How the Hauswald mansion and Gromov's dacha are being restored. What is happening to the historical dachas on the stone island Where is the Hauswald dacha located
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Remember the movie "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson"?
Through this window in the photograph, Watson threw a smoke bomb into Irene Adler's house ("Treasures of Agra" series) ..
This is the Gauswald dacha on Kamenny Island in St. Petersburg.
I was there this Monday...
Is it really this Monday???
I can’t even believe it... Only four days have passed, and everything around has changed so much...
Okay, I'm not talking about that now...
On Saturday I walked around Kamenny Island, including photographing this dacha...
And after the walk, I went online and read that “it is impossible to save the Gauswald dacha and the decision has been made to demolish it.”
I immediately wanted to go there again and take more photographs.
Which is what I did on Monday.
I came, and there.....
And there, having walked around the dacha on all sides, she wanted to come closer..
But a low metal fence surrounds it on all sides, the gate is locked...
What to do? - I was about to climb over the fence...
But then, by chance, a security guard came out of the outbuilding and said that under no circumstances was it possible to cross the fence, that this was now private property and entry was strictly prohibited.
He approached the fence from the other side, a very handsome guy in his 50s, and it turned out that he was not just a security guard, but a real expert on his “object”, who told me the whole history of the Gauswald dacha, with details that I had not seen on the Internet ..
He even showed old photographs of the dacha..
Everything is through the fence - he observes his duty as a security guard very strictly....
If only there were guards like this everywhere!
By the way, if you want, you can see this wonderful man at the very end of this video:
http://www.spbtv.ru/new.html?newsid=381
And the history of this building is extremely interesting!...
The dacha was built in 1898 for the wife of the bakery master, supplier to the imperial court, Evgenia Karlovna Gauswald.
The authors of the project were architects Vladimir Chagin and Vasily Schone, very fashionable in St. Petersburg at that time.
And the dacha was made in the most fashionable style at that time - in the Art Nouveau style..
For some reason, very few buildings in the Art Nouveau style have survived in our time...
Both in Moscow and in St. Petersburg...
“Their house is distinguished by an open plan and multi-level arrangement of rooms. The corner of the house, facing the intersection of the alleys, is highlighted by a rounded entrance portal, characteristic of the French Art Nouveau movement.
The house, built for the Gauswald family, has a facade decorated with various materials: rubble slabs, yellow brick, wood, and rightfully belongs to the best works of Art Nouveau in St. Petersburg.
Domestic filmmakers filmed the mansion more than once. In almost every second operetta film released in Soviet times at Lenfilm, we can easily recognize the main facade of the house by its very characteristic round door.
The metal curl of the lamp is missing.
With him it was a symbolic treble clef, which hinted at the musical preferences of the owner of the dacha:
It was from here that Mrs. Eisenstein (L. Maksakova) accompanied her husband Heinrich Eisenstein (Yu. Solomin) to prison (as it seemed to her) in the film “The Bat.” And it is in front of this door that the “adventurer,” opera singer and simply beautiful Irene Adler appears for the first time before Holmes and the audience in rapid slow motion.”
In addition, the films “Don Cesar de Bazan” and “Maritsa” were filmed here.
Stone Island has always been considered a privileged place...
Before Catherine II, it belonged to the chancellors, first Golovkin, then Besstuzhev-Ryumin.
In 1765, Empress Catherine II returned it to the ownership of the imperial family, giving it to the heir to the throne, Tsarevich Pavel Petrovich. The capital's elite immediately lined up for the highest permission to build dachas in the vicinity of the Grand Duke's residence.
This honor also fell to the suppliers of His Majesty's court - the baker-pastry chef Gauswald, the jeweler Gau, the shoe merchant P. Gose, etc.
The Gauswald House (2nd Berezovaya Alley, 32) is considered the first building in Russia in this style: emphasized asymmetry, broken lines of the portal and roof. The prototype was the architecture of English cottages.
In 1918, the 3rd children's colony named after Lunacharsky was located in the mansion. I don't think I need to explain what it is?
The homeless children broke off almost all the spears from the metal fence, dismantled the beautiful stained glass windows in the windows for lead lintels, from which they made weights for fishing rods, and they simply played with the colored glass of the stained glass windows...
Inside, the dacha was divided into cells that could accommodate several beds...
A few years later, the dacha was given to the Leningrad Metal Plant for housing for workers... But the plant management quickly realized that it would be more convenient to create a sanatorium and dispensary here.
