Church of Our Lady of Kazan, Valaam Monastery Town House (Saint Petersburg)
1/29 Narvsky Avenue, Saint Petersburg (tel.: +7 812 252-77-00), Metro station: "Narvskaya".
The acres at the intersection of Narvsky and Staro-Petergofsky Avenues, where the Valaam Town House is situated today, were owned by the Old Ladoga Dormition Convent in the early 20th century. The age of the Monastery and the Town House is reckoned from July 1905. In 1910, the main altar was consecrated in honour of the Our Lady of Kazan Icon.
The Town House was designed by Vasily Kosyakov. It is a complex of buildings with a church with five domes (1905–1910) constructed in Moscow style and featuring a belfry and a dwelling house. A bell tower with a chapel on the ground floor was built in the same years.
This small but amazingly picturesque complex with an expressive silhouette made of light trim and circle bricks, Radom sandstone and cement looks very surprisingly and joyfully in the working class area of the city.
After the 1917 Russian Revolution, in 1919, the Monastery Town House was destroyed. The Church of Our Lady of Kazan was a parish till October 1935. A clothing factory and later a furniture factory were situated in the closed church.
Since 1989, the church buildings were occupied by the Transfiguration Valaam Monestery. After reconstruction, on 2 April 1994, the Church's main altar was consecrated by the Patriarch of All Russia.
According to the legend, working people were among the first who were buried on the banks of the Chornaya River (eng.: Black River), the Smolenka River now. Construction of a huge city demanded many hands. Those, who were called upon to St. Petersburg by the Monarch, settled in Vasilievsky Island. However, there were no houses for them to live in. ...
Emperor Alexander III and his family's miraculous escape from the Borki train accident, which happened near Kharkov on 17 October 1888 (Old Style), gave rise to construction of a great number of churches dedicated to this event. Custom officers, exchange contractors, and port officials, who lived in Gutuevsky Island and in the mouth of the Neva Riv...
In the first half of the 19th century, the monumental dome of a church dominated the architecture of St. Petersburg's riverside; that church was the Church of St. Catherine the Great Martyr in S'ezdovskaya (then Kadetskaya) Liniya Street, on Vasilievsky Island.
On religious holidays, the Church's high bell tower used to sent the loud chime of it...