Description of the attraction
In 1810, the construction of the mansion of the merchant Philip Katenev (Kotenev) was completed on the main in those days Gostiny Square (now Museum). The author of the project was the provincial architect V. I. Suranov, according to whose concept the merchant's mansion was similar to the Gostiny Dvor, while simultaneously creating a single composition and showing the direction of future developments. The facade of the house with a protruding portico of eight columns, resting on an arcade on the first floor, overlooks the Holy Trinity Cathedral, “facing” the hotel courtyard (now in its place is the Directorate of the Russian Railways). The house is considered to be two-storey because of the corridor located in the central part for driving into the courtyard. Four rooms on the first floor overlooked the arcade gallery and were converted into trade shops, and from the middle room on the second floor there was an exit to a balcony located between the columns of the central portico.
Until 1830, the mansion changed its owner to M. A. Ustinov, a wealthy wine and salt tax farmer, who in turn sold it to the spiritual department (Holy Synod). At that time, the question of opening a theological seminary was acute, and after inspecting the best houses in Saratov, the commission of theological schools chose four houses (including the Kotenev mansion) with all the buildings and furnishings. The pupils of the seminary were: N. G. Chernyshevsky, I. I. Vvedensky (the first translator of the novels by Thackeray and Dickens), and the historian G. S. Sabulov (the author of the first translation of the Koran into Russian) taught oriental studies and ethnography.
When in 1885 a new seminary building was built at the intersection of Aleksandrovskaya and Malaya Sergievskaya streets, the house was transferred to the second male gymnasium, and in 1904 - to the second male real school named after Tsarevich Alexei (in which the actor B. A. Babochkin studied). In the Soviet years, the building belonged to secondary educational institutions, now it is the Russian classical gymnasium.
