Gagarinskaya St., 3, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 191187
This interesting little house is located at 3D Gagarinskaya Street (Chernyshhevskaya metro station). Against the muted color palette of its neighbors, its bright canary yellow color stands out especially noticeably. To the left, next to a tiny two-story house, is the Court Servants' House, where the palace staff lived in pre-revolutionary times. After three additional floors were added, the building lost its historical value and became an ordinary multi-story building. To the right of the tiny house is a building whose construction was personally overseen by Stolypin. Until the revolution, the reformer's family lived here. The finishing touches were completed after Pyotr Arkadyevich's death, and the family turned it into a hospital. But the small house between these historical giants is neither part of them nor a connector. It was built as an annex to another building—the Small Marble Palace. Before the revolution, this little house had no first floor because there was an arch underneath it that served as an exit from the palace’s inner courtyard to the street. The gatekeeper lived on the second floor. Now the passage is bricked up, and upstairs there is a quite decent apartment with a total area of 35 square meters, which is currently for rent; the first floor is commercial space. The entrance is from the courtyard side. As for the mansion itself, like many other buildings in Petersburg, it has its own interesting history. This estate, acquired in 1830, was transformed into a luxurious palace by the noble Kushelev-Bezborodko family. The owner became the young Prince Nikolai Konstantinovich, who was later involved in a scandal over family jewels and disinherited after being declared mentally ill. The estate passed into the possession of a wealthy lady, Ekaterina Leonard. Together with her husband Grigory Komarov, she decided to turn the building into an income property. But the reconstruction was never completed before the revolution. The couple never returned to Petersburg, and the building came under the management of a housing cooperative, whose efforts brought the former palace in line with modern architectural trends.
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