The estate on the corner of Grushevsky and Shelkovichnaya streets has been known since the end of the 18th century – the pharmacy of the public guardianship department was located here. The pharmacy began to function fully in 1799. In 1811, the pharmacy was bought by Grigory Bunge from the Kyiv Bunge dynasty of pharmacists. After the Podolsk fire of 1811, the pharmacy was the only one in Kyiv for some time. In 1815, Kyiv Catholics received permission from Emperor Alexander the First to build a Roman Catholic church. One of the promising places for the construction of a temple was recognized as the site opposite Mariinsky Palace, on the site of a pharmacy building. Architect Andrey Melensky (monument to Magdeburg Law, St. Nicholas Church on Askold’s grave, Church of the Nativity, Church of the Exaltation of the Cross) drew up a plan for the pharmacy building, and independent city appraisers valued it at 25,638 rubles. For some time there were negotiations with the owner of the pharmacy, who did not want to move to another place proposed by the Catholic community; the community itself did not like other options, so construction of the church began in 1817 at Vladimirskaya Gorka.
In 1875, the plot was purchased by major, director of the Kyiv Industrial Bank Vsevolod Rubinstein. In the same year, the architect Vladimir Nikolaev (Ascension Church on Baykovo cemetery, Tereshchenko mansion, Liberman’s mansion, National Philharmonic, Monument to Bogdan Khmelnitsky) a plan of the estate was drawn up: there were 2 houses here , 1 of which faced Grushevskogo Street, and the second faced Shelkovichnaya Street. There are 2 versions of the history of the construction of the mansion on the site of a former pharmacy. According to one of them, the mansion was built in the mid-1890s and its customer was Rubinstein. According to another, Rubinstein at the end of the 1890s sold the plot to the merchant of the 1st guild Galperin, who, accordingly, was the customer of the mansion built according to this version in 1899. It is known that Rubinstein lived here back in 1894 – his name and address appear in the 1894 guide to Kyiv. The same address is indicated for him in the directory “All Kyiv” of 1899. Therefore, it can be said with a high degree of probability that the mansion was built specifically by order of Rubinstein, but due to the fact that he lived in it for quite a short time, the house remained known in history as the Halperin mansion.
On October 18-19, 1905, a Jewish pogrom took place in Kyiv. In different parts of the city, crowds in the presence of troops and police robbed and destroyed shops and houses belonging to Jews. The Galperins’ mansion, like some of the Lipa Jews’ mansions, was also robbed. After the coup of 1917 and the establishment of Soviet power in Kyiv, the Galperin mansion was nationalized. In 1921, the artillery department of the 44th division was located here, and later the Kiev district statistical bureau. In 1925, the mansion was transferred to the Lysenko Music and Drama Institute, but the institute never moved into the new premises. After the capital of the Ukrainian SSR was transferred from Kharkov to Kyiv and before the start of the Great Patriotic War, the main police department of the NKVD was located in the mansion.
In 1946-1951, the mansion housed a museum of partisan glory and hosted the exhibition “Ukrainian Partisans in the Fight against the Nazi Invaders.” Later there was an organization called “House of Political Education”. In the 1970s, the mansion was transferred to the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR and connected by an underground tunnel with the building of the Supreme Council, for some time The government reception house was located here. In 1976, a major restoration of the building was carried out, during which a three-story volume and a two-story service wing were completed on the courtyard side, which communicates with the mansion via a passage at the second floor level. Nowadays, the permanent commissions of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine are located in the Halperin mansion. Also, a modern multi-storey building was also built for them on the site of the former estate garden.
Where is Galperin’s estate located?
Mikhail Grushevsky Street, 18/2