Merchant Bank Building (Kharkiv)
The Building of the Merchant Bank is a historical building in the city center of Kharkiv, located on Pavlivskyi Square, 10. It is a and of local significance No. 7278-Ха.
History
The idea of building a new building arose in the Kharkiv Merchant Society in 1909, when an architectural competition was held in St. Petersburg. The project of Russian architect won it. However, the Society chose the project of the young Ukrainian architect Oleksandr Rzhepishevskyi and the architect from St. Petersburg Nikolai Vasyliev as its winner. Sculptures were made by sculptors V. V. Kozlov and L. A. Dietrich. The building of the Merchant Bank was built in 1910–1913, it has six floors: the first three were occupied by the bank itself and office premises, the upper three were occupied by one of the most elite hotels in the city - "Astoria". The name of the hotel arose at the beginning of the 20th century as a response to hotels of a fashionable style in New York, owned by the Astor brothers.The building is made in the Northern Modern style, decorated with large Atlases, bizarre mascarons and other stucco. The building has a monolithic reinforced concrete frame, which was erected by the Black Sea Insurance Society. Inside, the bank and the hotel were stylishly decorated, two elevators worked. To supervise the construction, architect Rzhepishevsky moved to Kharkiv, where he will create a number of buildings in the National Romantic style, in particular cooperative houses and, where he himself will live.
At the beginning of the Soviet-German war, the building was burned down, and later damaged by shelling. After the Second World War, it was restored according to the project of architect. In Soviet times, the building became known as "Melody" - after the name of a large music store, which was located on the first floor of the building from 1951 to 2011.