Description of the attraction
The house of Count Tolstoy, which is an object of cultural heritage of regional importance, is located on a rather complex section between Rubinstein streets and the Fontanka river embankment. The most common name for this house is the Tolstoy House.
The Tolstoy house was built in 1910-1912. designed by architect Lidval F. I. and with the participation of his student Smirnov D. D. The building was built by order of Count Tolstoy Mikhail Pavlovich, who was the great-nephew of P. A. Tolstoy, hero of the Patriotic War of 1812. But in 1913. Mikhail Pavlovich died, and the house passed into the possession of his widow, Countess Tolstaya Olga Alexandrovna (ur. Vasilchikova, daughter of the second of the great poet M. Yu. Lermontov, Prince Vasilchikov Alexander Illarionovich). In 1918. the house was nationalized.
The building is designed in the Northern Art Nouveau style. It reflects the characteristic features of the St. Petersburg housing construction of that time. At the beginning of the century in St. Petersburg, due to the increase in the population, land prices rose sharply, which in turn contributed to a more compact development of courtyard plots with residential multi-storey buildings, which formed the so-called "courtyards-wells".
F. I. Lidval very carefully and skillfully developed the overall layout of the house. The author paid special attention to solving not only practical, but also aesthetic problems. While the facades of the majority of Petersburg apartment buildings of the 19th century, overlooking the courtyard, were usually only smoothly plastered, in the house of Count Tolstoy, the courtyard facades in their compositional design and decorative design are in no way inferior to the facades facing the street. The decorative decoration of the building clearly shows the elements characteristic of Lidval's work: sophistication and restraint of the decor, loggias on the upper floors of the building, high arches-passages in the Renaissance style, illumination and comfort of the interiors of living quarters. In addition to the Renaissance motif of the arched driveways, the architect also used elements of the Art Nouveau style. It is in this style that oval windows and stucco ornaments are decorated. The combination of plaster coatings with bricks, different in color and texture, looks interesting.
Initially, the building was built for people of different classes. It provided apartments for people with modest incomes and for the richer population. The architect provided for plumbing, elevators, laundry.
In the complex layout of the house, the architect included a sequence of three walk-through courtyards, which are connected by arches, leading from Rubinstein Street to the Fontanka embankment. Due to the incorrect configuration of the land plot under the building, the longitudinal axis of the courtyards has a break. In this regard, arcades do not form an end-to-end perspective. Arched driveways are equal in height to the first three floors. On the sides of the driveways there are arched walkways for pedestrians. Wrought iron lanterns are suspended from the arches. The facades on the sides of the driveways are decorated with pilasters with baroque capitals. The pilasters support the obelisks above them. The three front courtyards of Count Tolstoy's house are decorated with the same care as the facades. In the decoration of the facades of the Tolstoy House, materials such as brick, hewn limestone, and plaster were used. Initially, the driveways were located in the center of the courtyards, and very narrow strips along the inner street were occupied by small lawns.
In Soviet times, the appearance of the courtyards changed a lot: lawns were arranged in the passages in the middle of the courtyards, where poplars were planted, and a fountain with a concrete flowerpot was installed in the place of the octagonal flower bed. This is how the inner street, conceived by the architect (sometimes called the street of the architect Lidval), disappeared.
In different historical epochs, many famous people of Russia lived in the house. These are the satirist writer Arkady Averchenko, and V. G. Garshin - pathologist, academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences and friend of Anna Akhmatova, writer A. I. Kuprin and many others. Now the house is also inhabited by outstanding people: conductors, singers, ballet dancers, etc.