In this form, the dacha existed until perestroika... Until the time when the factories began to “wither away” and get rid of kindergartens, pioneer camps, sanatoriums, and other “ballast”...
The dacha was purchased by a private company, which actually only needed the plot.. But the company could not obtain permission to demolish the architectural monument..
Then - “not washing, just rolling” - the entrepreneurs simply abandoned the building, it stood for 8 years without heating and all the wooden parts of the dacha were “eaten” by white fungus..
So the dacha would have died, it’s already almost died... But..
The new owner of the dacha, having bought it as an architectural monument, is obliged to restore it...
And it turned out that this is still possible:
“Deputy Chairman of the KGIOP Boris Kirikov noted that the dacha is the first completed thing in the Art Nouveau style. However, in his opinion, the loss of the wooden part is not such a disaster, since it has undergone many cardinal distortions. “The drama of the situation is softened by the fact that we are dealing with the result of numerous reconstructions,” he believes. “And restoration will allow it to return to its lost original appearance.” At the same time, the official believes that “we need to hold onto the brick part.” he said with annoyance, “What can be seen at Kseshinskaya’s mansion.”
Council member Mikhail Milchik noted that if the foundations are dismantled, the object will lose its status as a monument, since a complete reconstruction would be a new building. “The tower and the front door need to be preserved and restored,” he said.
Let us remind you that Gauswald's dacha includes 4 buildings. It consists of 80% wooden structures. According to an examination carried out in 2005, it was found that wooden structures were infected with white fungus, which cannot be destroyed by treatment with solutions. The only way to combat it is to cut out the affected areas and burn them on the side (so as not to infect surrounding buildings with fungal spores). But if you go for it, then 2-3 meters of wood scraps will remain from the dacha. Therefore, experts believe that the wooden structures of the building cannot be restored.
There are uneven settlements and cracks in the foundation of the tower, however, all stone structures could be preserved if a drainage system was installed, experts say."
So, there is hope that the Gauswald dacha will not perish, but will delight our children and grandchildren with its appearance for a long time.
Here!
This unusual mansion is well known to residents of St. Petersburg and guests of the Northern capital. Dacha Gauswald on Kamenny Island is different from all the buildings surrounding it. This house, reminiscent of a caramel toy, is surprisingly bright and even mischievous. Here director I. Maslennikov shot a popular film about the adventures of the legendary Sherlock Holmes and his assistant and faithful friend Dr. Watson.
Authors of the project
Dacha Gauswald, whose address is Kamenny Island, Bolshaya Alley, 14, is a rare and original example of wooden architecture in Russia, the first building in the Art Nouveau style not only in St. Petersburg, but also in the country. Many people think that the building resembles a gingerbread house. And this is no coincidence. Young architects Vasily Shenet and Vladimir Chagin built it for E.K. Gauswald, the wife of a famous bakery master in St. Petersburg.
V.I. Chagin received an academic education. Dacha Gauswald is not the first work of the famous architect. Before construction began, he had already participated in large projects. It is noteworthy that after the revolution of 1917, Chagin did not leave the country, but began to engage in the restoration and reconstruction of many historical and architectural monuments of St. Petersburg. Vladimir Ivanovich was one of the first to build buildings in the Art Nouveau style in St. Petersburg. The master created most of his works in collaboration with V.I. Shenet.
Little information has been preserved about Vasily Ivanovich. He had his own mansion with a small park on Krestovsky Island. In 1916 it was confiscated for debt. Even the date of death is not precisely known: sources are usually limited to the phrase “after 1935.” Nevertheless, Schene's works have been preserved: four dachas located on Kamenny Island, among them his own, which was never completed, the Kelch mansion, which can be seen on Tchaikovsky Street, 28, the house of N.V. Tchaikovsky on Nevsky, 67 , as well as several apartment buildings that are located in the historical center of St. Petersburg.
For young architects, the Gauswald dacha became a real test, which they passed with honor: they approached the matter creatively, discarding all stereotypes. They emphasized the expressiveness of geometric shapes - cylinder, cube and cone, combining these elements.
Stone Island
Already at the time of the construction of the mansion, Kamenny Island was considered a privileged area of the city, where wealthy and famous people lived: merchant Eliseev, outstanding scientists, industrialist Putilov. The history of Kamenny Island is shrouded in legends and secrets.
In ancient times, lost sailors saw a huge rock that rose above the water. Landing on the shore, they explored the land and decided to give the island the name Kamenny. Much later, when Nicholas II came to power, the island became very popular among the elite - in just a few years it was built up with estates.
