It was built at the beginning of the 18th century for Vice Admiral Martyn Petrovich Gossler. Since January 1727, he was the director of the St. Petersburg Admiralty office. Gossler's house burned down in 1736 during a fire in the Marine settlement, which destroyed all the buildings in the area.
In 1736-1737, the architect G. Kraft built a new stone mansion here for Count Fyodor Andreevich Apraksin, the nephew of Admiral F. M. Apraksin. The house was built in the forms of the late Peter the Great Baroque. Initially, the gate was located to the left of the mansion. The wife of F. A. Apraksin was Countess Alexandra Mikhailovna Sheremeteva, granddaughter of Field Marshal B. P. Sheremetev.
Local historian V. Izmozik in the book "Millionnaya Street" writes that the next owner of the mansion was Gustav Biron, brother of the favorite of Empress Anna Ioannovna. In the middle of the 18th century, the site was owned by the architect G. Kraft. The historian G. Zuev in the book "The Moika River Flows" does not mention Biron and Kraft when listing the owners of the site. He claims that after the death of F. A. Apraksin, the territory went to his son Alexander Fedorovich Apraksin, who in 1773 sold it to the chamber junker Vasily Semyonovich Vasilchikov.
Under V. S. Vasilchikov, the main manor building was rebuilt according to the project of Antonio Rinaldi (presumably). It was then that instead of a covered porch, a marble four-column portico appeared here. The walls were smoothly plastered, after which the house acquired its current appearance. The owner of the mansion was married to the daughter of Count K. G. Razumovsky Anna.
Vasilchikov in 1776, the site was sold to the ex-wife of Duke Peter Biron Evdokia Borisovna. She died two years later, the territory passed into the possession of her brother, Prince N. B. Yusupov. Three years later, the prince sold the mansion with all the furnishings for 45,000 rubles to Princess Ekaterina Petrovna Baryatinsky. In 1789, Senator A. I. Divov inherited the house from her.
In 1795, the Divov house was bought by the treasury. Catherine II presented it to the youngest of the Zubov brothers - Valery. Three years later, the site was in the hands of Princess Maria Grigoryevna Golitsyna. In 1802, house number 22 passed into the possession of Count Viktor Pavlovich Kochubey, who from that time headed the department of internal affairs. In subsequent years, he was a member of the State Council, head of a number of other state institutions. After his resignation in 1807, Kochubey sold the mansion to Prince Vasily Vasilyevich Dolgoruky. He sold it 10 years later to Prince Alexei Borisovich Kurakin. In the 1820s, the British ambassador lived in Kurakin's house.
In 1822-1872, the house number 22 was owned by Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Potemkin. He lived in apartment number 3. Under him, the house church of the Presentation of the Lord was located in the building. Atlas N. Tsylov shows that by 1849 the building from the side of the Moika had four floors. Thanks to Potemkin's wife Tatyana Borisovna, the house on Millionnaya Street became one of the centers of charity. After Potemkin, the site belonged to Count Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatiev, who in 1881-1882 was the Minister of the Interior.
The next owner of the mansion in 1904 was Prince Semyon Semyonovich Abamelek-Lazarev. Simultaneously with this plot, he also bought the neighboring plot of house No. 23 on the Moika embankment. They are connected with the building on Millionnaya Street by passages through the courtyard outbuildings. The prince bought this mansion after he was forced by the terms of his father's will to leave his house on Nevsky Prospekt (No.). It passed into the possession of the Armenian Church. The part of the building overlooking the Moika River (house No. 21), according to the project of E. S. Vorotilov, was thoroughly rebuilt in 1907-1909. Apparently, its new look reminded the new owner of the same house on Nevsky Prospekt, from where he moved. The question of the possibility of using objects from house No. 40 on Nevsky Prospekt to decorate the new house of Abamelek-Lazarev was discussed on April 30, 1908 at the council of the Armenian church diocese of St. Petersburg. The interests of the prince were represented by the architect A.I. Tamanov. The council decided:
"Based on attention and deep respect for the glorious old Lazarev family, one should respect the desire of the representative of Prince Abamelek-Lazarev - the architect A.I. Tamanov, because objects from the interiors of the living quarters of the prince's house are of particular interest to him as a memory of their ancestors. about a possible compensation in money for the items taken, the Council considers it inconvenient for itself to transfer items dear to the prince into money and decided to offer him to replace the items taken. according to: 2, p. 357].
