Gatchinskaya St., 11, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 197136
The four-story income house No. 11, owned by the brothers Vasily, Andrey, and Pavel Andreevich Vasilyev, began construction in 1901 based on a design by civil engineer Vasily Vasilievich Korvin-Krukovsky. The project was revised and completed by architect Vasily Vasilievich Shaub in 1902.
According to Korvin-Krukovsky’s design, the front facade was intended to be styled in late eclecticism with classicist elements. Shaub somewhat reworked the layout of the house and wings, and also radically changed the design of the front facade to Art Nouveau style. Additionally, Shaub incorporated certain Baroque motifs in the decoration of this income house: volutes in the upper tier of the bay window, characteristic contours of shaped sandricks. The house also features typical Art Nouveau techniques: rounded corners of pediments, squat single-pitched attics above the cornices, varied windows, and the smooth transition of bay window masses onto the wall surface. Baroque motifs were also introduced in the interiors of the staircases. The main entrances have preserved tiled fireplaces and wrought iron railings. Here you can see volutes on the upper side window openings, and molded sandricks of smooth shapes and curves framing the window and door openings, as well as the arched passage.
The facades with bay windows shaped like turrets, pediments, rustication, and molded elements create the image of an extremely representative, truly metropolitan income house with a rational, carefully thought-out layout structure.
At the same time, general features of Art Nouveau are evident — these include the rounded corners of the pediments with finials, squat attics above the cornices, windows of various shapes and sizes with small panes, and the smooth connection of bay windows with the wall.
Similar motifs were introduced in the interiors of the staircases and rooms. Shaub showed particular inventiveness in the variety of plasterwork with molded decorative elements.
In 1907, the apartment of E.V. Nikologorskaya housed a warehouse of illegal literature of the Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP(b). On October 23, the secret police seized all the literature during a search.
In the 1910s, the building housed the Society of Library Science, whose goal was “to promote the improvement of library affairs in Russia and to facilitate mutual rapprochement between librarians and enthusiasts of library science and bibliography.” The society’s library contained 3,000 volumes. It published the journal “Librarian.” The chairman of the society was the Petrograd city head, Hofmeister I.I. Tolstoy.
From 1909 to 1931, the diocesan architect Andrey Petrovich Aplaksin lived in the house; in 1912, architect Boris Nikolaevich Basin, author of income house projects and architect of the insurance company “Russia,” also lived there.
The Vasilyev house has preserved its historic architectural appearance, reflecting the stylistic characteristics and techniques typical of architecture at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Currently, the building remains a multi-apartment residential house.
Sources:
https://www.gov.spb.ru/gov/otrasl/c_govcontrol/news/258527/
https://www.citywalls.ru/house691.html
