The house of the former society of political prisoners

In 1932, the Kharkiv Society of Political Prisoners engaged architect Noah Pidgorny to design a building, which was to serve two functions:  residential and administrative. In those years, the architects of Kharkiv actively used the constructivist approach. Laconism, functionality, and, at the same time, the grandeur of Derzhprom or other masterpieces of this new style made constructivism fashionable and popular. The building at the corner of Pushkinska and Hirshman streets, designed by Pidgorny, was supposed to follow the same constructivist path. It had to combine residential apartments with such public spaces as a library, museum, and lecture hall.  When the project was ready and construction began, the government published a resolution to fight formalism in art, and constructivism was declared a bourgeois style. Pidgorny was forced to change the project to follow new rules. He added arches, balustrades, and semi-columns, quoting the classical architecture with its porticos, columns, and stucco.  But we can still see the constructivist approach in the form of vertical ribbon windows and dynamic shapes with classic elements layered above. The people call this house "Noah's Ark", precisely because the architect's name was Noah. According to historians, the building housed a lot of different organizations: a club for former political prisoners, a museum, an Institute of Marxism-Leninism, and an Institute of Physical Culture. And, finally, twenty years ago, the Ukrainian branch of the International Slavic University moved to "Noah's Ark". In its residential part Valentina Chistyakova, an actress and the wife of the founder of the Berezil Theater Les Kurbas, used to live.