Mansion E.K. Gauswald is being restored at the expense of the owner, the dacha of V.F. Gromov - at the expense of the city budget. These are one of the few surviving monuments of wooden architecture in the center St. Petersburg.

The event was attended by the Chairman of the KGIOP Sergey Makarov, an architect-restorer of the highest category, a member of the Scientific and Methodological Council for Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Rakhmanov, Deputy Project Manager of the company "Mak-Tandem" LLC Vladislav Sysoev, Deputy General Director of "PSB" LLC Zhilstroy" for restoration Lyudmila Golubeva, deputy general director of PSB Zhilstroy LLC for production Alexey Petrov.

Mansion E.K. Hauswald is part of the regional cultural heritage site "Hauswald Mansion with three services, park area and fence". The property is privately owned.

The work has been carried out since August 2017 in accordance with the documentation and permit approved by KGIOP.

« If last year we were still looking at the rubble, the collapsed parts of the rafter system, but now we see what the restorers have done in a year: how the foundations have been strengthened, how the log house has been restored with maximum preservation of its authenticity, - said Sergei Makarov. - The historical log house has been preserved by more than 70%, the rafter system by more than 80%. Now the structure that protected the building from the effects of precipitation is being dismantled so that we can begin laying the tiles.”.

Structures were installed to strengthen and support the frame, tiles were dismantled and stored in order to lighten the load on the building's load-bearing structures and a temporary roof was installed, linoleum and Soviet-era tiles were dismantled, and emergency sections of the floor structures were dismantled. A marker with a number is attached to each wooden element of the facade, and a detailed marking scheme has been created.

The soils were examined, the rubble stone foundation was strengthened and more than 80% preserved.

Two thirds of the building is made of wood, the combination of wooden and stone structures is extremely original. The main types of wood used were pine and larch, the lost elements were recreated from the same material, and the contractor purchased historical huts in the North-West region for dismantling in order to use old logs for replacement: “ something that is inevitably understood in the area and, as a rule, goes to firewood"- explained Vladimir Rakhmanov.

Only three rows of rotted lower crowns were completely replaced - this is the most “sore spot” of wooden buildings, especially considering the high groundwater in this area. Small sections of the frame damaged by wood-boring beetles were also replaced.

In the process of dismantling the late internal cladding, the history of the building was revealed - its construction, subsequent changes and existence. Thus, an olive color was discovered - the original color of the building's facade. Documents from the first half of the 20th century were also discovered: letters, fragments of newspapers, stove tiles.

“Wooden greenhouse building at V.F.’s dacha. Gromov with a garden and a fence" is a monument of regional significance, one of the few wooden historical buildings preserved in the city center. Its restoration followed immediately after the completion of work on the improvement of the Lopukhinsky Garden.

« The building was not well maintained for a long time, - noted Sergei Makarov. - Serious examinations were carried out and the poor condition of the lower crowns was revealed. The uniqueness of this building lies in its high degree of preservation; there is a lot of original material here. Painting found that was painted over during Soviet times».

Vladimir Rakhmanov emphasized that if the Gauswald mansion was in emergency condition, then Gromov's dacha was in pre-emergency condition.

In 2015, according to the KGIOP program, 14.6 million rubles were allocated from the city budget for the development of design documentation, and 3.5 million rubles for priority emergency response work. In 2016, priority emergency response work continued, the amount of funding amounted to 29.1 million rubles.

Work was carried out to strengthen the foundation, clean out the basements, remove the outer cladding, which will be restored and returned to its place upon completion of the work.

Already at the initial stage, restorers managed to make several discoveries. Thus, during the clearing process, a unique painting was discovered in the interiors.

In the basement, under deposits of garbage, marble sculptures and a plaster bust were discovered, presumably of the merchant Fedul Gromov, the father of the former owner of the dacha.

In 2017, work was completed to restore the roof, walls and ceilings in the amount of 64.9 million rubles.

Work was carried out to dismantle the old roof, restore it with partial replacement and strengthening of the rafter system and dormer windows. The brickwork of the chimneys was completely restored, followed by plastering and re-creation of the cutting of mirrors and plaster rods. Damaged beams were replaced and restored, recreating the losses of the floor structure. Measures have been developed and carried out to destroy and create unfavorable conditions for the development of wood destructors. The affected areas of the walls and floors of the log house were cleared mechanically by hand.

