There are many myths and legends about how this house was built. One legend says that the house was built as a bet, and the idea was 100% successful. Today, guides and local residents say that the house with the Chimeras was built by Gorodetsky in memory of his deceased daughter, or that the architect of this work of art is not Gorodetsky at all, but a certain Dobachevksy, also a very extraordinary architect. But in any case, you need to see it with your own eyes, and that’s why the legend exists, to remain a mystery.

Architecture

House with Chimeras, the first house built on the basis of a material such as cement, which subsequently gained significant popularity. The foundation structure was very carefully strengthened and for this purpose about 50 concrete piles were driven into the ground to a depth of 5 m.

The house was built in the Art Nouveau style and designed in the shape of a cube; on the side of Bankova Street it has three floors, and on the side of Ivan Franko Square - six. The free layout uses the principle of functional interconnection of isolated groups of premises (front, residential, utility), which is typical of many residential buildings of the 20th century.

Its external design is so unusual that there is no other building like it, or even its likeness, anywhere else in the world; this is a kind of impulse, an inspiration for the architect. Chimeras are fabulous mythical creatures that coexist with mermaids, dolphins, and various sea inhabitants. There are toads, water lilies, gigantic sizes, rhinoceroses, antelopes, eagles, lizards. Notable are the figures of elephants, whose trunks also serve as drains for draining water during rains.

House with chimeras inside

The interior decoration of the house is no less interesting than its appearance. The staircase openings are equipped with a lamp in the shape of a huge catfish. The stucco molding on the ceiling is shaped like an octopus, and the ships going to the bottom and the skulls very realistically reflect a shipwreck. The rooms are also painted in a very unusual way, their style is based on a nautical theme. On the sides of the steps, mythical birds vigilantly watch those entering, holding the marble staircase in their claws. The house with chimeras was originally conceived as a property that would be rented out and generate income.

The arrangement of the rooms in the house is fan-shaped, in the direction of the sun, which created conditions for good natural lighting. The total area of ​​the building is 3,309.5 m².

On the ground floor on the side of Ivan Franko Square there were two stables, two rooms for coachmen, a common laundry room and two apartments - two and three rooms. Each of the two apartments consists of an entrance hall, a kitchen, a bathroom and a storage room. On the floors located above the first, there was one apartment.

On the second floor, the apartment consisted of six living rooms, a vestibule, a kitchen, a buffet, three maids' rooms, one bathroom, two toilets and two storage rooms.

On the third and sixth floors there were apartments with eight living rooms, they had an entrance hall, a kitchen, a laundry room, two rooms for servants, a bathroom and two toilets. The apartment on the third floor was located slightly below the level of the main entrance from Bankovskaya Street.

The best apartment, with thirteen rooms, on the fourth floor from Ivan Franko Square (on the first from Bankova Street), belonged to Gorodetsky himself. It consisted of an office, a living room, a small living room, a dining room, a boudoir, a bedroom, a nursery, a room for a governess, a spare room, an entrance hall, three rooms for servants, a dishwasher, a corridor, a kitchen, a bathroom, two toilets and two pantries. The same apartment was located on the floor above.

In addition to apartments, stables, laundry and storage rooms, the house had wine cellars and a cowshed. Gorodetsky wanted to provide his residents with fresh milk every day. The location of the barn was chosen in such a way that the smell did not cause inconvenience to the residents.

City's legends

The appearance of the “House with Chimeras” gave rise to a number of legends that can be found in newspapers and guidebooks.

According to the first legend, Gorodetsky built this house in memory of his daughter, who committed suicide by throwing herself into the waters of the Dnieper, either because of a family quarrel or because of unhappy love, which is why there are so many marine motifs in the design. However, as it was established, Elena Gorodetskaya (married to Yatsenko) was alive and well during the construction of the house and died much later than her father.

The second legend says that Gorodetsky built the house by making a bet with famous architects Alexander Kobelev and Vladimir Leontovich that in two years he could build a building using materials that were new at that time: cement and concrete. To which Alexander Kobelev told him:

“Yes, sir, you are crazy. Only a madman could come up with such an idea.”

