Noble Assembly (Ulyanovsk)

The history of the Ulyanovsk noble assembly begins in the 19th century, when Emperor Nicholas I , who visited Simbirsk on August 22-23, 1836, ordered the construction of a "noble house" in the city. However, the construction of the building began seven years later in 1843 and was completed in 1847. Its architect was the architect Ivan Adolfovich Benzeman. The grand opening of the Noble Assembly took place in January 1848. It held various business meetings, meetings, various entertainment events. The office, presence, archive and provincial zemstvo government worked in the building. In the Noble Assembly there were also apartments of the leader of the nobility, his secretary, clerk, and a number of other employees.

On April 18, 1848, the Karamzin Public Library "for all classes and classes of society" moved into the building, renting two small rooms in the House. Now these two rooms, plus another room on the first floor since 1990, are the museum of the Karamzin library, the setting of which has been preserved with great reliability, since there are quite a lot of genuine things and documents of that era. Although the entire book fund, which totaled more than 11 thousand publications, died in the fire of 1864 , the writer Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov donated his books to her and offered to do the same for other writers, and by 1866, to the centenary of the birthday of N. Karamzin. V. on an all-Russian subscription to the library received more than 70 thousand volumes, and on its basis a collection of the Book Palace was created.

The noble assembly was repeatedly attended by royal persons: May 19, 1868 - Vladimir Alexandrovich , May 21, 1868 - Alexey Alexandrovich , July 20, 1869 - Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich, future emperor Alexander III , June 9, 1870 - Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich August 28, 1871 - Alexander II with Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich.

On October 4, 1898, the famous anniversary exhibition was held in the House in honor of the 250th anniversary of Simbirsk.

In 1906, a terrorist act was carried out near the Noble Assembly - at the western entrance to the governor K.S. Starynkevich, the Socialist Revolutionaries dropped a bomb, and he died from his injuries two days later.

At different times, the western wing of the building was rented by the Noble Boarding House, the Second Men's Gymnasium, the Soviet school and the Pedagogical Institute were located here. Since 1925, the building of the former Noble Assembly was occupied by the library, which became known as the Palace of the Book named after Lenin. During the Great Patriotic War, in addition to the library, a part of the design bureau of the ZIS automobile plant worked in the building, as well as a military tribunal.

Nowadays, the Ulyanovsk Regional Scientific Library named after V.I. Lenin .

The building was built in the style of classicism and was distinguished by magnificence and grace. At the entrance there was a stepped porch, which was decorated with large lanterns on cast-iron pedestals. The dominant feature of the House was the solemn hall on the second floor with a ceiling decorated with ten coats of arms of Simbirsk and district towns in the form of stucco reliefs. From the hall to the balcony, which overlooks the Volga landscape, were high doors. Around the hall were grouped the rest of the building. To the left of the hall was a “mirror hall” for the ladies, who had recently been given the name “Pushkin”. On the right was a hall for men's entertainment, in particular for billiards and card games, now called "Karamzin."

During the fire of 1864, the building of the Nobility Assembly burned out almost completely - there were only stone walls and basement ceilings. However, the story of the building did not end there: three years later, it was restored according to the Kupinsky project almost in its original form. The porch was replaced by a portico with a wide balcony with a balustrade resting on pillars. It was also decided not to restore the covered wooden gallery and corner balcony in the courtyard of the House. And if earlier the coat of arms was decorated with ten emblems of Simbirsk and counties of the Simbirsk province, now only eight of them remained due to changes in the composition of the Simbirsk province and the number of counties in it. The hall was now lit by chandeliers with crystal pendants, installed after 1864. Who made them, there is no certainty: they were made by French or Austrian masters. These chandeliers have survived to this day, but now they are illuminated not with candles, but with electric lamps, and the crystal pendants have been replaced with glass ones. Two fireplaces have also been preserved.

However, the appearance of the building has changed more than once - first according to the needs of the Simbirsk nobility, and after 1917 - the Soviet regime. However, now it has an almost initial appearance, and in the 1960s. the stucco molding of the ceiling was restored from partially preserved fragments.

• Anna Shkolnaya. Anniversary of the "noble house" (Russian) . Simbirsky courier (January 21, 2012). Date of treatment April 26, 2014.
• Historical buildings of Ulyanovsk (Russian) (inaccessible link) . The house-museum of Lenin. Date of treatment April 26, 2014. Archived on April 26, 2014.