In 2018, government contracts were concluded to carry out work on the restoration of the western and southern facades (30.9 million rubles), external metal decoration (16.9 million rubles), and carpentry fillings (16.3 million rubles).

Mansion E.K. Gauswald was built in 1898 according to the design of architects Vasily Shenet and Vladimir Chagin for the wife of bakery master Evgenia Karlovna Gauswald. In 1910-1916. superstructures and extensions to the main volume were made in the techniques and forms of Art Nouveau. A variety of materials are used in the decoration of facades; rubble stone, ceramic facing tiles “hog”, limestone, wood, ceramic tiles, glazed polychrome tiles.

In 1918, the 3rd children's colony named after Lunacharsky was located in the mansion. Then for many years there was a sanatorium-dispensary for the Leningrad Metal Plant. In the early 1980s, the film “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson” was filmed here. In addition, the building was used during the filming of the films Don Cesar de Bazan and Die Fledermaus.

The building is two-story, on basements, with a high stone plinth, wooden, partly brick, with a complex volumetric-spatial composition of different volumes. The main volume of the building is wooden; the facades are finished, imitating half-timbered timber, by covering the walls with boards or “lining”, plastering and painting. In the north-eastern part of the building - the volume of the external vestibule, the parapet fencing of the terrace, the corner stylized tower - are made of brick, lined with “hog” ceramic tiles.

During Soviet times, the building was rebuilt several times due to changes in its functional purpose. The object underwent the most serious changes as a result of major renovations in 1984 (loss of decor and interior decoration).

A plot of land near the Kamennoostrovsky Bridge under Paul I was granted to Count G.G. Kushelev-Bezborodko, from whom it soon became the property of Prince Pyotr Vasilyevich Lopukhin. Work began on a large area to create a country dacha-estate with a large landscape park.

In 1820, the site was acquired by the Chairman of the State Council, Viktor Pavlovich Kochubey. In 1836, the dacha was rented by brothers Matvey and Mikhail Vielgorsky, famous music lovers of their time. The first home performance of Meyerbeer's opera Les Huguenots took place here.

In 1848, the largest Russian timber merchant and philanthropist Vasily Fedulovich Gromov bought the plot. In the 1850s, architect Georgy Wintergalter built a new two-story house, and architect Alexey Gornostaev erected greenhouses in the garden, built grottoes, fountains, gazebos and a stone terrace with stairs near the pond. Gromov’s own gardener E.V. Odintsov, the author of the public garden on St. Isaac’s Square, was involved in the redevelopment of the garden.

The building is an example of early eclecticism using classical motifs and is a rare example of a wooden cottage from the mid-19th century.

Gromov's dacha becomes the center for musical festivals. In 1866, a gala reception was held here on the occasion of the arrival of the American embassy in St. Petersburg. A contemporary described the visit to the dacha as follows: “On Monday, August 8th, we went to the dacha of Gromov, one of the most remarkable merchants in Russia in terms of importance and wealth. Gromov’s dacha, in its design and beauty, represents something magical: plants, fountains, statues - all this is so magnificent, skillfully chosen and arranged with such taste and knowledge that we were all completely enchanted...”

The rare plants that grew in Vasily Fedulovich's greenhouses could compete with the rarities of the Botanical Garden. Gromov provided great assistance to the Gardening Society and the Animal Welfare Society. In 1869, a meeting of the International Congress of Gardeners was held at his dacha. European scientists and gardeners examined the garden and greenhouses and were delighted with what they saw, although the park did not appear in all its glory, since the spring that year was cold.

A hereditary merchant, Vasily Gromov was one of the main contractors for the supply of timber materials for the St. Petersburg-Moscow railway under construction, took part in the construction of the permanent Nikolaevsky Bridge across the Neva, in the construction of many private and government buildings, built steam-powered forestry mills in the Novgorod province, conducted foreign trade. The trading company Gromov and Co. flourished; it included timber exchanges and a sawmill near Smolny, and a sawmill behind Nevskaya Zastava. As contemporaries noted, “Vasily Fedulovich did nothing superficially and only for show or in passing.”

