Description of the attraction
In the city of Gatchina, Leningrad Region, on Chekhov Street at number 4, there is a literary and memorial estate museum of the famous cartoonist Pavel Yegorovich Shcherbov. The museum is one of the branches of the regional state institution "Museum Agency". The estate museum was built in the northern Art Nouveau style and is one of the most unusual architectural creations of the early 20th century in Russia.
The first museum exhibition was opened here in 1992. The exposition part is divided into a local history exhibition and a memorial one. The part devoted to local history tells about the history and architecture of Gatchina. A separate exposition is dedicated to Gatchina, as the place where Russian aviation was born. In the memorial part of the exposition there are exhibitions entitled “P. E. Shcherbova "," P. E. Shcherbov - life and work”. Here visitors can learn about the creative path, interesting facts from the life of the famous cartoonist artist, get to know his friends, who often visited the estate: A. I. Kuprin, M. Nesterov, F. I. Chaliapin, K. K. Pervukhin, V. Andreev.
Even before the foundation of the museum in the estate, the house was very popular with visitors and local residents. It was considered a local landmark. The building was built in 1911. The authorship of the project belongs to the architect Stepan Samoilovich Krichinsky. At one time, the external and internal planning of the estate caused a lot of talk among contemporaries, and even during the construction of the building it was considered very extraordinary, to match the character of the owner-artist.
The records of the daughter of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, Ksenia, have come down to us. Sharing her feelings about this unusual structure, she described its layout. It seemed like a kind of medieval castle surrounded by a high wall. It is interesting that the Shcherbov family collected the stone for the fence. The walls and roof were covered with crimson tiles. Inside, thanks to an ingenious design solution, there was always a certain boominess. The center of the house was located in a large hall with a fireplace, around which were all kinds of iron fixtures, and a collection of weapons. The middle of this "medieval" hall was decorated with the skin of a large bear. A fairly wide staircase led to the second floor, where Shcherbov's workshop was located. From the hall one could get into small rooms, which were furnished and decorated in an oriental style - low round tables with copper trays, polished to a shine, ottomans, hookahs, pipes of different length and shape.
The architectural composition of the estate included not only the main building, but also outbuildings. Both the outbuilding and the sheds were built in the same way as the central building, of large concrete blocks, large stones, bricks and covered with red tiles. The central building - the owners' house - is two-story, with one floor facing the street and two facing the courtyard. The estate has ten living rooms. Tiles have survived to this day, in the eastern wing of the house there is a part of a stone fence and a gate, inside the building there is a fireplace, a carved oak staircase and a basement, and only the glacier has not survived from the outbuildings.
Thanks to the help of Maxim Gorky, the Shcherbov family continued to live in the estate after the October Revolution. Pavel Yegorovich Shcherbov died in 1938. Until 1952, his widow A. D. Shcherbova. From 1941 to 1944, German soldiers were housed in the estate. During these years A. D. Shcherbova lived in the kitchen. When the German troops retreated, most of the valuable things, paintings, decorations were taken to Germany. After the artist's widow died in 1952, the mansion was divided into 12 communal apartments, and 40 years later, the Literary Memorial Museum-Estate of the Artist P. Ye. Shcherbova.
