Trade exchange

Initially, this was a two-story haberdashery of the "Alshwang" company. During the New Economic Policy (NEP), the structure was built up, by the project of architect O. Linetsky, to house the Trade Exchange. At that time, despite the liquidation of the private property, the Soviet authorities were still trying to preserve the commerce within the NEP. Construction was completed in 1925, and five years later the program was abandoned and the building housed the Communist newspaper. In 1934, the former Trade Exchange housed the Conservatory, based on the Music Faculty of the Music and Drama Institute. There were eight faculties (orchestral and folk instruments, piano, singing, choral conducting, musicology, music research, composition) and three forms of education. The Kharkiv Region Organization of Ukrainian Composers was also located here.  In 1963, due to another reorganization, the Conservatory became the ancestor of the newly created Kharkiv State Institute of Culture named after І. Kotlyarevsky.  In the late 1970s, the Mercury sculpture group and the tower of the former Trade Exchange building were dismantled. It returned only three decades before EURO 2012. The building of the Trade Exchange could be called a bright example of the transition architecture - from revolutionary-industrial romanticism to constructivism.