Two years later, Gorodetsky presented his house to the architects and won the bet.

According to the third legend, before leaving the house, Gorodetsky placed a curse on it. Allegedly, all the residents of the mansion will be unhappy, and only Gorodetsky’s descendants will be able to easily get along with the chimeras. Supporters of this version point out that the offices that owned or rented premises here went bankrupt - their funds mysteriously disappeared, their organizations were disbanded.

There is also a legend according to which the house was built not by Gorodetsky, but by Nikolai Dobachevsky. This legend is refuted by the fact that all the drawings of the house bear Gorodetsky’s signature.

There is one building in Kyiv that attracts not only its name, but also its appearance. We are talking about the “House with Chimeras”, which stands in the center of Kyiv, on Bankova Street 10, which is a ten-minute walk from Khreshchatyk. Anyone who saw it received an unforgettable experience. We find this fact interesting and decided to introduce it to our readers.

This architectural structure is decorated with fantastic sculptures of animals and chimeras, which seem to have been borrowed from the peaked roofs of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It can safely be called the funniest Kyiv mansion.

Good-natured toads were placed in rows on the roof of this house, accompanied by Nereids, the heads of rhinoceroses and antelopes were built into the walls of the house, and the water pipes were made in the form of snakes and elephant trunks. The house, built on a cliff, is also surprising in that on the front side it has only 3 floors, and on the opposite side there are as many as six!

House with Chimeras, history of creation

Back in 1903, on the former shore of the drained Goat Swamp, this building was built by the architect Gorodetsky. The Kiev House Construction Society banned its development. Many at that time considered it madness to start construction on a cliff - therefore, the house was initially shrouded in many legends.

One of the legends says that Gorodetsky took on the construction on a bet with other architects who claimed that it was impossible to build on such a cliff.

However, the Gorodetsky House was built in record time - in just two years. The Italian sculptor Elio Salya took on the work and carried it out according to Gorodetsky’s drawings. He decorated the facade and interiors with bizarre sculptures - sea monsters and exotic animals.

There is another legend, which says that the sea monsters on the facade are the architect’s tribute to his daughter who drowned at sea.

In this newly built house, the architect occupied one floor and rented out the rest of the residential part of the house. Despite the very high rental price, there was no end to customers. The house was also attractive because it had its own icebox, laundry, wine cellar, and a couple of cows were kept in the yard so that the residents would receive fresh cream for their morning coffee every day.

Just 10 years later, in 1913, Gorodetsky sold his mansion and in subsequent years the house often changed owners until the October Revolution occurred, after which the building was nationalized by the workers' and peasants' government. For some time under Soviet rule, the house had communal apartments, then it was converted into a hospital of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine.

Today tourists see the House with Chimeras restored; work was carried out in 2003-2004. The reconstruction of Gorodetsky's house cost almost $30 million. The house's interior has been completely restored, including parquet floors and paintings. Now, “House with Chimeras” is a Small Residence in which the President of Ukraine holds receptions for foreign delegations (the main residence is located in the Mariinsky Palace).

There is another legend about a house with chimeras. It says that Gorodetsky, who was a talented architect and a passionate hunter, was also a sorcerer. Some people believe that he placed a spell on his house so that only his descendants could live happily in the House with the Chimeras. According to legend, the house would bring bad luck to any stranger who tried to live in it.

No one can go inside this house, but you can enjoy viewing it from the street.

All architects make mistakes. The mistakes of the best of them become tourist attractions, like the House with Chimeras of Vladislav Gorodetsky in Kyiv. The main tourist routes pass by, but access inside is seriously limited, since the building is occupied by the Protocol Department of the President of Ukraine. Ivan Siyak and Valentin Bo received permission to film the interiors of the house for Bird In Flight.

At the end of the 19th century, Kyiv finally felt the consequences of industrialization. The Russian Empire was growing richer, but the wealth was now going to new people. The landowners with their estates and the hereditary aristocracy were eclipsed by industrialists and financiers who emerged from the bottom. They earned money differently and spent money differently. The demand for real estate for housing and investment created by the bourgeoisie triggered the construction boom of the 1890s - 1900s.

