Novobirzhevoy Gostiny Dvor

The building of the Novobirzheviy Gostiny Dvor is built in the form of a closed quadrangle with a large courtyard. The ground floor is an open arcade. Walls are treated with rustication , completed with cornice ^[1] .

The building is located on the Mendeleev line of Vasilyevsky Strova , in the area between the Birzhevoy passage and Tiflis street . Opposite Novobirzhevogo yard is pl. Academician Sakharov . To the left of Sakharov Square (on the even side of the Mendeleev line) is the Twelve Collegiums Building - the main building of St. Petersburg University.

The left neighbor of the building of Novobirzhevogo Gostiny Dvor (on the odd side) is the Research Institute of Obstetrics and Gynecology. D. O. Ott . On the right is the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences ( Birzhevoy Pereulok , d. No. 1). The rear facade of the building faces Tiflis Lane .

Emperor Peter I saw Vasilyevsky Island as the center of the new city, St. Petersburg . Under his rule, the island becomes a haven for the buildings of the country's scientific elite: the Petersburg Academy of Sciences and the Academic University emerge; the building of the Twelve Collegiums is being built on Vasilyevsky Island, it was planned to locate the Governing Senate and the Holy Synod on Vasilyevsky.

In these conditions it was necessary to place on the Vasilyevsky Island and the center of the economy and trade. In 1722 - 1737, Vasilyevsky Island began to be built up according to the project of D. Trezzini . At the same time, the Old Gostiny Dvor appeared, the warehouse buildings of which stretched from the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island to the building of the Twelve Colleges ^[2] . To date, only the building on Tiflisskaya Street has survived from these buildings, 1 is the building of the library fund of the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

By the end of the 18th century, the commercial buildings on Vasilyevsky Island, including the buildings of the old Stock Exchange and the Customs, were outdated. There is a need for new buildings. Under Paul I ( 1797 ), a new development plan for the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island appears. Among the new buildings it was planned to build the buildings of the Gostiny Dvor and the New Exchange . In 1800, the construction of the building according to the design of architect Giacomo Quarenghi began.

During the construction, the architect used a typical design technique for commercial buildings of the 18th-19th centuries — interlocked shops combined outside the gallery in the form of an open vaulted arcade (other Courtyards in the city were built on the same principle). Novobirzhevoy Gostiny Dvor has a spacious patio-atrium and is an irregular closed quad, resembling a trapeze. Along the entire perimeter of the first floor of the building, there is an open walk-through bypass gallery, which is decorated to become a rustic plan , a characteristic technique for finishing the facades of Italian Renaissance palazzo ^[2] . The walls of the lower floor are completed with a cornice. Semi-circular windows of the second floor fit into the smooth surface of the arched niches. The galleries of the second floor are facing the courtyard.

Because of Russia's participation in the Napoleonic wars, the construction of Gostiny Dvor was slow, and subsequently stalled. In the second half of the 1800s, when Jean Thoma de Thomon began construction of the New Exchange building, the building was completely dismantled ^[1] . Resumption and completion of the construction of Gostiny Dvor dates back to 1815 .

In the XIX - early XX century Novobirzhevoy Gostiny Dvor was used mainly for trade and technical purposes, mainly as a warehouse ^[3] . At the beginning of the 20th century, warehouses of the Kozukhina artel and the office of the Glennaya Artel were located in the building of the Novobirzhev Gostiny Dvor ^[2] .

After the revolution, until the early 1930s, the building housed the warehouses of the Leningrad militia . In the early 1930s, the project of transferring the building of the Academy of Sciences was considered , but in 1934 the Academy of Sciences was transferred to Moscow . Then the building was transferred to the Faculty of History of the Leningrad University , which began work on September 1, 1934 .

In 1936 the building was rebuilt. According to the project of V. N. Pilyavsky, Ya. Ya. Ketcher and A. A. Zavarzin , a third floor with small square windows was built on, the upper tier of the courtyard arcade was demolished, and the lower one was included in the volume of the building with glazed openings and a flat roof terraces. Interiors have been radically changed. The central part of the first floor was occupied by a vestibule with a wardrobe, covered with cross vaults with arches supported on poles ^[2] . Also, there was a two-story lecture hall with 400 seats, located by the amphitheater.

Before the war, in addition to the historic building, the building of the Novobirzhy Gostiny Dvor also housed the Faculty of Philology and Geography ( 1930s ), as well as the military department. During the war the hospital was located in the building. After the war, the building was occupied for a while by the political-economics department ( 1960s ), in 1940 the faculty of philosophy was founded, which is also located in the Novobirzhev Gostiny Dvor. The building houses the St. Petersburg State University Medical College. Until 2009, the building also housed a university clinic.

Novobirzhevoy Gostiny Dvor on Vasilyevsky Island is protected by the state as a monument of architecture of federal significance and serves as a vivid example of Russian classicist architecture of the beginning of the 19th century ^[2] .