Name
Long-distance telephone exchange
Years of construction
1936
Architect
Address
14, Kontors'ka str.
Long-distance telephone exchange on Kontors’ka Street
Researchers are familiar with Kharkiv's architecture of that time when the city was the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. But the facilities that were built after the capital was relocated to Kyiv, often are unnoticed. The long-distance telephone exchange on Kontorska Street is one of such little-known objects. In 1930, the board of the People's Commissariat for Post and Telegraphs decided to build two automatic telephone exchanges: uphill and central. The first one is a well-known building, as it is often even considered to be a part of the Freedom Square ensemble; another one is poorly studied. It had been built at Kontorska Street (at that time Chervonozhovtneva Street). This street was quite densely built up before 1917, so the telephone exchange is the only interesting Soviet-era building there. It was erected in 1936 by architect L. Lyubarsky. The facade of this building is quite far from avant-garde architecture - it is a symmetrical structure, richly decorated with classical decor, divided in the height into 3 sections according to classical patterns. However, a large number of blank walls, square columns, - reminiscent of the classical colonnade, it is still quite close to the avant-garde "industrial" architecture, - do not allow to refer this building to Stalinist simplified Art Deco. It had been built in the times of "searches of Soviet architecture in the period of classics". The architect of this graduated from the Kharkiv Institute of Civil Engineering (KhICE), which was founded in 1930. In 1932, his diploma project of the Palace of the Soviets in Moscow (in collaboration with G. Lebedinsky, L. Lutsenko, A. Moroz, and Sergievsky under the guidance of D. Torubarov, I. Malozemov, and E.Lymar) got an honorable mention at the international contest. In the late 1930s, L. Lyubarsky was teaching a group of future public architects at KhICE. The residential building at Moskovsky Prospect, 96 in Kharkiv, designed by Lyubarsky, is on the list of architectural monuments of the city. The file of the Kharkiv Organization of the Union of Architects states that Lyubarsky was born in 1909 and retired in 1941. For a long time, this record was considered the date of death of the young architect. But in military archives, we find a note about the awarding of a military engineer of the 3rd rank Lev Grygorovych Lyubarsky, who entered the service in July 1941, in 1942. Given that KhICE' students of the 1930s were trained as commanders of military engineering units, we can assume that this military engineer and an architect who designed the telephone exchange on Kontorska, - the same person. In September 1942, the military engineer Lyubarsky was awarded the Medal of Merit. It is not known what happened to him later. But after World War II he did not return to Kharkiv. But we still have an interesting example of the architecture of the 1930s, created by a young architect who, inspired by the architectural searches of the 1920s, was also searching for his way in architecture. Olga Shvydenko
Long-distance telephone exchange / telephone exchange / Ukrtelecom
Lyubarsky L. / 1936 / 14, Kontors'ka str.
Office and administrative building / Influence of European Modern architecture
Monuments of architecture / Unaltered condition
Romanticism of Industrial Revolution
Influence of classical art
Constructivism
Art Deco
Influence of Ukrainian folk architecture
Influence of European Modern architecture
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