The history of this place begins in 1743. It was then that Baron Sergey Stroganov became the owner of the land near the Chyornaya Rechka metro station. Later, by right of inheritance, the land passed to his son Alexander, and from him to Pavel, Sergey Stroganov’s grandson. Count Pavel Alexandrovich was married to Princess Sofya Golitsyna, daughter of the “mustached princess” Natalia Golitsyna (who became the prototype of the main heroine, the countess, in Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin’s story “The Queen of Spades”). After the death of her parents, their daughter Elizaveta received the suburban lands near Petersburg, where the Chyornaya Rechka metro station is located today. In memory of her prematurely deceased husband, Elizaveta decided to build a country mansion on her lands and house her husband’s collection of weapons there. For this purpose, the Gothic style, which was banned in Saint Petersburg by Paul I, was perfectly suitable. This rule did not apply to the “countryside.”
The construction of the building was undertaken by Petr Sadovnikov, a former serf of the Golitsyn family, while the decoration of the facades and interiors was supervised by Harald Bosse. The construction was completed in 1843. The building’s facade faced Stroganovskaya Street (now Akademika Krylova Street). The mansion was surrounded by a landscaped park, part of which has been preserved as the Stroganov Garden. The main entrance is approached through gates consisting of two pseudo-Tudor towers with battlements and loopholes. These gates have also survived to this day.
On the first floor of the dacha, to the right of the main entrance, was the hall where Ivan Saltykov’s collection was kept. The lower parts of the walls, doorways, and window openings were lined with oak panels covered with fabric on top. The ceiling was divided into squares with stucco patterns in the style of English Renaissance castles. The room was also adorned with a magnificent fireplace made of pink marble and wooden carvings. None of this has survived to the present day.
In 1868, Elizaveta Saltykova passed away. The dacha passed to her only son Nikolai, and from him to Elizaveta’s grandson, Ivan Saltykov.
Today, the dacha of Princess Elizaveta Saltykova is one of the few surviving examples of mid-19th-century suburban architecture in Petersburg, despite having endured many hardships.
After the 1917 revolution, the dacha was occupied by a branch of the hospital for revolution participants. In 1924, it housed a dairy farm; in the 1930s, a primary school; after 1935, again a hospital; in 1946, a sanatorium; in the 1950s, a maternity and later a tuberculosis hospital ward. During the construction of the Chyornaya Rechka metro station in 1979–1980, the building was used as a foreman’s office. The construction of the inclined metro tunnel caused soil shifts and subsidence, which led to the mansion’s foundation shifting and tilting.
No one knew what to do with the crumbling dacha. After the metro construction was completed, the building was left open, and later the remaining parquet floors, decorative elements, and fireplaces disappeared from here. In the winter of the 1980s, the dacha burned down.
It also burned in the 1970s: this is evident from footage of one of the episodes of the Sherlock Holmes film “The Bloody Inscription,” which was filmed here in 1979. In the 1980s, the building stood empty and caught fire several times. Since 1991, the company “Burda Moden” leased the dacha and later purchased it. After restoration, it now houses shops and a bakery inside.
The park is now slightly thinned out, the gates are preserved, but directly beneath them, an underground passage was dug to the other side of Akademika Krylova Street. The room where Hope dealt with Drebber was filmed right here. This is one of the few real interiors in the film; the fireplace hall with four windows is located to the left of the porch and can be freely entered through the main entrance. Now, almost nothing here resembles 1979, except for the ornament on the doors.
Sources:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Лютеранская_церковь_Святого_Михаила
https://peterburg.center/maps/lyuteranskaya-cerkov-svyatogo-mihaila-v-sankt-peterburge.html
https://www.citywalls.ru/house91.html
Glezerov Sergey Evgenyevich: Historical Districts of Petersburg from A to Z
https://saint-petersburg.ru/m/thebest/rubin/372284/
https://www.221b.ru/geoPart2.htm