Dacha Gauswald (St. Petersburg): history
The building, built in 1898, is named after its first owners, the Hauswald couple. After the 1917 revolution, the island was renamed. It received the name common in those years - the Island of Workers. This once picturesque area has become deserted, and the luxurious houses have been taken over by street children. Every year there were more and more of them in St. Petersburg.
It was then (1918) that the new city authorities decided to open children's colony No. 3 named after Lunacharsky in the building. lived here until 1923. The little inhabitants took away everything they could take off. They dismantled magnificent stained glass windows with elegant lead inserts and made weights for fishing rods, and beautiful colored pieces of glass were used in games or exchanged for something even more “valuable.”
Years later, the plant’s sanatorium-dispensary was located in the mansion. The Island of Workers has become a vacation spot for high-ranking officials. A holiday village has appeared here again. In the nineties of the last century, the Gauswald dacha was sold to the Impulse company, which is still its owner today.
Description
Dacha Gauswald on Kamenny Island (St. Petersburg) is a unique architectural monument. On the ground floor of the building there were living rooms, above there were guest rooms and the owner's office. The authors of the project, according to some experts, took a classic English cottage, which had a separate entrance for servants, as a model, while others believe that the Bavarian style is clearly visible in the architecture of the building. We think that this was not so important for the owners of the house: impressive and stylish from the outside, the cottage was very cozy from the inside. Everything here has been thought out to the smallest detail.
Mansion architecture
Dacha Gauswald on Kamenny Island was built in the Art Nouveau style. The gray brick of the tower, stone slabs, yellow plastered walls are adjacent to carved pediment elements made of wood. They add grace and complexity to the design. At the same time, the asymmetry characteristic of this style, broken roof line, etc., is precisely observed.
The two-story central part of the building is made of wood, adjacent to it is a one-story building with a semicircular portal. The basement, lined with rubble slabs, is typical for almost all cottages on Kamenny Island. The building has almost no sharp corners, it is asymmetrical, smoothed and for this reason opens up from all sides. The facades are decorated with pointed turrets. To truly appreciate the intention of the authors of the project, you need to walk around the building.
Dacha Gauswald has a beautiful silhouette. To the north there is a tower with semi-circular windows. Two terraces, each with four columns, are located on the south side. The house plan was divided into functional zones: the north-eastern one was reserved for the owners’ lives, and the south-western one was intended for office space,
Dacha Gauswald is a true cinematic celebrity. These walls have become the backdrop for many films. Scenes of the famous series about Sherlock Holmes directed by I. Maslennikov were filmed here. St. Petersburg residents often call this building home. In the story, this is the name of the beloved woman of the great detective. Such popular films as “Die Fledermaus” and “Don Cezanne de Bazan” by Jan Fried were also filmed here.
Such outstanding actors as Yuri and Vitaly Solomin, Mikhail Boyarsky, Igor Dmitriev, Anna Samokhina, Larisa Udovichenko, and many others starred in the mansion.
The further fate of the monument
For this unique structure, difficult times came after the collapse of the USSR, during the years of perestroika. Dacha Gauswald was sold to the private company Impulse, which did not use or maintain it for twenty years. As a result, the house fell into disrepair. Studies have shown that more than 80% of all wooden buildings are destroyed by mold and affected by fungus.
After reviewing the expert opinion, city authorities decided to demolish all wooden structures. However, this was not done. A few years later, based on the results of a new inspection of the building’s accident rate, the final decision was made to dismantle all the wooden structures of the structure and subsequently build a building here according to the design of Rafael Dayanov. Unfortunately, even today the building is in a deplorable state and continues to collapse.
Dacha Gauswald: how to get there?
Today tourists will no longer be able to get inside the building. But you can still see what the famous building looks like from the outside. To get here, St. Petersburg residents and guests of the Northern capital need to get to the Petrogradskaya metro station. Here you will need to change to buses No. 46 or 1, trolleybus No. 34. This transport will take you to the “Kamenny Ostrov” stop. Then you need to walk along Pervaya Berezovaya Street to Bolshaya Alley and turn right to house number 14. The walk will take no more than ten minutes.
You can get to the Chernaya Rechka metro station. After exiting the metro, walk towards the embankment. Then cross the bridge to Kamenny Island and follow the Bolshaya Nevka embankment to Bolshaya Alley. Then turn left to house number 14.
“Anti-emergency work” in the house began nine years later.
On August 10, activists of VOOPIiK, located on Bolshaya Alley, 12, began to dismantle the architectural monument “Dacha Gauswald”. The information board indicates that emergency work is being carried out on the premises of the building.
