The Lower Dacha is the last palace building constructed in Alexandria, the Romanovs' suburban residence in Peterhof. The park's chronology begins in 1825, when Emperor Alexander I gifted the wooded area located east of the Peterhof Lower Park along the Gulf of Finland to his brother, Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich. After ascending the throne, Nicholas I presented the estate to his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, giving the territory the corresponding name — "Her Majesty's Own Dacha Alexandria."
Until 1917, Alexandria remained the private property of the imperial family: no official events were held here, the area was closed to visitors and carefully guarded. For nearly a century, the seaside Alexandria was a favorite summer retreat for four generations of the Romanov dynasty and gradually grew with new palace buildings, various small structures of utilitarian and recreational nature. A chapel, pavilions, guardhouses, cast-iron wells, bridges, gazebos, pergolas, children's sports grounds, a fortress and fire tower, a water mill, aviaries, farms and "small farms" — the Alexandrian space was built up freely, meeting the needs of the expanding imperial family and the preferences of its members.
Alexander III's decision to build a stone dacha on the bay coast for his son, Tsarevich Nicholas, dates back to February 1882. The new dacha on the seaside terrace was to replace the optical or semaphore telegraph tower of the Kronstadt telegraph line, erected half a century earlier by I. I. Charlemagne and engineer P. Chateau. The telegraph station system connected the imperial estate with Kronstadt and the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. The building was a rectangular four-story structure, topped with a mast featuring a movable metal semaphore mechanism. The communication system was complemented by a nearby marine telegraph mast, allowing the emperor to issue orders during naval maneuvers. By the mid-19th century, with the spread of the electric telegraph, the semaphore fell out of use, and the aging building no longer met the service's needs. At the opposite edge of Alexandria, on the St. Petersburg highway, a new telegraph building appeared, now functioning as the museum "Palace Telegraph Station," and the old tower was demolished.
The summer pavilion for the young heir was intended by Alexander III to preserve the familiar appearance of this part of Alexandria. Built in the spirit of southern Italian villas, the small building was supposed, like the telegraph, to be complemented by a tower volume. The first project by architect Anton Osipovich Tomishko was rejected. But soon the second version, proposed by the same architect, was approved by the highest authority. Now the four-story palace was crowned with a six-story square tower with a flagpole. Incidentally, Tomishko gained particular fame for constructing several prison buildings, including the complex of the St. Petersburg prison "Kresty."
Thus began the construction of not a modest park pavilion for the fourteen-year-old tsarevich, but effectively a seaside castle for the future emperor. The building's plinth and keystones were made of pink granite, the lower floor was clad with gray Putilov slabs. The walls were brick, covered with polychrome bricks of two shades — yellow and terracotta. Details of the main entrance and decorative facade finishes were made of light gray Bremen sandstone. The complex included, besides the main house, a service house, kitchen, icehouse, guardhouse with fence and gates, as well as a Swiss cottage. The towers of the Lower Dacha ensemble marked the extreme point of the eastern boundary of imperial Peterhof and served as a height dominance in its panorama from the sea.
By 1886, construction and finishing works at the Lower Dacha were completed, but Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich visited it rarely; in fact, it served as a guest house.
The situation changed with the coronation and marriage of now Emperor Nicholas II. In the spring of 1895, he wrote in his diary: "With joyful and sorrowful feelings, I entered dear Alexandria and came into our house by the sea. It seems so strange to live here with my wife. Although space is tight here, the rooms are lovely and the layout is perfect. The new room (Alix) downstairs by the dining room is wonderfully decorated. But the main beauty of the whole house is the proximity to the sea!"
That same year, Nicholas decided to expand the dacha and build a separate wing for future children. The "children's wing" project was also commissioned from Tomishko. Construction of the new building and the gallery connecting the old and new wings was completed in spring 1897. The children's wing had four floors, with a semicircular two-story bay window with an open balcony, the so-called Children's Balcony, adjoining the main volume from the west. In this building grew Nicholas's elder daughters Olga, born in Tsarskoye Selo on November 5, 1895, and Tatiana, born on May 29, 1897, in the Farmer's Palace of Alexandria, while construction at the Lower Dacha was still underway. Three children were born here: Maria on June 14, 1899, Anastasia on June 5, 1901, and the long-awaited Tsarevich Alexei on July 30, 1904. The entire second floor was allocated to Alexei. The girls lived on the third floor. The children's rooms, ascetic and monotonous, were almost devoid of decoration. Above the beds were chromolithographs on religious themes, copper icons, paper icons; above the desks were photographs of relatives. Toy cabinets were located in the playrooms, the so-called "day nurseries" — two spacious, airy, and bright halls with windows facing southwest. The dacha was equipped with running water and electrified in 1909.
The Lower Dacha became the permanent and beloved country residence of the family, largely due to its isolation from the outside world, creating an illusion of security. Not being a ceremonial residence, the Lower Dacha became the site of several outstanding historical events. Here, on October 17, 1905, the emperor signed the manifesto "On the Improvement of the State Order," i.e., on convening the legislative Duma and democratic freedoms. Here also was signed the 1914 manifesto on Russia's entry into the imperialist war. After the outbreak of World War I, the royal family left Peterhof.
In 1918, the Lower Dacha was under the jurisdiction of the People's Commissariat of State Property, later transferred to the People's Commissariat of Education. Even in the summer of 1925, the former tsar's dacha faced the threat of complete liquidation because, according to contemporaries, "no one knew what to do with it." On June 3, 1927, a museum called "The Fall of Autocracy" opened at the Lower Dacha, later renamed "The Last Romanovs in Peterhof."
In 1928, F. I. Schmit, director of the State Institute of Arts, a well-known art historian and ideologist of the new museum construction, in his work "Museum Affairs. Questions of Exhibition," analyzing the exhibition opened at the Nicholas dacha, called it "a tale of how the last of the Romanovs tried to fight the revolution, and how the revolution broke him."
On November 15, 1936, by decree of the Presidium of the Leningrad Soviet, the building was handed over to establish a rest home for instructors of the Leningrad regional and city committees of the VKP(b).
During the Great Patriotic War, the Lower Dacha building found itself in territory occupied by German troops. For three blockade years, the occupiers used it as a coastal anti-landing defense point. The first-floor rooms were equipped with machine gun pillboxes. On the tower, from which Kronstadt and the harbor were well visible, artillery observers and spotters were stationed. The dacha's territory was surrounded by minefields and wire obstacles. The dacha was a constant target for Soviet artillery and aviation.
Upon retreat, the Germans blew up part of the ammunition depots located in and near the palace. Thus, by the end of the war, the building suffered severe damage, but its shell, including even the six-story tower, was well preserved. After the war, the Lower Dacha was not restored and stood as a grand ruin. In the early 1960s, the palace ruins and two collapsing service buildings were blown up, completing what the war had not.
Sources:
https://adresaspb.com/category/structures/building/nizhnyaya-dacha/
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Нижняя_дача
