Kronverksky Prospect connects Kamennoostrovsky Prospect with Mytninskaya Embankment and appeared on the city map in the first half of the 18th century. The avenue received its name in 1836, although at that time there were alternative options, such as Petrovskaya Street or Esplanade Prospect.

The six-story revenue house of Evgenia Konstantinovna Barsova was built in 1911–1912 according to the project of civil engineer Morozov in the Art Nouveau style on the site of an older building. In the mid-19th century, the owner from the Zagibenin family became the honorary citizen Pavel Astafyevich and his brother, the 2nd guild merchant Petr Astafyevich, who owned a soap and candle factory. The brothers owned (one after another) a revenue house by the Ligovsky Canal. The heirs to all the property were the widow of Petr Astafyevich, Anna Pavlovna, son Dmitry Petrovich, and daughter Nadezhda Petrovna. Interestingly, Tuchkov Lane on Vasilievsky Island was called Zagibenin (Zagibenev) Lane from 1802 to 1882, named after the local homeowner merchant Astafy Matveyevich Zagibenin – the father of the Zagibenin brothers and most likely the founder of the dynasty. Astafy Matveyevich was engaged in collecting salt duties.

One of the mentioned representatives of this famous St. Petersburg merchant family was the owner of the house on Kronverksky Prospect. Among the architects involved in the construction of the house in the mid-19th century, the documents list A. M. Gruntov and V. Nevolin.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the plot with the building was acquired by Evgenia Konstantinovna Barsova, née Pechatkina – daughter of industrialist Konstantin Petrovich Pechatkin. The Pechatkin family of merchants and industrialists was well-known and highly respected. They owned writing paper factories in St. Petersburg (Golodaevskaya) and Krasnoye Selo (Krasnoselskaya and Ropshinskaya), as well as logging enterprises near Vologda. Petr Pechatkin began paper production in 1831 by leasing a paper mill in Krasnoye Selo with the 1st guild merchant Andrey Panin and completely modernizing it. The history of the famous merchant dynasty began with the Krasnoselskaya factory. In 1841, the factory in Krasnoye Selo came entirely under Pechatkin’s control, and the owner’s son, engineer Konstantin Petrovich Pechatkin, began working there as chief engineer. Over time, not only the production volumes but also the range of products increased. After Pechatkin’s death, his daughter Evgenia took the position of chairman of the board of the Partnership of Writing Paper Factories of the Pechatkin Heirs.

Evgenia Konstantinovna married the judicial official and public figure Senator Leonid Vasilievich Barsov, who was eight years older. The couple had no children but adopted a boy named Alexey, born in 1894.

Most likely, Barsova invested money received as dividends from the Partnership of Writing Paper Factories into the construction of the revenue house. At that time, this was considered the best investment of free funds.

To this day, the facade of the revenue house has been preserved with minor changes, but the vast majority of the interiors have been lost. Like many Art Nouveau houses, the building has an asymmetrical facade complemented by original bay windows and a stylized pediment.

On the left, the bay window is semi-oval and located at the level of the third to fifth floors. On the right, it is rectangular and flat, located at the level of the fourth to sixth floors. The facade is complemented by several balconies (one has been lost).

The first and second floors of the building are faced with gray rough granite; the rest of the facade is plastered and painted.

The massive heavy portals are decorated with reliefs depicting owls and lions.

The consoles of the large balcony on the third floor, located above the archway entrance to the courtyard, are decorated with mascarons.

In this house, from 1914 to 1921, the writer Gorky lived with his de facto wife Andreeva in an 11-room apartment on the fourth floor.

Literary scholar Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky recalled: “Gorky’s house was the third from the corner. The first house – it was wooden – was demolished. Well demolished. It was torn down after the revolution by boys with short clubs. They dismantled it very skillfully. They took the house apart for their stoves. And Gorky often stopped and watched with pleasure the boys who, with such weak strength but so skillfully, did men’s work. Alexey Maximovich noticed that the children did not remove the stairs but used them to slide logs down. And they didn’t hurt or kill anyone and knew how to scatter when the militia came. The third – the house where Gorky lived – was stone, heavy, and would stand for a long time. The base was treated, as done in Scandinavia, from where the fashion came to Petersburg, with rough stone. There were shops on the ground floor. After the revolution, there was an antique shop of Gorky’s friend I. N. Rakitsky. The shop was called ‘The Merry Native’ and was remarkable because no one ever entered it. A ship with metal sails, very well painted, stood in the window. Children stopped by this ship and looked through the glass, but they also did not go in: the ship was too beautiful to buy, and there were no other items in the shop. Now the shop arches are bricked up and plastered over.”

The entrance to Gorky’s apartment was via a black staircase. A long cat’s staircase. Then doors to a warm kitchen, behind it cold rooms. A dining room with a portable stove. The stove had iron pipes. I liked to watch their crimson short glow. They heated the stove with broken boxes brought by a man named Rappoport according to the schedule.

