Governorate architect Leonid Brodniсki was a representative of the Polish dynasty of architects founded by his father Albert. As a talented architect, he designed a number of buildings for various purposes in Yekaterinoslav and the Yekaterinoslav gubernia.

His Orthodox churches in diocesan style, public buildings with elements of eclecticism and neoclassicism, small private houses in the characteristic "Katerinoslav" style decorate to this day, the landscape of the former Ekaterinoslav Governorate and Ekaterinoslav itself. However, it is not known whether they will survive the new rocket fire of modern Russian barbarians during the ongoing war in Ukraine.

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Leonid was born in 1864 in the provincial town of Yekaterinoslav (now Dnepr, Ukraine) as the first child in the family of Albert Brodnitsky, an architect from the minor Polish nobility of Volhynia, and his wife Irina, daughter of Vasyl Savitsky, a representative of a prominent Ukrainian Cossack-Savitsky family of left-bank Ukraine. His father was sent to the city after graduating from the Building School in St Petersburg to work as an assistant architect at the Yekaterinoslav Gubernial Road and Building Commission. Leonid had a brother, Sergei, who was younger than him, and a sister, Nina, who became well-known citizens of the city and social activists.

Leonid Brodnicki followed in his father's footsteps and also became an architect. He received his secondary education at the Yekaterinoslav Real School, from which he graduated in 1881. He then entered the Institute of Civil Engineers (the former School of Construction, of which his father was a graduate) in St Petersburg, from which he graduated with a diploma in civil engineering. In 1886, after graduating from the Institute, he was assigned to the Ministry of the Interior of the Russian Empire and assigned as a technician at the Gubernial Land Office of the Yekaterinoslav Governorate. He then worked for some time as a junior engineer. In 1900, in the yearbook "Commemorative book and address calendar of the Yekaterinoslav gubernia for 1900", he is listed as "acting gubernial architect" with the rank of official of the 8th class - collegiate assessor. It can be said with certainty that Leonid - like his father - passed through all the levels of an architect's career envisaged in a provincial city of the Russian Empire. Ten years into his career in Yekaterinoslav, Leonid Brodnitsky also worked as diocesan architect of the Yekaterinoslav Orthodox Diocese. The pinnacle of his professional achievement was the position of gubernial architect, which - like his father - he held for about ten years at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Leonid Brodnicki's period of professional work coincided with the rapid development of the city. In the last quarter of the 19th century, industry, especially metallurgy, began to develop rapidly in the city. The reason for this was the discovery of iron ore deposits by the German entrepreneur and social activist Alexander Pol (1832-1890). In 1874, thanks to his efforts, the Kateryniansky railway was built and in 1884 the first railway bridge across the Dnieper River. The end of the century was a time of "iron fever" for Yekaterinoslav, and the city and the governorate were dubbed the "new America". Belgian, German and French industrialists built the Alexandrovsk South Russian Metallurgical Plant, a pipe factory, railway car repair workshops and a switch factory. Pole Tadeusz Gantke established a metallurgical plant.

Economic development contributed to the establishment of cultural and educational institutions, and the city's development continued apace. At the beginning of the 20th century. Yekaterinoslav was one of the seven largest cities in the Russian Empire, with a budget of between 1 and 8 million roubles, and the second in the empire to launch an electric tramway (1897). With the launch of the electric station in 1903, the entire city was illuminated.

During the period of his professional activity, Leonid Brodnitsky designed many buildings of an administrative nature, private tenements, and Orthodox churches in Yekaterinoslav and in the territory of the governorate, which still remain monuments of sacred architecture, but also places of prayer and church services.

Working as a diocesan architect, he designed several religious buildings in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate. In 1906-1907, together with civil engineer Georgiy Turovets, he drew up designs for Orthodox churches and church buildings, but information about them has not been found by this time. The Yekaterinoslavskiye eparchialnyye Vedomosti magazine of the time regularly carried advertisements with the following content: "Church construction. Ekaterinoslav. Diocesan architect Leonid Albertovich Brodnitsky and engineer-architect Georgiy Turovets are accepting orders for the development of designs (plans) for churches, chapels, iconostasis, fences, etc.'.