A register of carried items was attached to the minutes of the Council:
"1. Parquet inlaid floor from the dining room - 15 sq. sazhens. 2. Parquet floor of multi-colored wood from the study - 21 sq. sazhens. 5. A terracotta fireplace with a mirror from the dining room 6. Seven pine doors with carvings on panels with stucco architraves and sandriks..." [Ibid.].
Among other things, the balcony grille, window frames, door and window openings and other details were transferred to the new princely house. S. S. Abamelek-Lazarev carried out repairs in the house on Nevsky Prospekt at his own expense. The architect Tamanov even had to moderate the ardor of the customer, who was going to leave only an empty box of the building on Nevsky Prospekt. He proposed to equip it with exact copies of the exported items, insisted on their obligatory preliminary photographing.
S. S. Abamelek-Lazarev moved to the house on Millionnaya Street in 1910. On the occasion of the move, on January 19, a magnificent reception was arranged for 250 guests, as reported by the St. Petersburg newspapers. The magazine "Capital and Estate" in 1915 described the interiors of the mansion as follows:
"The main attraction of the old house of Count Apraksin is a magnificent vestibule and stairs. Boldly and easily winding to the top of the steps, from the front platform, decorated with a huge mirror, diverging in different directions. A beautiful light ceiling in a semicircle gives this whole staircase great elegance and style. On the platforms stand enormous white and gold floor lamps, painted by Rossi for the Mikhailovsky Palace. Directly from the stairs you get into a large hall with beautiful stucco work in delicate tones. Here, as in the whole house, excellent parquet. To the right and left of this hall, windows to the Millionnaya, lies a series of living rooms ending on one side with a corner bedroom and on the other a large living room with magnificent Flemish tapestries on the walls.In all rooms you will find excellent antique bronze, marble, porcelain, family portraits by famous artists.In the hall rise from the floor four more than man-sized bronze candelabra of Thomir.On the walls are two tapestries representing the history of Tamerlane and Bayazet, performed in the 18th century in Brussels. The old house ends with a long, bright dining room" [Quoted from: 2, pp. 358, 359].
In 1911, Abamelek-Lazarev bought the neighboring house No. Millionnaya Street, and it was also rebuilt in 1913-1915. The facade of house No. 22 has become wider by two windows. House number 24 was supplemented with an entrance gate, it was redevelopment. In the same years, the architect I. A. Fomin rebuilt house No. 23 on the Moika embankment. After the death in 1916 of S. S. Abamelek-Lazarev and before the revolution of 1917, his heirs owned the house.
In 1920-1925, these buildings were rented by the Pushkin House to accommodate part of the funds and organize exhibitions. In 1927, house No. 22 was transferred to the Central House of Physical Culture Workers, and in 1933 the Committee for Physical Culture and Sports began to work here.
In the place where the house of Abamelek-Lazarev is now located, it did not differ in great architectural merit. Along with old mansions, not so much beautiful as attractive precisely because of their “oldness”, there were faceless buildings of the second half of the 19th century, and in some places the bulk of apartment buildings were already towering. The four-story house of Prince S.S. Abamelek-Lazarev with small apartments was not much different from them.
The prince planned to build a new, more respectable building with spacious halls, a large dining room and, of course, a theater hall. The old house was dismantled, and in early 1913 the architect I. A. Fomin was invited to develop the project and build a new one.
The complexity of the task facing the architect was the limited area. There were already houses on both sides, and the new one had to be inscribed in their row. Certain "obligations" were also imposed by the location of the building in the city center, not far from the Palace and Konyushennaya squares. Fomin successfully coped with this, having managed to give the house a monumentality, despite its relatively small size.
The basis of the composition of the facade is a clear system of pilasters of the Corinthian order, rising to the height of all three floors.
The pilasters are placed on a low plinth lined with granite. They support a massive entablature, completed above the cornice with a blind parapet. The facade has a sense of calm grandeur, inherent in the best buildings in the style of classicism. On the roof, on the pedestals of the parapet, echoing the granite parapet of the embankment, vases were installed.