Alexey Maximovich lived in a room with a large window. On the walls were very low shelves with books. Many books on folklore. Alexey Maximovich wore an old jacket splattered with ink up to the elbows. Over the jacket, a padded Chinese robe with wide sleeves. On his feet, warm Chinese shoes with a multilayer sole made of oiled paper. He always wrote in the mornings. He wrote in large letters, each letter separately, on large pages. A good 17th-century handwriting. Alexey Maximovich sat in a Chinese folding chair. On the shelves stood simple and thin Chinese jade.

In Maria Fyodorovna’s rooms were items from the late 19th century. Also many Chinese items, but a different China, the one loved by ladies: convex carved ivory on black lacquer.

Rakitsky had a huge room. In it was a cabinet from Peter’s times with uneven glass of the same period, Burmese cloisonné elephants, each elephant the size of a large shepherd dog, and some skulls, probably Siamese, with decorated triangular daggers inserted in them – lots of cloisonné. On the walls were paintings by Rakitsky himself, painted with colored lacquers depicting tropics with monkeys. Ivan Nikolaevich, a forty-year-old man without a mustache or beard, lay on a large sofa covered with a worn deer hide. Besides the hide, there were, I think, no other heating devices in the room.”

Frequent guests in Gorky’s apartment included Mayakovsky, Bryusov, Shalyapin, Roerich, Rachmaninoff, Lunacharsky, Reisner, Khodasevich, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and many others. Here the writer worked on the novella “In the World” and the play “The Old Man,” edited the magazine “Letopis.” After the revolution, when the writer created the publishing house “World Literature,” his editorial board gathered in the apartment. In 1920, the English science fiction writer Herbert Wells lived with Gorky, constantly cared for by Gorky’s secretary Maria (Mura) Ignatyevna Benkendorf (Budberg) and the young Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky. Wells was driven around Petrograd by car, shown the House of Scientists (the requisitioned palace of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich) and the House of Arts (the requisitioned Eliseev mansion). The visits were scheduled for times when there were as few people as possible. With Chukovsky, Wells visited an exemplary school created on the basis of the Tenishev School, where a specially prepared ceremonial reception for the “classic of English literature” took place. All the satisfied Soviet children greeted Wells and thanked him for his wonderful stories and novellas. According to eyewitnesses, the English writer realized it was a staged event and later, back in England, wrote about this farce, though as a private case – the Englishman loved the Soviet regime very much.

A. M. Gorky and H. Wells

The times were hungry, but for Wells’s arrival, the dining room of the House of Arts was allocated more than 100 kilograms of meat, and the banquet table was laden with delicacies. What Wells and Gorky did not eat, according to Amfiteatrov, was distributed to the residents of the House of Arts.

Gorky and Wells met in 1906, and the English writer visited Russia three times. By the way, the Englishman (like Gorky) had amorous relations with Mura, and the relationship lasted more than ten years.

The poetess Zinaida Gippius wrote in her memoirs about Gorky and Andreeva: “... Gorky’s wife (the second – his real wife somewhere in Moscow), a former actress, now commissar of all Russian theaters, had already amassed some money... this is no secret to anyone. This lady-communist is a very curious type. A cabotin to the core, hysterical, quite beautiful, though surleretour – before anything else, she was engaged in everything but politics. With the Bolsheviks in power, Gorky himself behaved somewhat ambiguously, uncertainly.

I remember how in November 1917 I personally shouted at Gorky (I think I saw him for the last time then): ‘... And what does your own conscience tell you? Your inner human conscience?’ – and he only barked dully at requests to intercede with the Bolsheviks for the ministers imprisoned in the fortress: ‘I can’t even talk to those scoundrels.’

While for Gorky the Bolsheviks were ‘scoundrels’ when the occasion arose – Maria Fyodorovna waited. But it didn’t last long. And now – oh, now she is a ‘communist’ in soul and body. She ‘entered’ the role of commissar – minister of all theatrical and artistic affairs – as she previously entered roles on stage, in other plays. She has two cars, comes daily to her ministry, to the seized mansion on Liteyny, ‘for reception.’

Artists, writers, and painters wait for hours for the reception. She is in no hurry. Once, when a famous artist, D-sky, after a long wait was finally admitted to the ministerial office, he found the commissar very busy... with a shoemaker. She could not explain to this nasty shoemaker what kind of heel she wanted. And with purely royal, charming grace, she exclaimed upon seeing D-sky: ‘Ah, here’s the artist, well, paint me a heel for my boots!’”

Next to the house, on a small square by Kamennoostrovsky Prospect, a monument to Gorky was opened in 1968 by sculptors Isaeva and Gabe, with the participation of architect Levinson. The tall bronze sculpture is installed on a pedestal of red polished granite 2.75 meters high. On its front side, the facsimile “M. Gorky” is reproduced in applied letters.

Sources:

https://myguidebook.ru/b/book/1940145948/23

https://www.citywalls.ru/house585.html