Description of the attraction
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Petrograd side of St. Petersburg was actively built up. The so-called House with Towers became the architectural dominant of Leo Tolstoy Square. The site on which this fantastically beautiful building now stands has often changed owners since the middle of the 19th century. In 1909, it passed into the possession of the engineer K. I. Rosenstein, who took part in the redevelopment of this area. He also started a project of a tenement house, made a planning solution. But feeling that he could not cope with such work alone, Rosenstein invites the architect A. E. Belogrud to cooperate, who at that moment was fond of the Middle Ages, therefore he proposed a variant of stylizing the projected building under an English castle. Belohrud boldly combined elements of Neo-Gothic and Neo-Renaissance in his project.
The main facade of the building is decorated with two symmetrical hexagonal towers, towering over the main body of the building. The architect placed a decorative dial with the signs of the zodiac on the wall of one of the towers. The walls of the house are painted yellow-gray, and the details of the building are highlighted in brown. Window openings are very diverse, deliberately shifted in different ways on different floors in relation to other floors. The window frames are unusually diverse and beautiful: lancet, round, rectangular, semicircular.
From Lev Tolstoy Street, the previously built five-story house, which was designed in the style of romanticism, was included in the new building. Cast fences, romantic windows in the courtyard, staircase doors remained from it. In addition to its undoubted beauty, the building also had a high margin of safety, since its interfloor ceilings were made by special order. From the point of view of engineering equipment, the building met the highest standards of that time: the apartments had bathtubs recessed into the floor, gas stoves, built-in wardrobes, heaters for drying towels. There was a garage in the yard. The interior layout was compact and functional.
After the revolution, the House with Towers often changed owners. It housed the cinemas "Elite", "Competitor", "Rezets", "ARS". Since the 1950s, the building has acquired the status of an architectural monument. Since 1972, the premises have been transferred to the Leningrad Television Studio. In 1978, the lower floor of the building was rebuilt into a theater room with an auditorium for 220 seats. From 1996 to the present day the theater "Russian Entreprise named after A. Mironov" has been working here.
