Description of the attraction
The building, built in 1911 at the expense of Stepan Pavlovich Petrov, a merchant of the second guild of Novouzensk. The two-story building housed his office, a warehouse-store of agricultural machines and implements, and living quarters.
S. P. Petrov, born in 1866, a native of the city of Volsk, Saratov region, a native of a bourgeois, large family, who received a home education and began his career as a teenager when he moved to Saratov in his father's grocery store. Polite, agile and efficient Stepan quickly gained a good reputation and mastered the trade and commercial business. Soon the young specialist was invited to the shop of agricultural machines R. K. Erta (trading house Ertov, Sovetskaya St. 10), to the position of a clerk. Receiving a decent salary, S. P. Petrov first helped his parents financially, and then after saving up money, he opened his own business selling agricultural machines in Pokrovskaya Sloboda (now Engels). In 1900, he became a merchant of the second guild, and already in 1917 the famous industrialist and merchant S. P. Petrov became a merchant of the first guild, and in 1918, due to the civil war, the whole family left Russia in a hurry. In 1926, S. P. Petrov dies, leaving behind three daughters.
In Soviet times, the Petrov building was "socialized" and from 1917 to the 1930s the building housed: L. Trotsky, SAPP (Saratov Association of Proletarian Writers) and the unemployed exchange. In 1984, when the building was supposed to be converted into a restaurant "Moldova", a treasure of 374 gold coins was found in the wall during the renovation. In the 1990s, the building was occupied by the Saratov Youth House JSC, then the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (the latter initiated the installation of a sculpture of the god of trade Mercury, by A. Shcherbakov, near the corner facade). Nowadays, the house of the merchant and industrialist S. P. Petrov is occupied by trade organizations. The building is an architectural monument and a historical landmark of the city of Saratov.
