A.V. Ratkov-Rozhnov Apartment Building

On Kirochnaya Street stands one of the most striking apartment buildings of the eclectic era — the building at numbers 32–34, built for Ananiy Ratkov-Rozhnov, marshal of the nobility of Tsarskoye Selo district. The long six-storey facade with its massive atlantes has long made the house one of the architectural landmarks of this part of the city.

The building was erected in 1899–1900 to a design by the well-known St Petersburg architect Pavel Suzor. The client was Ananiy Vladimirovich Ratkov-Rozhnov, a hereditary nobleman and graduate of the Alexander Lyceum; in state service he attained the rank of full state councillor and the court title of chamberlain, and after the revolution he emigrated to France, where he died in Paris in 1948. At almost the same time Suzor built a similar house with an analogous ceremonial arch for the client's brother on Panteleimonovskaya Street, making the two buildings something of an architectural pair.

The long facade of the house is articulated by four bay windows, each supported by two half-length figures of bearded atlantes — a detail that has become the building's calling card. Beneath the cornice runs a frieze with decorative lion masks. From the street a spacious courtyard, or cour d'honneur, opens through a tall arch — a device typical of late nineteenth-century apartment-house construction, allowing more light and air into the building's interior spaces.

Over the years notable figures of Russian culture and science lived in the house: the literary scholar and academician Nestor Kotlyarevsky rented an apartment here from 1910 to 1917, the actor Yuri Yuryev from 1901 to 1906, and the palaeontologist Alexei Borisyak from 1906 to 1908. Such company was typical of expensive apartment houses at the turn of the century, which attracted the well-to-do intelligentsia of the imperial capital.

The house on Kirochnaya has preserved the historic appearance of its facade and was recognised as a cultural heritage site of regional significance by a decree of 2009. The sculptural decoration and the courtyard with its arch remain original elements of the building, untouched by any serious alteration for more than a century.

Today the Ratkov-Rozhnov apartment building remains an exemplary specimen of St Petersburg eclecticism of the late nineteenth century and a monument to the high-quality pre-revolutionary residential construction characteristic of the central streets of the imperial capital. The massive figures of the atlantes and the deep ceremonial courtyard continue to draw the attention of passers-by and researchers of St Petersburg architecture, and the building itself is frequently mentioned in guidebooks to the city's apartment houses alongside more famous works by the same architect.