Thanks to the clarity of the pattern and large forms, the facade of the house immediately attracts attention. It is the building of the palace that creates the impression of the completeness of the space surrounding one of the main squares of St. Petersburg - the Palace Square. Fomin managed to introduce into the architecture of the mansion a note of refined aristocracy, consonant with the nearby Winter and Marble Palaces.
But the facade is only a small part of the building, during the design and construction of which the architect Fomin showed an excellent knowledge of classical architecture and a remarkable ability to solve complex planning problems. The ceremonial interiors of the house also give the impression of grandiose and majestic palace halls. It is hard to believe that they were created within the walls of a small city mansion.
The composition of the interiors begins with a vestibule - a small, rectangular room located in the left half of the building. The entire perimeter of the lobby is surrounded by columns and pilasters of the Doric order, lined with dark yellow artificial marble. The proportions of the order are deliberately weighted, and thanks to this, the colonnade, which is not much higher than human height, is perceived as a monumental structure.
In contrast to the entrance hall, the front staircase, located nearby, seems especially light and spacious. The staircase successfully fits into a high, well-lit room, covered with a coffered vault.
From the top of the stairs you can get into the Grand Dining Room of the mansion, which has three huge windows overlooking the embankment.
The dining room is decorated festively, brightly, it is distinguished by the integrity of the volumetric solution and the luxury of decorative finishes. The center of composition here is a loggia with choirs for musicians. It is separated from the whole room by two pairs of tall Ionic columns lined with deep black artificial marble with large dark red and greenish-brown blotches.
The columns contrast with the delicate light green tone of the walls, against which white architectural details and white doors with gilded relief decorations stand out brightly. In the center of each of the side walls of the dining room, in an arched frame with columns of the Corinthian order on the sides, there were picturesque panels.
The flat ceiling is also decorated with decorative ornamental painting, passing along the edges into a plastically curved ridge; its surface is divided into rhomboid caissons with rosettes of the thinnest pattern. The feeling of artistic richness is also created by other sculptural details: the intricate carving of the cornice, the elegant brackets of the sandriks above the doors, the softly sculpted reliefs in round medallions. Wonderful type-setting parquet organically complements the interior design.
Next to the dining room is the Theater Hall. Its architecture adequately continues the monumental theme begun by the composition of the façade. The main element of the hall is a row of high pilasters of the Corinthian order. Their faux orange-red marble cladding stands out against the gleaming ivory marble walls. Between the pilasters there are doors framed by strict architraves, decorated with reliefs depicting griffins. The plot of the painting of the plafond was suggested by the purpose of the hall: in the center of the ceiling, in an octagonal frame, the quadriga of Apollo, the god of beauty, the patron of the arts, rushing through the clouds, is artistically executed. Along the edge, the ceiling is surrounded by a frieze with images of putti supporting garlands. When creating the Theater Hall, the masters I. A. Bodaninsky, who painted the ceiling, and B. I. Yakovlev, who created its sculptural decor, worked together with Fomin.
After the revolution, from 1917 to 1922, the building housed the Office of the Petrograd Criminal Investigation Department, and until 1926 - the Pushkin House. In 1933, the Committee for Physical Culture and Sports of the Leningrad City Executive Committee was located in the mansion. For some unknown reason, during the Soviet era, the vases were removed from the roof parapet.
Emb. R. Moiki, 23
Perova Natalya Borisovna,
Very bright, lively, fascinatingly introduced us to the house of Prince S.S. Abamelek-Lazareva guide Elena Gdalievna Popova-Yatskevich! In Imperial Petersburg, Millionnaya Street is a real center of the aristocracy. Plot No. 22 on Millionnaya has been replaced by more than a dozen brilliant owners, starting with Vice Admiral Gossler, who lived here in a wooden house in the times of Peter the Great. I listened to the story of Elena Gdalievna attentively and with pleasure! She has been studying the history of the house for more than 20 years and excellently presented a lot of historical facts, illustrations, talked about the restructuring associated with the change of owners of the site. The guide shared her knowledge about the Russian noble family of Armenian origin, the Lazarevs, the famous miners. The name of the latter - Semyon Semenovich Abamelek-Lazarev, he bears to this day. We visited three houses of this owner at once, saw the details of the interiors, which were transferred in memory of the ancestors from the Lazarev house near the Armenian Church, went into the building from the side of the Moika, 21 - the last one erected in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg according to the project of I.A. Fomin's mansion with magnificent halls and stairs. In conclusion, Elena Gdalievna led us to the courtyard. The tour ended, but the desire to listen and learn remained. Thank you, Elena Gdalievna, the staff of the Committee for Physical Culture and Sports, the Open City project for the pleasure!
