In the 19th century, a three-story house of the Lapin merchants stood on the site of this building. In 1825, they requested "to cover the roof with iron instead of tiles, and to make a bench in the fence for selling bread and sbiten." The sixteen-year-old Nekrasov spent his first winter in St. Petersburg in this house in 1838-1839 as a teacher. A small boarding school for boys run by Benetsky was located here, and he offered Nekrasov to teach the pupils spelling, history, and arithmetic. Nekrasov expressed his impressions of life and teaching at the boarding school two years later in the vaudevilles "The Magnanimous Deed" and "Fedya and Volodya."

The next owner of house No. 11 was the second guild merchant Schneer Zalman Ioffe, who owned a furniture store and a trade-brokerage office at Liteyny 47, as well as antique shops on Basseynaya and Zagorodny Prospekt.

In 1913-1914, a new massive building in the neoclassical style was built here for him. The architect of this building was Alexander Lvovich Lishnevsky.

https://reveal.world/story/aleksandr-lishnevskij-universal-nyj-soldat-arhitektury

Since then, house No. 11 has become one of the symbols of the district of St. Petersburg known as "Five Corners" — its tower faces the intersection known by that name. The new building had only six apartments, two on each floor, intended for wealthy residents. On the top floor facing Zagorodny Prospekt lived the owner himself with his family. Below them was the apartment of banker Golant, chairman of the Petrograd Mutual Credit Society council. Several shops were located on the lower floors. For example, at the corner was the entrance to Shapiro’s car showroom; nearby were shops selling furs, hats, shoes, corsets, travel goods, sheet music, wine, and fruit. On the second floor along Troitskaya Street, in 1915, architect Lishnevsky arranged a 300-seat cinema.

The tall tower with five dormer windows reigns over the Five Corners, serving as a landmark in the urban space. The facade facing Rubinstein Street is symmetrical. The first and second floors were built to house retail spaces, so their exterior decoration is modest: large windows are separated by granite piers, and it is visible that gray granite slabs decorate the brickwork of the building. The third, fourth, and fifth floors seem like a separate structure. The Venetian windows on the third floor have semicircular transoms that open inward. Caryatids standing on the sides of the window openings support the false balconies of the windows on the next floor. On the fourth floor, the window pediments are triangular, resting on brackets, and in the recesses of the pediments is something resembling a bird image. In the pediments above the bay windows are Hermes’ caducei entwined with snakes — symbols of the god of trade, travel, and deception. The cornices of the third floor and the roof are supported by massive modillions. Everything is massive and solid, yet light and airy at the same time.

The first two floors, with high ceilings, were intended for shops. The corner of the building is designed as a semicircular tower. The pediments of the bay windows are decorated with relief stucco.

The arched windows of the third floor are adorned with pilasters on which caryatid figures are installed. The caryatids support garlands with one hand. There are 40 caryatids on the facade — they are installed all around the building’s perimeter. Despite their number, the caryatids are almost unnoticeable — they are small in size.

The oval inner courtyard of the building is unique — hardly any similar ones exist in St. Petersburg. Art historian Alexander Stepanov notes that by creating a courtyard of unusual shape, Lishnevsky turned the sky "into a mirrored abyss over which clouds glide." Windows of both staircases — the main one (which repeats the oval shape of the courtyard) and the service one — open into the courtyard space.

The former income house of Ioffe, which architectural historian Boris Kirikov calls "a recognizable sign of the Five Corners," has always attracted and continues to attract the attention of artists, photographers, musicians, and filmmakers. For example, the music video for the band DDT’s song "Not a Step Back" was filmed on the roof of this building; currently, an art studio is located in the building’s tower.

The house is connected with tragic fates of the late 1930s. The daughter of Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky, writer and publicist Lidia Korneevna Chukovskaya, lived here. Her husband was the remarkable physicist and writer Matvei Petrovich Bronshtein, author of popular physics books, who was arrested and executed. After that, the house was often visited by Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova. Anna’s son, Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev, was then imprisoned at Shpalernaya 10. From that time began the friendship of two deprived women…

Sources:

Victoria Ilyina. Five Corners — a unique St. Petersburg intersection. 6th Open Hearings of the Petersburg Institute, January 1999

https://www.citywalls.ru/house460.html

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