The building of the Siberian Bank (house of V.P. Babintsev)

Vasily Petrovich Babintsev, a well-known businessman in Vladivostok at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, one of the partners of the largest commercial and industrial company of the Far East of the trading house Churin, Kasyanov and Co. , in 1902-1905 according to the project of Vladimir Antonovich Planson (according to other sources - Ivan Vladimirovich Meshkov) built a tenement house on Svetlanskaya street. Two of its first floors housed premises for offices and rental shops, and comfortable apartments were located on the third floor. In 1912-1917, the building housed the Siberian Trade Bank ^[1] . After the revolution , the building alternately contained: "Yokohama Special Bank", a hairdresser, a barbecue, governorate department, and the Pacific Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography ( TINRO ).

Since 1977, the building houses the Primorsky State United Museum named after V.K. Arsenyev - the first museum of local lore in the Far East , the largest museum in the Primorsky Territory . The museum presents the history and nature of the Primorsky Territory, collection of materials on the activities of researchers of the region - M. I. Venyukov , N. M. Przhevalsky and others, materials on the history of the city, archeology and ethnography . The museum includes 3 branches in Vladivostok and 5 in other cities of Primorye.

The building is one of the most important city-forming accents in the central part of the city. He was given the scale structure and the artistic level of the subsequent development of significant sections of Svetlanskaya and October 25 streets - the main highways of the center of Vladivostok, at the intersection of which the building occupies a corner position. In plan it has an L-shaped shape, the walls are made of red brick for plaster. In the architectural and artistic solution of its facades, motifs of classicism and empire are used, the division of the facade planes is made in the proportions of the order system. The massive rusticated ground floor with display windows is interpreted as a pedestal of the order, in the upper floors the rhythm of the windows and piers corresponds to the intercolumn of the Roman Doric order. Both facades have the same three-part composition with the axis of symmetry in the center, emphasized by the developed attic and bay windows-risalits. The risalits are crowned with triangular gables, the corner of the building is highlighted by a dome of elliptical shape. Stucco of empire motifs is widely used in the decoration of facades and interiors ^[1] .

• Monuments of history and culture of the Primorsky Territory. Materials for the arch. - Vladivostok: Dalnevost. books. ed., 1991 .-- 268 p.