Everything was organized at a high level. Very friendly and helpful coordinators. The guide was very interesting about the history of the palace. The mood was great.
It is very nice to see interested people in the group of tourists. And only such people come to such an event. Looking forward to visiting the next closed facility.
I hope that I will be able to listen to interesting lectures that they promise to organize.
Thank you very much for the event.
Reshetnik Marina Mikhailovna,
Many thanks to the guide Elena Gdalievna, a very enthusiastic and interesting person. Instead of 1 hour 30 minutes the tour lasted almost two and a half hours, we were all so carried away. And then, Elena Gdalievna, showed us the courtyards, although this was not included in the tour, but she did not regret her time. Thanks a lot!
Smirnova Irina Stanislavovna
I take my hat off to Elena Gdalievna for the encyclopedic knowledge that she shared with us for almost three hours! The history of this place is rich, the owners are interesting. Peter the Great used to visit his friend's house here. And although the house has not been preserved, but the place is something - here it is! Of the owners (and there were about 20 of them), the most remarkable is the last - S.S. Abamelek-Lazarev. Freeing the house on Nevsky Prospekt for the Armenian church, he moved EVERYTHING to the mansion on Millionnaya, including parquet and door handles. What was impossible to take out was reproduced here in the same proportions and copies. The "Palmyra Tariff" brought by Abamelek-Lazarev is a masterpiece of the Hermitage of world significance. And his collection of Western European paintings now adorns the Ulyanovsk Art Museum and is second only to the Hermitage! She was taken there in 1929-30, which saved her from being sold abroad. This page of history was told to us by the curator of the collection of the Ulyanovsk Museum, who happened to be on the tour with us. The tour was a success, a great end to the OG season!
A completely different situation developed with the construction of the house of Prince S.S. Abamelek-Lazareva. Fomin had to fit his plan into a plot limited on three sides. Ivan Alexandrovich owns the facade overlooking the Moika, the lobby, the staircase and two halls. All authors unanimously note that Fomin monumentalizes the theme of a private mansion, decorates small halls in such a way that they are not inferior to palace ones in solemnity.
Entering through massive wooden doors, we find ourselves in a small hallway. The square room with a cross vault was painted by Bodaninsky in the style of Roman grotesques: golden vases, lyres, garlands against a bright blue background, and a golden mask in the center against a black background. Analogues of such murals can be found in Roman villas, for example, the lobby of the casino in Villa Ludovisi is similarly decorated.
From this hallway we enter the lobby. His decision is very extraordinary. This is a small and low rectangular room, surrounded by heavy Doric pilasters, about a man's height in height. On two long walls they correspond to a Doric colonnade of the same proportions. These columns have no bases, they are placed on a kind of flooring that extends from the wall and is not interrupted by intercolumns. The pilasters and columns are made of artificial marble of orange color so beloved by Fomin, and the capitals are made of pinkish-yellow material. (We met such a color scheme in the dance hall of Shakhovskaya's mansion.) Fomin also uses his favorite chess floor. And so the squat proportions of the columns and pilasters are exacerbated by a very heavy white entablature with large decorations of laconic forms. Interestingly, for all their seeming heaviness and squatness, the dimensions of the columns are quite comparable with the growth of the average person, so there remains a certain sense of the absurdity of the experienced space. This whole game of proportions and volumes is even more intensified on the end wall: at the corners, Fomin uses pilasters superimposed on each other, and, freeing the center for a niche with sculpture, he is forced to move the pilasters so close that the gap between them becomes smaller than the pilasters themselves. It is interesting that both the entrance and the exit to the stairs were made not in the end walls, but in the extreme intercolumns.