There were no great architects of that time. 100 years later, the most famous name is Vladislav Gorodetsky, whose place in history was preserved by the pompous, criticized by critics, unsuccessful from an engineering point of view, “House with Chimeras.” Most of the reproaches addressed to him sound very modern and are still applied to high-profile construction projects.

The architect's controversial reputation

The son of Ukrainian landowners of Polish origin came to Kyiv in 1889 after graduating from the Imperial Academy of Arts and soon married the daughter of the owner of two yeast distilleries. New connections helped to receive the first orders for the design of crypts and yard toilets. “Construction office of the house sewerage system of the architect V.V. Gorodetsky” was the name of his first bureau.

My passion for shooting helped. Vladislav joined the Kiev department of the Imperial Society for Proper Hunting, built a shooting range and entered the circle of the most influential residents of the city. The very next year, Gorodetsky was invited to join the House-Building Society, which was developing the area adjacent to Khreshchatyk. Together with the director of the company, Shleifer, Gorodetsky designed the most expensive hotel in the city, the Continental Hotel. He invested his earnings in the For cement plant of the merchant Evgeniy Zaitsev, with whom he often hunted. In 1902, Zaitsev gave Gorodetsky a contract for the construction of a four-story income complex in the very center, on the corner of Khreshchatyk and Proriznaya, with a huge budget for that time of 800 thousand rubles.

Gorodetsky approached his 40th birthday and the construction of his own house with a resume that included several commercial buildings, the Museum of Antiquities and Arts (now the National Museum of Art) designed by Pyotr Boytsov, the St. Nicholas Church designed by Valovsky, and the Karaite kenassa, the main decoration of which steel stucco decorations by Italian Elio Sal. The completion of other people's projects and the lack of his own expressed style were among the reasons that in Soviet literature Gorodetsky was often deprived of the status of an architect and called an engineer.

Opaque land purchase deal

To build his own house, Gorodetsky looked for two plots on the steep slope of Bankovaya Street that were declared unsuitable for construction. After waiting until the price dropped to a minimum due to the lack of buyers, the architect bought land from the House-Building Society with money borrowed from the Mutual Credit Society. The director of both companies was Gorodetsky’s partner in the construction of the Continental, Shleifer. The collateral was a building that had not yet been built. Now it is called "House with Chimeras".

Risky financing scheme

The bubble in the real estate market in Kyiv was inflated by reckless lending. To go through the entire process from buying land to decorating the interiors of the house, Gorodetsky took out 30 loans.

A plot of 1,550 square meters cost 15,640 rubles. Funds for the construction of the first floor were obtained using the land as collateral. Money was taken as security for the first floor for the second floor, and as security for the second floor for the third. So, for 65 thousand, six floors and a roof were completed. The first year of two years of finishing work alone cost another 59 thousand rubles.

Elitism

By the beginning of the 20th century, in Kyiv there was a 36-bit gradation of housing based on comfort and annual rent. In addition to the location of the house and the area of ​​the apartment, the floor (the lower the better) and the range of services were taken into account: heating, electricity, telephone, refrigerators in the basement, the presence of a doorman and bellman, parking for carriages and a garage. Renting an apartment of up to 100 square meters in central areas cost about 300 rubles per year. A seven-room luxury apartment with full service on Nikolaevskaya Street (now Architect Gorodetsky) cost 700.

In the “House with Chimeras”, the Gorodetsky family was given an apartment of 380 m² on the ground floor with an office, two living rooms, dining rooms, a boudoir, a bedroom, a nursery, a guest room, an entrance hall, three rooms for servants, a kitchen, a washing room, and a bathroom , two master toilets and a storage room.

Others were rented: a two-room apartment on the first floor - for 420 rubles per year, a three-room apartment - for 540, a 6-room apartment on the second floor - for 1,200, an 8-room apartment on the third - for 2,000, a 10-room apartment on the fourth floor and a 9-room apartment on on the fifth - for an incredible 3,500 rubles each, an 8-room apartment on the sixth - for 2,750 rubles per year. The house had a freight elevator, a communal laundry, an icehouse, sheds for firewood and carriages, a cowshed for the supply of fresh milk, and wine cellars.

