantling of everything that attracted curious children’s minds continued until 1923, when the Hauswald dacha received new owners and became a sanatorium-prophylactic of the Leningrad Metal Plant.

A quiet nomenclature life flowed. The Island of the Workers earned the nickname "island of high fences," turning, in fact, into a complex of nomenclature dachas, and became quite distant both from social upheavals and the needs of workers.

In Soviet times, thanks to domestic cinema, the mansion became truly famous. In how many films this stone gentleman took part! Igor Maslennikov filmed his "Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson" here (episode "A Scandal in Bohemia"), Yan Frid — "Don Cesar de Bazan" and "The Bat".

Actors such as Vasily Livanov, Vitaly and Yuri Solomins, Nikolai Karachentsov, Mikhail Boyarsky, Anna Samokhina, Igor Dmitriev, Yuri Bogatyryov, Larisa Udovichenko, and many others performed within the house walls. Among the people, the building is known simply as Irene Adler’s house. According to the plot, she was Sherlock Holmes’s beloved woman.

In the 1990s, the house was sold to the company "Impulse," affiliated with businessman Oleg Deripaska’s structures, and stood abandoned and cold for almost twenty years. It was remembered only in 2008: at a meeting of the Council for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage under the Government of Petersburg, the issue of the Hauswald dacha was considered.

And so the newspaper "Saint Petersburg Vedomosti" on August 20, 2019, reported:

"The restoration of the bakery masters’ Hauswald dacha has been completed in Saint Petersburg. The late 19th-century building is located on Kamennoostrovsky Island. It was built combining stone and wooden (pine and larch) structures. For many years, the mansion deteriorated and became unusable due to improper maintenance. It was even threatened with demolition. Nevertheless, in 2017 specialists began the restoration process. They managed to preserve more than 70% of the historic log structure and more than 80% of the rafter system. The commissioning of the Hauswald dacha is scheduled for December. Possibly, tourists will be able to visit the mansion."

The thorough and expensive restoration of the monument, designed by the now late Petersburg architect Rafael Dayanov, was successfully completed at the end of 2019; the work was fully funded by the owner of the company "Vozrozhdenie." The owners of "Vozrozhdenie," at the time of the company’s 2020 report publication, were Valentina Petrovna Deripaska and Margarita Balina. Valentina Petrovna is the full namesake of the mother of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska.

Currently, the entrance to the mansion is closed, the fence that appeared after the restoration was removed, and although it is not possible to enter the house now, it can be viewed from the outside and beautiful photographs can be taken.

Sources:

https://dzen.ru/media/stone_spb/sanktpeterburg-istoriia-osobniaka-gausvald-pervyi-v-rossii-5e1f019516ef9000ae91028a

https://www.citywalls.ru/house1603.html

https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2324586

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Дача_Гаусвальд

https://www.fontanka.ru/2021/11/21/70266545/