Such an extraordinary decision can also be interpreted as an ironic reading of the Empire style, a parody, within the framework of a private mansion, the use of "heroic space" in which is comical in itself, of the use by Russian Empire architects of monumental, heavy forms of external architecture in the interior decoration of socially significant buildings. This opinion is expressed by G.I. Revzin, pointing to the lobby of the Admiralty, as a possible prototype for a parody.
The entrance to the stairs is far enough away from behind the columns, so already from the lobby we see its perspective, and it immediately becomes clear that this is a completely different space. In contrast, we see a spacious, elegant, bright interior of the staircase with smooth pale green walls, a beautiful high vault with octagonal caissons and rosettes in them, white against a green background. A large role in this space is played by a simple, white mirror located on the site. Inexpressive at first glance, it, nevertheless, allows you to see the perspective of the second flight of stairs even from the lobby, creating an amazing effect of an endless staircase directed upwards. A large window located on the side of the mirror gives a constant bright light, highlighting not only the staircase itself, but also its reflection in the mirror. These games, which make it possible to create three-dimensional visual spaces at small real sizes, were Fomin's trademark. Slender, high railings give additional lightness to the stairs.
From the stairs we get into the dining room. This is the prettiest room. Opposite the window there is a kind of semi-circular loggia with a balcony for musicians, separated by two Ionic columns and two semi-columns lined with black marble with large patches of reddish-brown and light brown spots, with white capitals and bases. This complex and very beautiful coloring of the columns is the main color accent and subjugates the color scheme of the entire hall. In the center of each of the side walls there are flat arches, decorated with smaller Corinthian columns, but identical in color scheme.
The most important element of the composition of this hall are illusionistic picturesque panels. In this case, Fomin achieves his favorite effect of expanding space not by using mirrors, but by introducing an illusionistic composition into the interior. It is no coincidence that on the first sketch of the dining room, preserved in the Museum of Architecture. A.V. Shchusev, this small one seems to be a huge solemn space. The use of illusionistic techniques is undoubtedly colored with irony, parodying the techniques of the masters of Italian architecture.
The walls were not decorated, they remained smooth, and, as if emphasizing this, Fomin concentrates white doors with gilded decor in the corners of the building so that the white pediments crowning them on the consoles almost touch each other at the corners. In the upper part, separated by a thin frieze of scrolls, there are round sculptural medallions above the doors. (The sculpture for this work by Fomina was made by B.I. Yakovlev.) All white details are well read against a pale beige, slightly tinted general background. The mirror arch in the lower part is decorated with caissons;
The theater hall is of great interest. He is opposed to the dining room by his decision. The whole room is decorated with red-brown Corinthian pilasters with white capitals. Between them are white doors with gilt trim, three on each of the side walls, exactly the same as in the dining room, but they are framed in a thin frame of artificial marble of the same red-brown color with gold trim. At their end there are shelves with pairs of griffins on brackets. The motive itself, of course, is not new and was often used in the design of interiors of classicism (Adam, Cameron), but Fomin decides it in a completely different way: the dark sculptural figures of griffins are located on a light, ivory-colored background, and this gives them the features of Art Nouveau.In accordance with the purpose of the hall, a subject for painting is chosen: in the center, in the octagon, the chariot of Apollo is placed, in two small rectangles, painting imitating reliefs, along the edge of the ceiling surrounds a frieze with putti supporting garlands.
These are truly landmark buildings for the entire pre-revolutionary period of Fomin's work: all motives, all principles have already been revealed in them. But at the same time, in their semantics, they are most connected with the previous tradition. Especially Polovtsov's dacha: a classic U-shaped plan, symmetrical layout, division into front and residential parts, connection with the surrounding park. But Fomin always changes something, violating the classical canons and laws: oversaturation with details: too many columns, proportions are slightly changed, the detail is overly accentuated, a little more bizarre than strict taste requires, a line is made, the pediments above the doors almost overlap each other? and a completely new, unexpected, sometimes ironic, sometimes elegantly sublime feeling is created. Each new room becomes completely unexpected for us in its image and decision. But in general, this is still a kind of "playing on a foreign field."
