Karl Marx Street

The street was established in the 18th century and was previously called Blagoveshchenska (Annunciation) Street. In the late 19th-early 20th century it was the site where the estates of the nobility were built. A former estate of the College Secretary von M?nster is preserved at the corner of Karl Marx and Dmitriyevka Streets. Architect Yaroslavsky participated in its construction. Since the mid-19th century, the house had belonged to the family of B. Filonov, a famous public figure, virtuoso, council member of the Kharkiv City Art and Industry Museum. The house has not changed: both the house itself and the entrance gate with the stone Polovtsian figures, as well as the back wing have been well preserved.

26, Karl Marx Street is a building constructed in the early 19th century by E. Vasiliev and enlarged by A. Ton in the 1830s. The house which belonged to the noble family of the Alkhovskys is also a typical city villa, though its front facade with a high four-column gallery faces the yard, rather than the street.

The yard of this house offers a view of an impressive building situated in 28, Karl Marx Street. This is a former Musical Theatre designed by B. Kor­neyenko and built in 1911 for the circus. It used to be the largest circus in the world (5750 seats), but only a year later the building was purchased by a theatre entrepreneur G. Mussury who refurbished it for an opera house. During Soviet times, the first Ukrain­ian Theatre of Musical Comedy was opened here, but because of a lack of facilities for staging performances and bad acoustics, the theatre soon moved from the building.

32, Karl Marx Street is another monument of the Constructivism era — the Pishchevik House for Culture designed by A. Linetsky in 1930. The major facade of the building was partially lost after the reconstruction of the 1970s, but the general outlook and interiors design still preserve the spirit of Constructivism. The building has become a new home for the Music­al Theatre.