Unreliable engineering solution

The steep slope on the plot of land purchased by Gorodetsky forced him to use new design solutions. Firstly, the house has two heights: from the facade it is three-story, and six floors look towards Khreshchatyk. Secondly, the house has two different foundations: a strip foundation on a hill and reinforced with fifty bored concrete piles below.

Pile technology was new for Kyiv at the beginning of the 20th century, and the architect failed to apply it correctly. Over several decades, parts of the building lying on different foundations split apart. In some places the crack reached a width of 40 centimeters. To save the house in the late 1990s, a major renovation was required, with 177 new supports being driven in.

Controversial artistic value

Uselessness of home. Owner's insolvency

If the apartments were fully occupied, the rent would bring Gorodetsky 13,910 rubles annually. Maintenance of the building cost 2,300 rubles, 4,410 had to be paid to pay off debts. However, there was no line of people wishing to live in the “House with Chimeras”. The prices, the noise of the tram running down Bankovaya Street, the oppressive interior design, and the owner’s hunting trophies placed here and there were frightening.

In 1909, Gorodetsky first mortgaged the “House with Chimeras”, in 1912 - again, and then was unable to buy it back. Irreversible damage to the architect's budget was caused by the fulfillment of his dream - participation in an African safari. The tour of Kenya for three Kiev residents was led by a zoologist, a graduate of the University of Paris. He was assisted by two rangers, two squires, a groom, three personal servants for tourists, two cooks, two preparers, a dog handler, four guards and almost 150 porters.

In 1920, Vladislav Gorodetsky emigrated to Poland. He died and was buried in Iran, where he was building a station commissioned by an American company.

(all photos, except those otherwise signed, are by Valentin Bo)

House with chimeras (Ukraine) - description, history, location. Exact address, phone number, website. Tourist reviews, photos and videos.

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The house with chimeras is one of the strangest buildings in Kyiv. It is located at Bankovskaya 10, not far from the Presidential Administration. The house was built in 1901-1902. in the Art Nouveau style, by the Polish-born architect Vladislav Gorodetsky. This site was initially unsuitable for construction - the area was swampy and the soil was mobile, but in record time the house was built entirely from concrete and cement.

Concrete at that time was a new and rare material, only rich people could afford it. The architect Gorodetsky was one of those people, so he did not skimp not only on the house itself, but also on the decorations. To demonstrate what cement can do, the facade of the house was lavishly decorated with images of chimeras - fabulous mythical creatures. It also depicts mermaids, giant toads and water lilies, rhinoceroses, antelopes, as well as elephants, whose trunks serve as drains during the rains,

The inside of the house is no less amazing. On the staircase openings there is a lamp in the shape of a giant catfish, the stucco on the ceiling depicts a shipwreck with the participation of a huge octopus, and on the sides of the marble staircase there are fabulous birds.

Gorodetsky was a keen hunter, and it was this hobby that gave him the idea of ​​creating such unusual interiors.

Initially, it was assumed that the apartments in this building would be rented out and generate income for Gorodetsky, but there were few such rich people in Kyiv, and yet, some of them were still rented out. Today the house belongs to the Presidential Administration and is used to receive foreign delegations.

Legends of the House with Chimeras

During the creation and existence of the House with Chimeras, more than one legend associated with it arose, but two of them are the most famous.

As you know, the soil on which the house stands was initially unsuitable for construction. Therefore, the surrounding areas were given over at one time for state construction, and this one, among others, was auctioned off. At this public auction, the architect Gorodetsky met with his colleagues Vladimir Leontovich and Alexander Kobelev and expressed his intention to build a house in the swamp using only concrete. They only laughed, but Gorodetsky was a gambling man and made a bet with them, which he eventually won.

The second legend says that Gorodetsky built this house in memory of his dead daughter, who drowned herself because of unhappy love. However, according to other sources, Gorodetsky had only one daughter, who lived a long and happy life.

