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The Peasant House

Constructed in the style of Ukrainian Modern, the former Peasant House (designed by B. Korneyenko, 1912) used to function as a hotel for the visitors of the city. It had a dining hall, class rooms, etc. The building now houses Kharkiv City Bureau of Technical Inventory. The housefront is decorated with an alto-relievo of Taras Shevchenko — a poet who is really considered to be a national hero. The rest of the decorative details are unfortunately lost.

As you pass the building of the Central Department Store, there opens a view of a few interesting constructions which clearly illustrate the history of Kharkiv in the late 19th-early 20th century. This was the time for the city to turn into a big industrial, commercial and financial centre of the Russian Empire, which was stipulated by its favourable geographic location. Foreign entrepreneurs actively invested into the country’s industry, created joint stock companies and private firms. Architecture, too, experienced this tendency implemented in the construction of a new type of buildings: railway station, department store, bank, lombard, rental house, etc.

Erected mainly in Sumska Street, the main street of the city, and in Nikolayevska Square (now Konstytutsii Square), these buildings formed a kind of Kharkiv’s ‘City’. The buildings were designed by talented St. Petersburg architects R. Golenishchev, F. Lidval, N. Verevkin, I. Pretro, R. Henrichsen, A. Dmitriyev, D. Rakitin, N. Vasiliev, A. Rzhepyshevsky and others. This is why on a rainy autumn evening, some of the city nooks might remind of St. Petersburg.