How the St. Petersburg house of merchant Polezhaev is connected with Woland, and what dark secrets he keeps

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

In modern terms, this building, located on Starorusskaya Street in St. Petersburg, was considered an elite new building a hundred years ago. The house of the merchant Polezhaev, built in the Art Nouveau style, impressed with its scope, beauty and modern, for those times, conveniences. Now he is only beautiful from the outside, and this beauty is mysteriously gloomy. It is no coincidence that director Vladimir Bortko chose this house-castle for the filming of The Master and Margarita.

The house was designed by the engineer-architect Ivan Yakovlev by order of the merchant of the 1st guild M. N. Polezhaeva. Construction began in 1913 and ended in 1915. Successful Old Believer merchants, the Polezhaevs, who made their fortune by selling grain, wisely suggested that income can be obtained not only from trade, but also from the rental of real estate. The potential tenants of the new tenement building were supposed to be ambitious merchants-moneybags, and the industrial area in which it was decided to erect this large-scale building (the corner of Starorusskaya and Novgorodskaya), M. N. Polezhaev considered it very promising. In principle, this is what happened: now it is the very center of the city.

The majestic building can be considered an Art Nouveau classic. Turrets, bay windows, half-columns, tongs, pilasters - the sea here is an interesting element. And the figures of the Atlanteans who seem to support the balconies, what are they worth!

The house was clearly designed for very wealthy tenants. Elevators, bathrooms, hot and cold water, electricity, gas, and all this - in 1915! The area of some apartments reached several hundred square meters (20 rooms), and the layout itself was very convenient. A large apartment in such a house, as a rule, had two entrances - the front one and the black one. The kitchen is spacious, with a cool pantry and a small additional room for a maid or a cook.

And since the building turned out to be huge (several buildings with a courdoner), and outwardly it looked very attractive, we can say that in fact it was an elite residential complex of the early 20th century.

However, the merchant Polezhaev himself did not live in this house, but one of his maids, as contemporaries recalled, lived here until the 1960s.

By the way, the famous poet Cherubina de Gabriak (real name - Elizaveta Dmitrieva) lived in this pompous building for some time, because of which the sensational duel between Gumilyov and Voloshin took place earlier. However, the duel itself was not as interesting as the gossips had painted it. This is how Maximilian Voloshin later described it:. More about this story can be read here.

After the revolution, Polezhaev's house passed to the state and multi-room apartments turned into communal apartments. Some of them were occupied by 10-12 families. The lower floor was at various times occupied by city organizations (for example, a polyclinic).

Now the house has both ordinary and communal apartments and, just like in the Soviet years, some of the premises are occupied by organizations. The building is rightfully included in the list of cultural heritage sites of our country.

Although the house as a whole has retained its original appearance, during the Soviet years, its variegated tenants (of course, not all) were rather careless about the interior, so that the once luxurious entrances (front ones) over the decades acquired a rather unsightly appearance. The tiles fell off in some places, and various inscriptions regularly appeared on the shabby walls. Just like in the monologue of Professor Preobrazhensky by Bulgakov about the devastation that is "in the heads"! In recent years, the entrances have begun to be gradually renovated, however, it is still far from the complete renovation of the house.

By the way, about Bulgakov. The mysteriously gloomy appearance of this St. Petersburg building, which, by the way, has always generated all kinds of rumors and legends among the surrounding residents, interested the director Vladimir Bortko. Despite the fact that the novel “The Master and Margarita” is set in the center of Moscow, during the film adaptation of this work in 2004, Bortko, as a director and screenwriter, decided to rent a “bad apartment” here, in Polezhaev's house. And he made the right decision: the series, as you know, was a great success, and the colorful building that now and then appears on the screen only enhanced the mystical effect created by the director.

After the filming of the film, which was released in 2005, especially impressionable people began to talk about the mystical influence of Bulgakov's work on this building. They say that now in its corridors one can hear strange sounds and see some inexplicable phenomena, but this, of course, is nothing more than rumors.

And in continuation of the theme of apartment buildings, similar to castles - The secret of a fairy tale house in the center of Moscow. The history of the incredibly beautiful house of Pertsova.