Adamini House

Adamini House occupies a corner site at the junction of the Field of Mars, the Moika River Embankment, and Aptekarsky Lane — the southernmost building of the block, at the western edge of the field. A three-story apartment house in the late Empire style, it is recognized as a federally protected architectural landmark and is known less for the merchant who commissioned it than for its architect.

The house was built in 1823–1827 for the merchant Antonov on a trapezoidal plot acquired from the family of Stepan Apraksin. The design was created by architect Domenico Adamini, whose name became attached to the building, though contemporaries also called it Antonov's House after its owner. The wider side of the plot faces the Field of Mars, the narrower side faces the lane, and for a long time the southern façade along the Moika closed off the view of the Griboyedov Canal as seen from Nevsky Prospect — until that view was partly blocked by the later-built Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood.

The eastern and southern façades are decorated with equal grandeur: both are adorned with central projecting bays featuring eight-column porticos of the composite order at the level of the second and third floors. The southeastern corner of the house is rounded and marked by pilasters on the upper floors, while a molded frieze depicting griffins runs around the building's perimeter. The ground floor of the southern façade was originally designed as an arcade, since the merchant intended to lease these premises out for shops.

One of the building's first residents was the physicist Pavel Schilling, who assembled here one of the earliest electromagnetic telegraphs and demonstrated the invention to the public, including to Emperor Nicholas I. In the early twentieth century the building passed to the Imperial Appanage Department and became known as the Udely House; the architectural historian Vladimir Kurbatov even predicted it would soon be demolished. Instead, the house became a notable center of artistic life: from 1914 the second floor housed the "Dobychina Art Bureau," which hosted exhibitions by the "World of Art," "Union of Youth," and other groups. From the spring of 1916 the basement housed the "Comedians' Halt" cabaret, which replaced "The Stray Dog," closed the year before; the wall paintings were the work of four well-known painters of the time — Grigoriev, Sudeikin, Shukhaev, and Yakovlev — but the venue closed in 1919, and the murals were later destroyed in a flood.

In the first years after the Revolution, the novelist Leonid Andreyev briefly lived here, as did the poet Anna Akhmatova, who stayed as a guest in the apartment of her friend Olga Sudeikina. Later, the apartments were occupied by the art historian Lipgart, the architect and urban planner Baranov, and the writers German, Panova, and Rakhmanov, whose names are now commemorated by memorial plaques. In the autumn of 1941, at the end of November, the building took two direct hits from high-explosive aerial bombs: the ceilings of the eastern wing and the central part of the southern façade were damaged. Restoration work was completed in 1946 under the direction of architect Alexander Gintsburg, who restored the façades to their prewar appearance.

Today Adamini House retains its status as a cultural heritage site and remains a residential building by the Field of Mars. Having survived the war and decades of urban life, it still serves as a reminder of Saint Petersburg's turbulent cultural history in the early twentieth century.