This remarkable building is located in the very center of the city, near the arch of the General Staff. In fact, it is two houses built at different, though close, times, as indicated by their address — Bolshaya Morskaya St., 3-5. This building was constructed for the Azov-Don Commercial Bank. Founded in 1871 on the outskirts of the country — in Taganrog — by the 1890s the bank was already among the top five largest banks in the country. In 1903, the bank’s management moved to the capital, which created the need for a new bank building. To build the building, the bank purchased a plot at Bolshaya Morskaya, number 5, in 1907 (previously there was a stone house here, built in 1781 for the merchant Antropov, later expanded and turned into the "Belle Vue" hotel).

The plot for the bank building was not chosen by chance: its location just a few hundred meters from the Winter Palace was meant to confirm the solidity of the credit institution. However, the architect was not a "well-known" one. The fact is that the bank’s director — Boris Kamenka — had bought an apartment on Kamennoostrovsky Prospect in a new building designed by Lidval, and apparently was impressed. As a result, the project of this young architect won.

The gray building in the style of Northern Modern at Bolshaya Morskaya, 3–5, just steps from the General Staff arch, is a place where the "smell of money," the notorious emanation of success, is felt with extraordinary intensity. The building, constructed for one of the largest Russian banks at the very beginning of the 20th century, impresses with its monumentality. The construction of this building was a moment of triumph both for its creator — the young architect Fyodor Lidval, for whom this was only the second large-scale work — and for the client — the Azov-Don Commercial Bank, a provincial credit institution that became a significant player in the economy of the entire Russian Empire.

In 1908-1909, simultaneously with the building of the Second Mutual Credit Society at Sadovaya 34, Lidval erected the bank building. While on Sadovaya Street elements of Northern Modern and Neoclassicism are combined equally, at Bolshaya Morskaya Neoclassicism undoubtedly dominates (probably due to the proximity of Karl Rossi’s classical masterpiece). Whereas the Second Mutual Credit Society building practically lacks columns (only the facade pilasters slightly "hint" at columns), here Lidval created a full portico with three-quarter Ionic columns, topped with a pediment imitation.

The competition conditions were not simple: a height of four floors with a "fireproof" mansard, construction from fire-resistant materials, a facade of rough stone, and on the first floor — a two-level operating hall with an area of at least 900 square sazhen (about 400 m²). The main challenge was the bank hall: natural lighting had to be arranged without using display windows or a glass dome — vulnerable and unsafe elements. Fyodor Lidval solved the problem with narrow "light wells": the operating hall windows faced inner courtyards covered with transparent roofs.

The building turned out to be not only beautiful but also functional: the basement housed three hundred safes, an archive, storage rooms; above them — the director’s space, a large hall, and a reception room; higher up — meeting rooms for the bank council and board members, their offices, rooms for the secretariat, inspection, and accounting for more than a hundred people, with separate rooms for the chief accountant and his deputy, a dining room with a buffet, and more.

The complex also included its own boiler house, a coal storage adjacent to it, a laundry, an apartment for the building manager, rooms for janitors and doormen, a large kitchen, and restrooms. In other words, it was not just a building but a fully autonomous system. A very expensive pleasure: the construction, excluding the cost of the land plot, cost 658,558 rubles and 50 kopecks — an astronomical sum for that time.

The bank cooperated with French and English financial circles. In the last quarter of the 19th century, it mainly financed grain trade; in the early 20th century, it also supported industry, mainly coal and metallurgical sectors. It worked with the "Prodmeta" and "Produgol" syndicates. Bank branches operated at the Kalashnikov grain, livestock, and meat exchanges in St. Petersburg, as well as in 65 cities across Russia.

Both facades are clad with light gray uniform granite from the Kovantsari deposit on the Vuoksa River. The granite is a uniform fine-grained rock, mainly composed of gray feldspar and partially quartz. On some slabs in the center of the basement floor, a banded-slate structure of the granite can be seen.

The columns emphasize the main room of the building — the huge two-level operating hall, made very spacious thanks to the use of a reinforced concrete frame. Although the facade was originally symmetrical, its development caused some asymmetry. Shortly after completing the building at number 5, the Azov-Don Bank acquired the neighboring plot at number 3 (previously the private house of the famous 18th-century architect Kvasov was located here). Now Lidval had to build on this plot as well, combining it with the previous one. In 1912-1913, Lidval constructed the right wing of the building. To emphasize the dominant role of the left wing, the roof was made without a gable, and pilasters were used instead of columns. Both buildings are decorated with a bas-relief frieze created by sculptor V. V. Kuznetsov. The relief is cut through by masonry joints, making it part of the wall — a technique very characteristic of Lidval. The reliefs are also located above the porticos and in the inter-window spaces.

The main entrance to the building is decorated with metal reliefs. Metal panels are also placed between the columns of the portico of the left wing. In the 1920s–1930s, the building housed the Leningrad regional office of Torgbank, a savings bank, institutions of the non-ferrous metals industry, the regional consumer societies union, Lenkulttorg, Voentorg, and other institutions.

In 1944, the building was restored. On June 20, 1947, an intercity telephone exchange opened here; in 1948, the Central Negotiation Point. In 1964, the first automatic telephone conversation between Leningrad and Moscow took place at this point. At the same time, the first coin-operated intercity telephone booth in the USSR began operating here.

Sources:

https://www.dp.ru/a/2018/09/06/Mesto_sili

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Азовско-Донской_банк#Buildings