Former Adonis Factory Building

The building of the former “Adonis” factory stands on Profsoyuznaya Street, just steps from the Peter and Paul Cathedral, and is listed among Kazan’s cultural heritage sites. The historical core of the building is nearly two centuries old, while the name “Adonis” became attached to the complex only in the Soviet and post-Soviet period, when a garment factory operated here.

Until the early 19th century this site was occupied by the metochion (courtyard residence) of the Sviyazhsk Monastery, where monks visiting Kazan would stay. A fire on 3 September 1815 destroyed the wooden buildings surrounding the metochion, and the city authorities relocated the monastery courtyard to a house purchased on Pokrovskaya Street from the merchant Shaposhnikov, while the vacated land was given over to trade in order to relieve the overcrowded Gostiny Dvor market. At the request of Vice-Governor Alexander Zhmakin, the wooden shops were ordered to be replaced with stone ones by the summer of 1825; construction, overseen by the Kazan tanners the Kotelov brothers, began in the spring of that year to a design by architect Alexander Schmidt, who replaced a rejected earlier design by university architect Pyotr Pyatnitsky. The main building was completed by the end of November 1825, and a year later a second, single-storey building was erected opposite it.

The new trading rows housed a store selling chemical goods and dyes, and an herb row selling medicinal and aromatic herbs. In the late 19th century the site also saw brisk fruit trading: advertisements from 1888 mention the merchant Vasily Plotnikov, who offered French pears, mandarins and oranges. Within the earlier volume of the building, researchers have identified fragments of an even older house belonging to the merchants Mikhlyaev and Dryablov.

In 1930 the trading rows were converted into Garment Factory No. 4, and in 1993 the enterprise was turned into a joint-stock company and renamed “Adonis” — under this name the factory operated here for several subsequent decades, giving the whole complex its current colloquial name.

Today its status as a cultural heritage site protects the historic building from demolition and requires its appearance to be preserved during any reconstruction. In spring 2024 the complex was acquired by the investment company “Estate Invest”, headed by Irek Galiev, for a deal worth approximately 493 million rubles. The Moscow-based bureau CreativeSpace Hunter and the restoration company “Recom+” were brought in for the reconstruction: the project envisions creating a multifunctional creative cluster with spaces for fashion brands, gastronomic projects and city events, while preserving the historic facade.

The building’s journey — from monastery courtyard and trading rows to garment factory and creative cluster — mirrors the history of Kazan itself, where trade, manufacturing and urban culture have taken turns under the same roof for centuries. “Adonis” remains a living testament to this continuity in the very heart of the city.