Leonid Brodniсki is best known for his design of St Nicholas' Orthodox Church, built in 1894 in the village of Kamensky (now the town of Kamensky in the Dnepropetrovsk region). The initiator of the construction was the director of the South-Russian Dneprovsky Metallurgical Society in Kamensky, a Pole, Ignacy Yasyukovich, known as the 'Ukrainian Henry Ford'. Here, it is worth mentioning the fact that thanks to him, St Nicholas Church was also built in the same village in 1897. Its designer was the architect Zdzislav Kharmansky, a representative of another dynasty of architects in Yekaterinoslav. These two churches were built with the money of the employees of the mentioned enterprise. The church was built in the "Neo-Russian style", common at the time, referring to motifs of Russian architecture. All the rich decoration of the building's façade was made of brick, without the use of stucco. The church was built of so-called yellow Cherkassy brick of a beautiful shade.

Leonid Brodnitsky's career coincided with the heyday in the Russian Empire of the 'Neo-Russian style' in the architecture of civil and sacred buildings. The Neo-Russian style drew inspiration from the achievements of ancient Rus', which is why the buildings created in it resemble wooden terraces. A distinctive decoration (décor) was used: coquetry around the openings, columns with a thickening in the middle, resembling balustrades. The provincial version of the Neo-Russian style, which was used in the design of churches in the second half of the 19th century, was usually referred to as the 'diocesan style' - St. Nicholas Church in Kamienski was built according to its principles. At the time, it was the architectural dominant of Kamienski and was the most interesting building in the village. Nowadays, the church is known as St. Nicholas Cathedral, the cathedral Orthodox Cathedral in Kamenski.

Leonid Brodnitsky's next projects were two Orthodox churches - in Yekaterinoslav and Pavlohrad, a district town in the same governorate. On 22 December 1896, a new Orthodox church dedicated to the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary was consecrated in Ekaterinoslav. It was built on the site of the Alexander Nevsky chapel (one of the chapels of the church was named after the prince). However, local researchers have some reservations about the information that this temple is the work of Leonid Brodnitsky.

On 15 October 1898, the Cathedral of the Image of Christ the Saviour Not Made by Human Hand, mostly known as the 'Golubitsky Church', was consecrated in Pavlohrad. The temple was built on the initiative and with the money of Pavlohrad's resident and mayor, patron Yakov Golubitsky. Built of stone, the church had three altars: the main one (the Image of Christ the Saviour Not Made by Human Hand) and the side ones (the southern one of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Mother of God and the northern one of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker). This temple has been preserved to this day and is the historic Orthodox Cathedral of Pavlohrad, the concathedral of the Dnepropetrovsk eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (Museum Avenue 1).
At this point, it is worth mentioning that the appearance of the Pavlohrad temple is for the most part a copy of the church dedicated to the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Yekaterinoslav. The designs of both temples came from the hand of the same master. At the same time, some publications report that in 1889 the management of the Bryansk Factory, the city's largest metallurgical enterprise, commissioned Nikolai Sultanov, the court architect of Emperor Alexander III, to design the churches - it is possible that the design of both churches was based on Nikolai Sultanov's design of the Bryansk Factory's church, and that Leonid Brodnitsky supervised the execution and framing on site. This practice was generally typical of provincial architecture. Unfortunately, the main sources confirming authorship - the plans as well as the minutes and other documents - have not been found by this time.

The next step in Leonid Brodnicki's career was as a provincial architect. During this period he did a lot of engineering and technical work in Yekaterinoslav and the gubernia. In the city, he designed and supervised the construction of several buildings with civil and cultural purposes. In his work, the architect turned to the neo-classical trend popular in Europe and the USA, which at the time was considered a reaction to the broken massing or exuberant decoration of Art Nouveau buildings.

In 1896, together with Stanislav Charmansky, he designed and built the Auditorium of the People's Reading Committee (now 42 Kniazia Volodymyr Vlyokhogo Street) in neoclassical style. This unique edifice - an architectural monument - is considered the oldest surviving building of a theatrical character in the city. The People's Reading Auditorium became the first cultural and educational centre for the poor citizens of Yekaterinoslav. Lectures for citizens, theatrical performances were held here, the first film screening in Ekaterinoslav took place here. The Auditorium building, built at the end of the 19th century, had a very modest appearance that did not correspond to its purpose. The two-storey brick edifice was made in a provincial version of eclecticism, leaning towards neoclassicism. It was plastered and built on a rectangular plan. The design used a very modest decoration, the facades being decorated with porticoes with semi-columns. On the sides of the main façade are flat decorative porticoes with double fluted semi-columns on high plinths. Similar porticoes are located in the central parts of the building's side elevations. Despite its modest appearance, the Auditorium was considered one of the architectural and public attractions of Yekaterinoslav in the early 20th century.

