The building at 13 Arkhitektora Horodetskoho Street is an interesting example of a commercial and industrial building located among residential buildings with a purely commercial purpose: to provide the opportunity to purchase furniture for residents of newly constructed buildings.
Iosif Kimayer's firm
The date "1884" can be seen on the facade of the house. However, this is not the year of the construction of the building, but the date of the beginning of the activity of the leading manufacturer of exquisite Austrian furniture in Kyiv, because the residence of the factory of Iosif Kimayer was located in this building.
Since the second half of the 19th century, Vienna has been the trendsetter in the furniture industry. The demand for Austrian furniture spread throughout Europe. So it is not surprising that the Austrians actually monopolized the furniture market in Kyiv. There was a fierce rivalry among several entrepreneurs in this field, but in the end, the Austrian subject Iosif Kimayer chose the first place. About a hundred workers worked at his Kyiv factory. The finished products were immediately put up for sale in the company store. By the way, for the production of furniture, Kimayer used Ukrainian oak, while other species were imported from different countries. Both private and corporate customers willingly bought the goods offered by the company. Furniture with his stamp could be seen in the Polytechnic Institute, leading banks, and the best hotels. In 1897 alone, the company furnished a hundred wealthy apartments in Odesa, Warsaw and other cities by special order. By the way, a significant part of the furniture and carpentry of Kimayer's company still serves its purpose, in particular, in the building of the National Bank of Ukraine, built in 1902-1905.
History of the house
The building was built with the participation of architects Vladyslav Horodetskyi and Martin Klug. The plot had a complex configuration in terms of plan, spread deep into the quarter, reaching Olhynska and Instytutska Streets, and was densely built up mainly with industrial buildings. Nearby, in the house on the corner of Instytutska and Olhynska, lived the owner of the furniture company.
In the period between the Civil War and the Second World War, the building housed various institutions and enterprises, in particular, the Kyiv 8th Shoe Factory. In September 1941, the building burned down. The metal structures were destroyed and damaged beyond repair. During the reconstruction, carried out in the late 1940s, only the main facade was preserved, the perimeter of the external walls and the floors of the outbuilding. The rest of the buildings were dismantled into bricks. No matter how difficult the fate of the building was, we can still admire the beauty of its facade, within the walls of which today the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine is located.
Architecture
The building is four-story, brick, in plan close to a square with a side of 32 m. The facade is made in Neo-Renaissance forms with enlarged details. The sheets between the large windows of the first and second floors are decorated with rusticated vanes, the third and fourth - columns of the Corinthian order. In the capitals there are stuccoed heads of the god of trade Mercury; "Wands of Mercury" decorate the locks above the windows of the fourth floor; in the tympanum of the pediment crowning the central part of the facade, there are sculptural images, in particular, of Mercury. To the right of the facade is the entrance to the intermediate lobby of the Khreshchatyk metro station.
The building is a monument of urban planning and architecture.