Particular mention should be made of the charitable activities of the Gromov family. Back in 1820, Fedul Grigorievich founded the St. Shelter with his own money. Sergius, and Vasily Fedulovich maintained this shelter all his life, constantly expanding and improving it. For his father’s services to the city, Vasily Gromov in 1839 received the title of honorary citizen with the right of inheritance. He took part in the reconstruction of the Cathedral of all educational institutions (Smolny), was one of the founders of the Alexandrinsky Hospital, one of the main donors to the wooden Church of the Mother of God of Kazan (the first church of the Resurrection Novodevichy Convent), donated for the construction of the iconostasis in St. Andrew's Cathedral in Kronstadt, for the construction the cathedral in Petrozavodsk, to the embassy church in London, made significant donations for military expenses during the Crimean campaign.

After the death of Vasily Gromov in 1870, the dacha belonged to different owners: in the early 1890s, the writer Hieronymus Yasinsky lived here, with whom Anton Pavlovich Chekhov often visited; in 1894, the former Kushelev-Lopukhin-Gromov plot was acquired by a major banker Fyodor Alferov. In 1897, he began to sell off the southern part of the site for residential development.

In 1926, in connection with the death of F.E. Dzerzhinsky, by decision of the Leningrad City Council, the Lopukhinsky Garden receives the name - Garden of the Club of the Union of Workers' State Institutions named after F.E. Dzerzhinsky.

By 1939, the House of Pioneers and Schoolchildren was located in the former building of Gromov's dacha.

Since 1939, the experimental station of the Leningrad Television Center was located in a rebuilt two-story service building adjacent to the dacha.

In 1991, by decision St. Petersburg The city Council of People's Deputies returned the historical name to Lopukhinsky Garden.

In recent years, the building has not been used, which has led to a significant deterioration in the condition of the facades and interior decoration.

The mansion, or rather the Gauswald dacha on Kamenny Island, built in 1898, is not only one of the brightest examples of Art Nouveau, of which there are many in St. Petersburg. It is generally accepted that the building is almost the first low-rise wooden building in this style not only in the Northern capital, but also in Russia.

The unusual and somewhat decorative nature of the building determined its cinematic fate during the Soviet years. The house was "filmed" by Jan Fried ("Don Cesar de Bazan" and "The Bat"), and by Igor Maslennikov it became Irene Adler's mansion in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson." Yes, and before that there was a lot of things. But it won’t happen again - there are such fears. Today, the wooden structures of house 32 on 2nd Berezovaya Alley are inexorably collapsing, the unique building has become dilapidated and is a sad sight. However, there is a security guard, but he doesn’t know what company he works for, or what he’s guarding. If the building suffers the fate of many irretrievably lost, then something elite will undoubtedly be built on this site. Kamenny Island is one of the most expensive and prestigious places in St. Petersburg.

Baker

The house received its name - Gauswald Dacha - after the surname of the first owners. The bakery master built it for his wife, Evgenia Karlovna Gauswald, according to the design of architects Vladimir Chagin and Vasily Shenet.

Just two years after the construction of this mansion, in 1900, Vladimir Ivanovich Chagin, a graduate of the Imperial Academy of Arts, an auditor-technician of the Ministry of the Imperial Household, an architect with several large projects under his belt, and later the owner of two of his own apartment buildings in Moscow, would become serve in the cabinet of His Imperial Majesty. What would not prevent him from staying in the USSR after the revolution and working on major projects: there was the reconstruction of residential buildings and the restoration of the interiors of the Sandunov Baths in Moscow. In 1948, the architect was buried at the Vvedenskoye cemetery in Lefortovo.

Most of his works in the style of St. Petersburg Art Nouveau, of which Muscovite Chagin is one of the founders, he realized together with the architect Vasily Ivanovich Shenet. Not much is known about the latter. His own mansion and a small park on Krestovsky Island were confiscated in 1916 for debts. The date of death is unknown, various sources indicate “after 1935?” But Shenet’s works are still alive: four dachas on Kamenny Island (including his own, unfinished one), the apartment building of N.V. Tchaikovsky on Nevsky, 67, the Kelch mansion on the street. Tchaikovsky, 28, several more apartment buildings in the historical center of the Northern capital.

The bakery master and happy husband Gauswald was a difficult man, since he attracted fashionable architects to build his own dacha on Kamenny Island. At that time, Kamenny was both the former property of the imperial family and a super-elite cottage community. Among its inhabitants are the merchant Eliseev and the industrialist Putilov, the lawyer Planson and professor Bekhterev, the founder of Harbin, the engineer Sviyagin.

