The House with Chimaeras, 10 Bankovaya St, Kiev.
Via Wikipedia:
The House with Chimaeras was designed by the architect Vladislav Gorodetsky in 1901–1902. Gorodetsky was born in 1863 into a prosperous Polish szlachta family in the Podillia region. After finishing the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg in 1890, he moved to Kiev, where he lived for almost 30 years. At the time of the building’s construction, Gorodetsky had already established himself as a prominent Kiev architect, having designed many city buildings, from the St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Cathedral to a Karaite kenesa and the current National Art Museum of Ukraine. Besides architecture, Gorodetsky was also interested in big-game hunting, which explains why his building features many animals.
The Italian sculptor Emilio Sala was responsible for both the internal and external sculptural decorations, such as mermaids, dolphins, and frogs on the roof of the building, sinking ships and hunting trophies on the exterior walls, and exuberant interior decorations, such as grand stairways and chandeliers depicting huge catfish strangled in the stems of lotus flowers.
• A gallery of details
• The House at night on Flickr
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Adolph Sutro’s Gingerbread Palace
• The Triangular Lodge
Wow! I love the way he combined the classical with the turn of the century obsession with nature forms. Stunning.
This is amazing!
Wow !
My camera is itching…
Thanks John! the Gaudi of Kiev is right. That is some excellently weird melding of styles.
Weird indeed. Surprising this isn’t more well-known, isn’t it? There’s a lot of Art Nouveau architecture in Russia which the Soviet regime would have found an embarrassment so it’s taken a while to come to light. Not sure that this is really Art Nouveau, however, it’s more like a Neo-classical facade that’s been invaded by a stone menagerie.