The fact that the building needs to be saved (or demolished) was announced back in 2008. Mikhail Milchik, deputy director of Spetsproektrestavratsiya, told reporters nine years ago that the wooden structures of the dacha were heavily damaged by white house fungus. According to him, the building is suffering from the pest so much that the house can no longer be saved. The conditions for its development were created by the previous owners, when the building was a sanatorium-preventorium LMZ. A few weeks after the announcement, the Gauswald dacha was to be dismantled.
Only a year later, in May 2009, the Council for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage abandoned the idea of dismantling the architectural monument. Then the head of the monument protection committee, Vera Dementyeva, said that they would conduct another examination of the condition of the house. This was supposed to be done by the Forestry Academy together with the Spetsproektrestavratsiya Institute. But it was Spetsproektrestavratsiya that, in the spring of 2008, recognized that the only possible option was to demolish the wooden dacha and then rebuild it.
The head of the ERA group, Alexey Yarema, said that the public was denied an independent mycological examination of the Gauswald dacha. KGIOP explained their position by saying that access to the site is closed, since the owner of the building - a private company - does not intend to allow experts onto its territory.
At the beginning of 2010, the Forestry Academy from the technical expertise of the dacha. Urban defenders assumed that this happened under pressure from the Committee for the Protection of Monuments, which, according to them, was more profitable to issue a demolition permit to the developer.
With the examination of the dacha, restoration could not begin for several years. In 2011, according to the results of a new survey, the Committee for the Protection of Monuments “threat of collapse of emergency structures.” In 2012, there was information that the building would undergo urgent emergency repairs. At that time, the building was already under the control of Impulse LLC, which was going to reconstruct the building according to the project of LLC Architectural Bureau “Liteinaya Chast-91”.
Actions and emergency work at the Gauswald dacha began only in July 2017. Workers and cabins appeared on its territory. At the same time, the general designer (“Liteinaya Part-91”) was not aware of any work at the site. Its representatives believe that the emergency repair project for the dacha is already outdated. According to the information indicated on the information board, the work will be carried out until mid-2018. On the same board is the number of the work permit issued by KGIOP.
This house was built in 1898 by order of the bakery master Gauswald for his wife Evgenia Karlovna. The project was created by famous architects Chagin and Schöne. Vladimir Ivanovich Chagin was educated at the Academy of Arts and by the time work began on the dacha, Gauswald had already participated in several large projects, and after the October Revolution he was involved in the reconstruction and restoration of many architectural monuments. It was he who was one of the first to build buildings in the Art Nouveau style in St. Petersburg, most of which he created together with Vasily Ivanovich Schone.
Kamenny Island already in those years was a privileged area of St. Petersburg, where many famous and wealthy people lived: merchant Eliseev, major industrialist Putilov, outstanding scientists.
Dacha Gauswald is the first Art Nouveau building in Russia, most of which is built of wood. At the same time, the asymmetry, broken roof lines and some other details characteristic of this architectural style are observed. The central two-story part of the building is wooden; adjacent to it is a one-story building with a semicircular portal. The basement part is lined with rubble slabs, which were used in the construction of most cottages on Kamenny Island. On the ground floor there were residential master rooms, and on the second floor there was an office and apartments for guests. Some experts are of the opinion that much of the creation of the Gauswald dacha was taken from classical English cottage architecture, while others argue that the “Bavarian” style can be traced in the building’s features.
In the first years after the October Revolution, Kamenny Island, by that time renamed the Island of Workers, began to become empty, and street children settled in its elite houses, which became more and more numerous over time. Then, by decision of the authorities, a children's colony was located in the Gauswald dacha. Street children lived here until 1923 and stole everything they could get their hands on: colored stained glass with elegant lead inserts was dismantled by the colony's pets for fishing rods and other needs.
In the mid-1920s, the Gauswald dacha housed a dispensary for the Leningrad Metal Plant, and the Workers' Island itself became a concentration of dachas for major officials. During the Soviet era, the appearance of the Gauswald dacha attracted the attention of the creators of many famous films. In this house, Jan Fried filmed his “Don Cesar de Bazan” and “The Bat,” and in “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson” by Igor Maslennikov, the Hauswald dacha turned into the mansion of Irene Adler.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, difficult days came for the dacha. This building was purchased by a private company, which did not use it for twenty years, and the house fell into complete disrepair. After conducting a study, it turned out that more than 80% of wooden buildings were practically destroyed by mold. After reviewing the specialists' conclusions, the authorities decided to demolish all the damaged wooden structures. However, this never happened. A few years later there was a new inspection of the accident rate, as a result of which the decision was finally made to dismantle all the wooden parts, and subsequently in their place to install a building designed by the architect Rafael Dayanov.
