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"Lost the authenticity of the author's concept": Bezobrazova's house on Sennaya will be stripped of its status as a monument
Bezobrazova, located in a huge triangle between the outstanding apartment buildings of N.V. Sennaya Square, Grivtsov Lane and the Griboyedov Canal Embankment, will lose its status as a monument in 11 years. The beige building with red brick trim has been excluded from the newly approved list of historical monuments. The document has been published on the Smolny website, and an anti-corruption investigation is currently underway.
- Refusal to include the "House of NV" in the Unified Register of Historical and Cultural Monuments of the State. Bezobrazova"; the order of the State Committee for the Control, Protection and Use of Monuments (KGIOP) states that it should be excluded from the list of newly identified objects.
The list should also invalidate the territorial boundary plan and housing protection objects. Since the documents have not yet been signed, construction cards with honorary status can still be found on the KGIOP portal.
KGIOP SPB.KP.RU explained that the recent investigation did not confirm that the house has any special historical significance for St. Petersburg.
- The building is an example of a St. Petersburg tenement house from the early 20th century, but the authenticity of the author's concept was partially lost as a result of reconstruction. The committee referred to the expert's conclusion that the inclusion of the house in the register of monuments is unfounded, since the building has no historical or cultural value.
Interestingly, the owner of the commercial building conducted a similar survey last May to begin work on preserving the monument. In their report, experts rated the house as valuable and reported that even minor interior remodeling had not affected its conservation status. The building's exterior has not changed for a year and a half, but if you look back in time, there have been changes. The architect's original design was four stories high, but now it's six stories high. And the colors are slightly different. It was brick-colored, without the light cream exterior.
However, KGIOP was confident that the house was not in danger of being demolished. After all, the house is historical and “forms the street façade of Sennaya Square, the embankment of the Griboyedov Canal and Grivtsov Lane.” Demolition of buildings is prohibited by City Code No. 820-7.
The Bezobrazova House was built at the end of the 18th century and was rebuilt several times at the beginning of the 20th century, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The architects of different eras were August Lange and Julius Benois. The building is named after the wife of Major General Vladimir Bezobrazov, Nadezhda Vladimirovna, Countess Stenbock-Fermor.
In the fall of 2022, there was a fire in the building. The fire broke out in one of the apartments on the third floor. No one was injured in the fire.
- The house is located in a conservation area, so its appearance is preserved. Law 820 prohibits repainting facades and changing historic windows, doors and gates facing the street. The interior is not protected, so, for example, the stove can be demolished. Destruction of street elements can only be done illegally. For example, in the heritage area that I identified, some neighbors replaced the original doors, blocked part of the high double doorway and installed single doors. They just wanted to impose fines on their neighbors, and no one returned anything to its historic appearance.
But nothing will change for the residents and they will lose the opportunity to feel like part of a large, memorable building.
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