What a house built by the richest man in St. Petersburg looks like: Kelkh's Mansion

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In St. Petersburg there is a building gorgeous in its beauty, pomp and originality - this is the Kelkh mansion. Those who have not yet been in it should definitely visit it to see the clearest example of eclecticism in architecture. Well, just see what you can think of and build if you have not just a lot, but a lot of money. The house once belonged to the richest spouses. Alas, what is easy given is easy and taken away. The owner of the mansion, Alexander Kelkh, went bankrupt and was arrested after the revolution. But the house still stands and admires architecture lovers.

Successful marriage

The construction of the mansion was ordered at the end of the century before last by state councilor and entrepreneur Alexander Kelkh. He was the son of a resident of St. Petersburg Ferdinand Kelch, who was not initially rich, but rose to the rank of collegiate counselor, received the nobility and successfully married. His wife was the widow of the richest Siberian industrialist, owner of gold mines, the Lena-Vitim shipping company and real estate in Irkutsk and Moscow - Yulia Bazanova. The marriage turned out to be very profitable - Yulia Ivanovna was smart, calculating and competently disposed of her enormous inheritance. By the way, she was also a major philanthropist, financing hospitals, educational institutions, libraries, and simply helping poor people.

Interestingly, the son of Ferdinand Kelch, Alexander, married his stepmother's daughter, Varvara (in fact, his half-sister), and before that she married his brother Nikolai, but he soon died.

Having married the widow of his brother, the wealthy heiress Varvara Kelkh, Alexander in an instant became the owner of a huge fortune. Now he could afford to build everything in the city that only had enough imagination. So the idea arose to build a chic house-palace, striking in its luxury and combination of incongruous.

Grandiose project

In 1896, the couple bought and registered in the name of Varvara a mansion on Tchaikovsky Street (at that time - Sergievskaya). Almost immediately, they began to rebuild the building (and in fact - to erect a new one on the site of the old house), entrusting the project to young architects Vladimir Chagin and Vasily Shena.

The front facade of the mansion is in the Renaissance style, and the courtyard is pseudo-Gothic. In general, the building has something not only from the Gothic castle and from the palace in the style of the French Renaissance, but here you can also see elements of Rococo, Baroque, Art Deco.

When decorating the interiors, the architects were instructed not to be stingy in expressing their creative ideas - the customers made them understand that they were ready to pay as much as needed, and ordered to use only the most expensive and natural materials. As a result, the house turned out to be luxurious not only outside, but also inside, and its interiors are simply stunning. The premises combine several styles - Renaissance, Gothic, Rococo.

In addition to many interesting decorations and figures of women, babies, angels, mythical creatures, you can see images of dragons in the building. The reason, most likely, is that in those days the image of the dragon was considered happy: they say, he drove away everything bad from the owners and brought well-being to the house.

Closer to the completion of the construction, Varvara Kelkh, for some reason, stopped arranging the work of Shene and Chagin and she turned to the architect Karl Schmidt. He completed the project. In 1903, a Gothic courtyard building and Art Nouveau stables were added to the building.

White Hall

This room is perhaps the most important and most luxurious in the entire building. It is decorated with white and pink marble, the ceiling and walls are replete with stucco and gilding. Mirrors are hung between the windows. Two highlights of the hall are a luxurious chandelier, which was made to order at the famous Stange factory, and a marble fireplace with the composition "Awakening of Spring", which was made by the first Russian woman-sculptor Maria Dillon.

Lobby

There are arabesques on the ceiling of the lobby. In the central part of the ceiling, you can see stucco molding, in which a canvas with a picturesque image of two women, framed by a laurel wreath, attracts attention. On the walls there are four canvases with landscapes interspersed with stucco decoration. The lobby is completed by a flat arch with stucco molding, which rests on two pilasters. Each pilaster bears a masterly stone head of a man. It is believed that these are the brothers Kelch - Alexander and Nikolai.

Main staircase

The staircase, made in the Moscow stone-cutting workshop "Georgy Liszt", is made of white marble and decorated with carvings. Initially, sculptures and vases stood on the pedestals of the stairs. It is interesting that in the niche on the second floor there was also a place for a sculpture, but later a mirror was installed there. If, while on the stairs, you look up, you can see an illuminated ceiling with a stained glass window, which depicts an arabesque composition. Also at the top are picturesque canvases depicting girls dressed in accordance with different historical periods and different seasons. On the eastern side of the staircase there is an arcade, the supports of which are columns, decorated with a lattice below.

Gothic dining room

The dining room, designed by architects Chagin and Chenet, is decorated in the Gothic style. Wall panels, ceiling, doorways and furniture are made of walnut. The ceiling has five arches. On the consoles of the walls you can see the figures of chimeras, at their base - dancing men. The mystery of the Gothic dining room is added by stained-glass windows and a chic fireplace, each tier of which is very intricate and unusual. On the upper tier of the fireplace, you can see the carvings depicting an eagle.

The sad fate of Alexander Kelkh

The couple did not have a chance to live in a luxurious mansion in love and harmony. In 1905, Varvara divorced her husband and moved to live in Paris, leaving him and his children in St. Petersburg. Alexander soon went bankrupt and first mortgaged the mansion, and then sold it. After ten years, the Synod gave the go-ahead for his divorce from his wife. Kelch remarried - to a dressmaker who already had her daughter.

The further life of the once richest man in Petersburg did not work out. Before the revolution, he left for the Far East, worked there at a factory, and when the enterprise passed into the hands of a foreign company, he returned to St. Petersburg, where he was interrupted by an insignificant income - for example, he sold cigarettes. The family was essentially supported by his wife and adopted daughter, who worked as laborers at the factory. And in 1930, Kelch was arrested and sent to camps, where his trace is lost. By the way, perhaps, the reason for the arrest was the fact that the ex-wife who lived abroad sometimes sent money to Alexander.

After the revolution, the School of Screen Art was opened in a nationalized building that once belonged to the Kelchs. Here students mastered cinematographic specialties. By the way, among the graduates of this school was the author of the legendary black-and-white film "Chapaev" Sergei Vasiliev.

In 1941, the building suffered from a Nazi bombing: part of it, including the left bay window, was destroyed. In 1944-1945, the mansion was restored, but, alas, they did not begin to recreate the bay window.

In 1998, the Kelkh mansion was transferred to the St. Petersburg State University - since then it has also been called the "House of the Lawyer".

We invite you to read more about stained glass windows in the Kelch house and, in general, about where in St. Petersburg you can see unique historical stained-glass windows.