But let's return to the dacha. The Gauswald mansion is a rare example of St. Petersburg Art Nouveau in wooden architecture, embodying many characteristic features of the style: the emphasized asymmetry of the building’s silhouette, the complex, broken lines of the roof and portals. Adjacent to the wooden two-story part of the building is a one-story part with a semicircular portal. From the south, the complex is complemented by two wooden terraces decorated with four stone pillars, and from the north - a semicircular stone tower with semicircular windows. The ground floor is made of rubble slabs (ruble or scrap stone is obtained from limestone and sandstone). By the way, this slab is a kind of “calling card” of the mansions on Kamenny; it was used in one way or another in the design of almost every second building.

The owners' living rooms were on the first floor, the second was given over to guest rooms and an office. The dacha was divided into two parts: the service part - south-west and the residential part - north-east. The kitchen, pantry and servants' rooms had a separate entrance. It is believed that the layout, some decorative elements and the functional division of the building were drawn by the creators of the project from the architecture of classic English cottages. Some researchers of the history of architecture, however, consider the prototype style of the Gauswald dacha to be not “English” but “Bavarian”. What doesn’t change things: stylish and impressive from the outside, from the inside the cottage remained cozy and thought out to the smallest detail.

Lunacharsky

After the revolution, Stone Island, which turned into the Island of Workers, was depopulated. The former residents of the dachas have disappeared, but the actual workers have not yet appeared - war, devastation. But the once elite area has new “owners” - street children. Perhaps this is why the Soviet government decided to immediately nationalize the mansions and transfer them to the jurisdiction of a children's colony. To, so to speak, you don’t have to go far. So the Gauswald dacha became home to the 3rd children's colony named after Lunacharsky.

The People's Commissar of Education (and later an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences) Lunacharsky himself, despite his ambiguity as a political figure, was an intelligent man. According to Leon Trotsky, “Lunacharsky was indispensable in relations with the old university and pedagogical circles in general, who confidently expected from the “ignorant usurpers” the complete elimination of the sciences and arts. Lunacharsky with enthusiasm and without difficulty showed this closed world that the Bolsheviks not only respect culture , but also not strangers to acquaintance with it. More than one priest of the pulpit had in those days, with his mouth wide open, to look at this vandal, who read half a dozen new languages ​​and two ancient ones and, in passing, unexpectedly discovered such versatile erudition that he could easily would be enough for a good dozen professors." Despite this and the vast experience of educational work, the work of re-educating the difficult to educate in the colony named after the People's Commissar proceeded slowly. And I had to forget about the comfort and interior of the house.

Boys. Street children. Residents of an elite mansion. It all started with little things. One of the pupils, N.A. Beinar, writes: “...The height of the window in the dining room was two floors, the inner frame of which was decorated with multi-colored glass, depicting flowers with green leaves in a thin lead edge. Of course, these beautiful glasses did not give rest. children's hands. They were picked out of the lead edging. The lead went to sinkers for fishing rods, and beautiful round, thick pieces of glass of different colors found use in some kind of game or were exchanged for something...". The taking away of everything that attracted the inquisitive minds of children continued until 1923, when the Gauswald dacha accepted new owners and became a sanatorium-dispensary for the Leningrad Metal Plant.

Quiet nomenklatura life flowed on. The Island of Workers received the nickname “island of high fences”, turning, in fact, into a complex of nomenklatura dachas, and became quite far from both social upheavals and the needs of workers.

Porcini

The years of “perestroika” turned out to be a disastrous time for the mansions on Kamenny. An architectural monument of local significance, the Gauswald dacha, acquired in the 1990s by a private company, stood abandoned and cold for almost twenty years. They remembered it only in 2008: at a meeting of the Council for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage (KGIOP) under the government of St. Petersburg, the issue of the Gauswald dacha was considered.

Actually, the question had already disappeared by that time. As Mikhail Milchik, deputy director of the Spetsproektrestavratsiya company, explained then, about 85% of wooden structures were destroyed by white fungus, which destroys wood.

Verdict: the dacha will be demolished. Possible amendment: the wooden structures will be dismantled and then recreated, while the stone part will remain in its original form. At the same time, the cottage may even retain the status of an architectural monument (with the introduction of appropriate clarifications to the list of architectural monuments). Now the mansion is still in disrepair. And the interiors of the house are lost forever.