Restoration is currently underway, and they promise to return the building to its historical appearance by the end of 2019.
Bakery master Hauswald decided to please his wife and give her a dacha, but like a real baker, he decided not just to build a dacha, but to “bake” it! The location was also well chosen, a super-elite holiday village on Kamenny Island, where land distribution had just begun from the lordly hand of the imperial court of Nicholas II. Here, the Eliseev merchants, Professor Bekhterev, industrialist Putilov and even the founder of the Chinese city of Harbin, Mr. Sviryagin, arrived in time and had already managed to rebuild.
To make the dacha look like a birthday cake for the anniversary of an overseas prince, like a gingerbread house in the imperial garden, or like the subject of a tea party from Carroll's fairy tale, Gauswald called on young architects who were able to implement the most daring culinary solutions in the architecture of this mansion. I wouldn’t be surprised if real biscuit was actually used in the masonry of the walls.
Chagin and Schöne, who were the architects, coped with the task brilliantly. I’m even sure that I wanted to bite into the new house like a freshly baked cake, while making sure to get my nose dirty in the airy cream. By the way, in Alexander Benois’s alphabet there is a picture about the enchanted house of a wizened old fairytale woman, made of marshmallows and chocolate, maybe it was this that Hauswald and the architects admired?
3.
photo from Google Docs
Workers' Island
15 years later, the new socialist government, which had seized the helm, was not very kind to the “elite” sections of the population, which included residents of local dachas. In order not to anger this government, they hastily evaporated from the country and materialized in European settlements, leaving all their goods for the benefit of the working people. True, in the first years of the revolution, no one needed these houses, only their insides. Other issues were being resolved in the country, the island was empty, which the street children took advantage of, settling in dachas all over the island.
4.
The new government quickly came to its senses and decided to nationalize all the mansions at once, transferring them to the jurisdiction of a children's colony. To, so to speak, you don’t have to go far. With a slight movement of the hand, the Gauswald dacha became home to the third children's colony named after Lunacharsky. In such conditions, it was especially difficult for the mansion, even if the colored stained glass with elegant lead inserts was dismantled by the colony’s pets into sinkers for fishing rods.
5.
Island of sharp fences
This joy from five-star accommodation for street children did not last long; the advantageous strategic location of the island and dachas was also appreciated by the new leaders of the country. What homeless children? Our “elite” will live here, did they fight for equality in vain? Well, they essentially turned the entire complex on Kamenny Island into a list of nomenklatura dachas, for which it received the popular title “Island of Sharp Fences.” The Gauswald mansion housed a dispensary for the Leningrad Metal Plant, and the island itself became quite far from not only social upheavals, but also from the needs of workers. What they fought against was what they ran into.
6.
Irene Adler's House
With the development of Soviet cinema, the mansion, thanks to its beautiful forms and natural beauty, became a celebrity. Dacha Gauswald began to take an active part in filming and was a ready-made set for many films. The main film that brought her fame was the film "Sherlock Holmes: The Treasure of Agra", where she played the role of Irene Adler's house.
Even though such actors as Livanov, Solomin, Karachentsov, Boyarsky, Samokhina, Dmitriev, Bogatyrev, Udovichenko and many others played within the walls of this house, but this particular role sank into people’s souls so much that since then everyone has forgotten about the baker, and the building is now referred to exclusively as the home of Irene Adler.
7.
Porcini
The most difficult and destructive period of the dacha was the time of “perestroika”. In the early 90s, the caramel house was sent under the hammer of one auction into the hands of private owners. Either the owner died in a gang war, or fled abroad, or went to places not so remote, but one thing is certain, he forgot about the house and no one was watching him anymore.
8.
They remembered the biscuit house only in 2008 at a meeting of the Council for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. It was there that the question was raised, which in itself disappeared according to the results of the examination; 85% of the wooden floors were destroyed by white fungus. What's the verdict? The cottage must be demolished.
9.
Naturally, the residents were not satisfied with this arrangement, and a new compromise solution was found. The city administration said that they would dismantle and then recreate all the wooden structures, while the stone part would be preserved in its original form. As you can see, the mansion is still in disrepair, the interior of the house is irretrievably lost, and restoration work has not begun. Judging by the sluggish ongoing trials and press reports, the city administration is still planning to carry out the original sentence.