A building at 32 Velyka Zhytomyrska Street in Kyiv attracts a lot of attention. Residents of Kyiv call it the "house with snakes and chestnuts."
Apostrophe tells the story of the building.
The house was built in 1910. The owner of the estate was a noblewoman, Sofia Chokolova, from the Chokolov family, after whom the present-day Chokolivka neighborhood was named. She bought the plot in 1910, when a three-story stone house was already under construction. The house was built as an apartment building, with one apartment on each floor. The construction was completed in 1911, and the author of the project was probably G. Ledochowski.
The house is a vivid representative of floral modernism.
In the 1990s, the house was rented out and renovated, during which the old tile stoves were destroyed and the unique decoration was damaged.
The house belonged to various structures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and in 2010 it was sold to Aquaplaz LLC. In 2014, a reconstruction project was announced with the addition of two floors above the house with snakes. In March 2015, the Kyiv City State Administration transferred the land plot from state to communal ownership, and in the summer of 2018, it was leased to Aquaplaz for 15 years. In 2017, B&H film distribution announced its intention to sponsor the restoration of the monument.
Earlier, Apostrophe published a rare photo of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra from 1918.