Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology

At the corner of Moskovsky and Zagorodny Prospekts stands the building of one of Russia's oldest technical universities — the Institute of Technology, long known to locals as "Tekhnolozhka". It produced the creators of Russian synthetic rubber and television, and the institution remains an active federal historical monument.

The institute was founded by decree of Nicholas I on 28 November 1828, on the initiative of Finance Minister Yegor Kankrin, as the Practical Institute of Technology — intended to train specialists to manage factories. Students were admitted on the recommendation of city councils, mainly from the children of third-guild merchants, townspeople and poorer families, often orphans. Graduates received the title of "scientific master craftsmen", and from 1849 that of "engineer-technologist". The institute gained university status in 1862, and in 1896 became the Technological Institute of Emperor Nicholas I.

The main building was erected in 1829–1831 on the site of the former Volynsky estate, to a design by the architects Alexei Postnikov and Eduard Anert — a modest three-storey block whose only ornament was a frieze; classes began on 11 October 1831. In 1859–1862 Fyodor Bekman added two side wings, and in 1898 Ludwig Shishko rebuilt the building: he removed the frieze, added a fourth storey, enlarged the windows, and moved the entrance to the centre of the façade.

After the revolution the institution was renamed several times, and from 1930 it bore the name of the Leningrad Soviet along with a chemical profile in its title. When the Great Patriotic War began, part of the staff and equipment was evacuated to Kazan; classes in Leningrad stopped in March 1942, while the remaining staff produced anti-personnel mines, anaesthetic ether and other goods for the front. Classes resumed in 1944, after the institute returned from evacuation. In 1925 a monument to Plekhanov was erected in front of the building.

The institute was the first in the country to open departments of plastics technology, glass technology and synthetic rubber technology. Its graduates and faculty include Dmitri Mendeleev, television inventor Vladimir Zworykin, physicist Abram Ioffe, metallurgist Dmitri Chernov, and chemist Sergei Lebedev, who established the production of synthetic rubber. On 29 May 2013 a fire broke out in the building, bringing down its dome and spire; the building was restored by 2016.

Today the institute comprises six faculties training chemical engineers for industry. The building, which gave its name to the metro station of the same name, remains a working university and an architectural monument preserving the memory of two centuries of the Russian technological school.