lesfressange:
Welcome Home!!! (The Mansion of Baron Von Stieglitz)
“Baron Alexander von Stieglitz (1 September 1814, St. Petersburg - 24
October 1884, St. Petersburg), Russian financier and philanthropist.
Born the only son of Ludwig von Stieglitz - a Jewish German-born banker
who immigrated to Russia and converted to Christianity, and who became
court banker to Alexander I and was made a baron - he took over his
father’s banking business at the latter’s death in 1843. He became
Russia’s leading financier, the first governor of the Bank of Russia
and, in addition to contributing to many other charities and
institutions, was founder of the Central College of Technical Drawing
(now the A. L. Stieglitz St. Petersburg State Industrial Art Academy)
His Renaissance Revival mansion on the English Embankment in St.
Petersburg was constructed on the site of two older buildings - and at
the enormous cost of 3.5 million rubles - from 1859 to 1862, to the
designs of architect Alexander Krakau. After the death of Stieglitz in
1884, the mansion was inherited by his adopted daughter, and then
purchased by the State Treasury in 1887 as the intended residence of
Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich shortly before his marriage to Grand
Duchess Alexandra Georgievna,
daughter of King George I of Greece. (The building is sometimes referred
to as the palace of Grand Duke Paul.) After the death of his
twenty-year-old wife during the birth of their second child in 1891, the
Grand Duke did not return to live in the building. For a long time
afterward it stood
vacant. Eventually it became home to various Soviet institutions, and
was
recently acquired by St. Petersburg State University. The
university’s planned restoration is expected to cost fifty to sixty
million
dollars.”
1.
Concert Hall
2.
Dining-room
3.
Library
4.
Blue Drawing-Room
5. Yellow Drawing-Room
6. Golden Drawing-Room
7. Main Study Room
8.
Study of Baroness Stieglitz
9. Ballroom
10. White Drawing Room