Another small piece from the 2011 trip to Ukraine, or as they say now, to Ukraine. Kyiv. This is my second trip 20 years later... but right now, Kyiv seemed unusually beautiful to me. Many thanks to the guide, who is in love with her city, and with her melodious voice as a storyteller, she captivated us.

I didn’t remember this house at all from my last trip. The house makes an ambiguous impression; from the side of the Government House it seemed heavy to me, crushed by a mass of sculptures. But almost two years have passed, and I understand that the House with Chimeras, what sticks in the memory, leaves an emotional trace with its outlandishness.

In 1938 Olga Anstey wrote

A tasteless dreamer, a mannered mime
I came up with you in a proud dream.
Above the square an arrogant massif
You have grown up and are surprised by yourself!..
You're screaming all over, we're tormented by immobility,
But the tailed divas are destined to touch
And the unbridled manes of the Nerei
Freeze in a pantomime convulsion!..

Leszek Dezideriy Vladislav Gorodetsky (this is the full name of the architect, named by us Vladislav Vladislavovich) was born on June 4 (May 23, old style) 1863 in an old Polish family, in the picturesque village of Sheludki, on the Southern Bug. One of Gorodetsky’s grandfathers was distinguished by his love of freedom and participated in the Polish uprising of 1831; the other was a famous ethnographer and agrarian theorist.
The architect's father, Vladislav Gorodetsky, was a brave uhlan and took part in the Crimean War of 1853-1856, for which he received a bronze medal. When the Polish uprising of 1861 broke out, Władysław Sr., with his solid combat experience, became the commander of a rebel detachment. But the rebels were defeated; The Gorodetsky estate was confiscated, the family was left without funds...
The mother of the future architect moves to Odessa, where the boy is sent to a real school at the Lutheran Church of St. Paul. Leszek showed an early talent for drawing; After graduating from college, he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, which he graduated brilliantly in 1890.

From this time until the Civil War, fate connected Vladislav with Kiev. Already in his first brick-and-stone buildings, the architect turned to what was popular at the end of the 19th century. style - historicism, based on the borrowing and use of architectural forms of past eras. An example of this style, lush and bright, was the building of the City Museum of Antiquities and Arts on Aleksandrovskaya Street (now Mikhail Grushevsky Street). Decorated in the form of an antique temple with six Doric columns and a portico, the museum very successfully completes the perspective of European Square in the direction of Pechersk. At the stairs leading to the front doors, two huge lions sit on guard.

At the same time, Gorodetsky, commissioned by the Kyiv tobacco king Solomon Cohen, was engaged in the construction of a chapel for the Karaite community - a small nation with a unique religion, including elements of Islam, Judaism and other eastern cults.
Along with material wealth, Gorodetsky acquired a hobby, which he never betrayed throughout his life. Vladislav Vladislavovich was passionate about hunting, traveling to the most exotic places. At the same time, decorative elements began to appear in his creations, reminiscent of the architect’s hunting passion.

Finally, Gorodetsky decides that it’s time to build a house for himself. He acquired two plots of land in the center of Kyiv, on Bankovaya Street, on one of which he built the famous “house with chimeras” in 1903.

The house is in the style of early decorative modernism, which was not typical for the beginning of the 20th century in Ukraine. But the master actually built it for himself - from 1903 to 1913. he lived and worked at Bankovaya, 10. Vladislav Gorodetsky managed to acquire land on this site for almost nothing. The site was considered unsuitable for development because the slope was too steep, but this did not bother the construction professional.

When Gorodetsky announced his intention to build on this site, he bet that in two years he would build his own housing here. Then the famous Kiev architect Alexander Kobelev put his hand to the architect’s forehead and said with pathos: “You, sir, are crazy. Only a madman could come up with such an idea.”

However, Gorodetsky won the bet.

Vladislav Gorodetsky designed his house in such a way that he was able to rationally use a small plot of land and bypass difficult ground conditions. In particular, to strengthen the stability of the slope, almost 50 concrete piles were driven to a depth of 5 meters. The house itself is designed in the shape of a cube: from the side of Bankova Street it has three, and from the side of Ivan Franko Square – six floors. The facades are decorated with a typical Art Nouveau style using different styles. “House with Chimeras” was popularly named for the sculptural decorations with mythological and hunting themes on the pediment. It is interesting to use a high parapet on the roof, which made it possible to practically hide the roof. They say that the building of the architect Gorodetsky on Bankova, 10 is the first “roofless” in the Ukrainian capital.