A description of the edifice can be found in the information yearbook "The Whole Yekaterinoslav" of 1913: "The Auditorium of the Scientific Society. The auditorium is located on St. Petersburg Street, not far from Prospekt [Ekaterinsky - L.Zh], opposite Yakovlevsky Square. The edifice has a very modest external appearance of a one-and-a-half-storey building. Inside, it consists of three large halls and several rooms. The largest hall, the so-called Great Auditorium, can serve as both a theatre and a lecture theatre. Part of the hall is used as a stage. Below this is the so-called small auditorium. Both the large and small auditoriums are adjoined by a small foyer with toilets and changing rooms." At the time of its construction, in the late 19th century, the Public Reading Auditorium was the most recognisable building in the whole village. Today, this beautiful building is overwhelmed by the surrounding skyscrapers and it is difficult to imagine that it once stood out in the area. Today, the building is listed as a monument of urban planning and architecture in the city of Dnipro.

In the early 20th century. Leonid Brodnitsky was involved in the creation of one of Yekaterinoslav's architectural gems. In 1900-1902, he finalised the design (whose author is still unknown) and supervised the construction of the Gubernial Land Office building (Krutogorne 21 exit). This two-storey building with rich decoration, known as the Land House, combines elements of neoclassicism and eclecticism.

The ornamentation of the facade of the Earth House made use of decorative zoomorphic elements - chimeras, which were less frequently used in Yekaterinoslav architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, compared to the very widespread 'lion motif'. Above the windows of the second floor, in the 'keystones', are the heads of the ancient Greek god Zeus, the oldest of the gods of Olympus and a symbol of wisdom. Perhaps such an allegory resulted from the functional purpose of the building, a kind of local 'earthly Olympus', where the fate of the Yekaterinoslav region was decided.

In 1904. Leonid Brodnitsky worked in a commission on the construction of the new corps of the gubernial post and telegraph office in Yekaterinoslav. The construction was supervised by another Pole, the architect Stanislav Charmanski, with whom Brodnitsky had carried out one of his earlier projects.

In 1906-1907, Leonid Brodnicki made his last design for a public building. This was the educational corps of the diocesan Mykolaiv Orthodox Church-teaching school (1 F. Makarevsky Street).

Leonid Brodnicki was also involved in carrying out private commissions. However, according to local researchers, little is known about this side of his architectural activity. One building that is undoubtedly of his authorship and is widely known is the villa of the prominent Ukrainian historian, ethnographer, folklorist, academician Dmytr Yavornitsky (1855-1940). The scholar needed his own house after returning from Moscow to Yekaterinoslav in 1902 to take up the post of director of the Alexander Pol Regional Museum. He commissioned a design from his friend Sergei Brodnitsky's brother Leonid, who designed it in 1905.

The single-storey house with a distinctive two-storey turret had a façade facing Dvorian Square (now 5 Shevchenko Square). The building lacked sophisticated architectural details and was made with few decorative elements of the Romanesque style. The historian lived in this small red brick house with a belvedere and a carved wooden veranda for the last 35 years of his life. A museum dedicated to him is located there. The original design of Yavornitsky's house by Leonid Brodnitsky, a copy of which was kindly given to the author by the museum's director, Mrs Jana Tymoshenko, has also been preserved in his collection.

Today, the historian's villa is almost the only building that has survived from the old Yekaterinoslav times in its characteristic 'Katerinoslav' style and typical colour scheme - the colour of red brick. In 2009, the building was included in the List of Cultural Heritage Monuments of National Significance in the city of Dnipro of the State Register of Immovable Monuments of Ukraine.

It should be added here that the villa of Leonid Brodnitsky himself, which he built in the 1890s at 3b Troitskaya Street, has been preserved to this day. Today, this object has the category of "newly discovered cultural heritage site" and is protected.

Leonid Brodnitsky took an active part in the social life of Yekaterinoslav: he participated in the work of the Yekaterinoslav People's Reading Committee, prepared public lectures, carried out the project free of charge and provided technical supervision for the construction of the Auditorium building. In 1896 he became one of the founders of the Ekaterinoslav group of members of the Society of Civil Engineers.

At the beginning of 1907. Leonid Brodnitsky, 43, died suddenly, leaving three daughters from two marriages. Unfortunately, the further fate of the Brodnicki family is not known. What remains of the architect are the elegant townhouses designed by him in a specific 'Yekaterinoslav style', Orthodox churches and public buildings, where the social life of the city continues to this day. It is safe to say that the Polish architect Leonid Brodnitsky, with his works, added uniqueness not only to the urban space of Ekaterinoslav at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, but also to Dnipro in the 21st century, where his single-storey fabulous villas emerge among the high-rise buildings, as if from other eras.