Six-story part.

In 1998, the house began to be restored, and the interiors were also restored. Now there is a small representation of the President of Ukraine there. "Virtual tour"

Gorodetsky built this house as an income house, i.e. It was assumed that some of the apartments would be rented out. And although the prices were very high, there were enough people willing to rent an apartment in comfortable housing. The architect placed a large separate apartment on each floor, and two small ones on the ground floor.

The house had an icebox with separate refrigerators for all apartments, a laundry room, a wood store, a basement, a wine cellar, a carriage barn, a coachman's room and... a cowshed. Original Gorodetsky wanted to serve his residents and guests only with fresh milk! By the way, the barn was located so that the smells did not cause any discomfort to people...

The sculptural decorations of the facade, based on Gorodetsky’s own sketches, were made by his assistant, the Milanese sculptor Elio Salya, who left his signature “E. Sala. 1902" under the sculptural composition of the fight between a lioness and an eagle.

Let's take a closer look: all over the pediment on the side of Bankovaya Street there are cute toads. Nereids, fish.

The columns are decorated with the heads of rhinoceroses, deer, and roe deer.

Snakes, elephants... you can look at them for hours. Yes, here is another happy crocodile. Found it - make a wish!

The house offers a wonderful view towards Ivan Franko Square.

Below on the side of the square is a garden adjacent to the house. There the architect designed an alpine slide and fountains.

After the triumph of “House with Chimeras,” orders poured in for Gorodetsky from all over Ukraine. Here are just some of his creations: the mausoleum of the Potocki counts in the village of Pechera in Podolia (there is still an inscription in Polish: “Vladislav Gorodetsky danced. 1904”); a gymnasium in Uman, a carbon dioxide factory in Simferopol, the mausoleum of Counts Witte at the Baikovo cemetery.

In addition to architectural fame, Gorodetsky also gained fame as a passionate hunter, an avid traveler to exotic lands (he had dreamed of it since childhood!). In 1895 - 1910 he went on a “hunting tour” through the lands of Lankaran, the Transcaspian region, Turkestan, Afghanistan, Altai, Semirechye and Western Siberia, and in the winter of 1911 - 1912. - visited his most famous African safari, which the whole of Kyiv has been gossiping about for years.

In memory of this journey, V. Gorodetsky published the book “In the Jungles of Africa. Hunter's Diary", personally decorated with drawings and photographs. The book was published in 1914 and is now a rarity. However, it can be seen in the exhibition of the One Street Museum on Andreevsky Descent...

Then the course of history took a “steep dive”... During the Civil War, in 1920, together with his wife Cornelia Marr, Gorodetsky left for Poland. There he first restored the ancient palace of the Vishnevetsky princes in the city of Vishnevets in the Ternopil region (then Polish) and designed several buildings at the famous resort of Helm.

Many of his creations are still preserved in Poland. The architect created an indoor market and a water tower in Piotrkow Tribunalski, a water supply system with towers and slaughterhouses in Radom, Częstochowa and Lublin, a casino in Otwock and a bathhouse in Zgirz.

In 1928, 65-year-old but still restless Gorodetsky, at the invitation of the American company Herryu Ulen & Co, went to Tehran, where he built a palace for the Shah and the first railway station in the Iranian capital. In addition, he developed theater and hotel projects for Tehran...

Shortly before his death, Vladislav Vladislavovich makes his last hunting trip - to the Mazandaran area on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. The architect planned to go to the mountains of Afghanistan, but his sudden death on January 3, 1930 from a heart attack did not allow him to carry out his plan.

At the Lutheran cemetery in Tehran, at Gorodetsky’s modest grave there are many flowers; the great citizen of Kiev is loved and remembered... (C)

If you are traveling to Kyiv, be sure to check it out!

(Information used from the sites “Around the World”, Wikipedia, Reading Room “Mirta”, official website of the President of Ukraine)