At the turn of the 20th century, increasing industrialisation created a demand for financial services, which in turn led to the development of banking construction. In the capital of the Russian empire, St Petersburg, there were several architects specialising in this field at the time. One of them was a Pole, Marian Peretiatkowicz, author of, among others, the Vavelberg Banking House on Nevsky Prospekt. Inspired by classical forms, the edifice's powerful, austere form was intended to inspire awe and confidence in clients.

Architect Marian Peretiatkowicz

Marian Peretiatkowicz (1872-1916), a prominent architect, urban planning theoretician, educator and social activist, was born in Usichy, Volyn Governorate (now in Ukraine), and was associated with the city on the Neva River almost all his life. He graduated from the Nikolaev Cavalry School, but abandoned his military career in favour of training at the Institute of Civil Engineers and the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts under Professor Leontij Benois (1856-1928).

Winning architectural competitions opened the way for him to realise his own designs. His St Petersburg output is very rich. He specialised in monumental public buildings. Initially he designed in the spirit of Art Nouveau before joining the Neoclassical trend. Among other things, together with his professor, he developed an urban planning concept for the redevelopment of the centre of St Petersburg (not realised), supervised the construction of the Moscow Merchants' Bank (Nevsky Prospekt 46) and completed the Notre-Dame-de-France Church (Our Lady of Lourdes, 7 Kaunas Avenue). In addition to the Wawelberg Banking House (Nevsky Prospekt 7-9), he was the author of: the building of the Russian Commercial and Industrial Bank (Velikova Morska Street 15), the building of the former Ministry of Trade and Industry (nab. Makarova 8), the house of the "Salamandra" Insurance Company (4 Grochowa Street) and the so-called Kierbedzia House (19 Kirillovskaya Street), as well as the unpreserved - St. Casimir's Church and the "Spas on the Waters" Orthodox Church.

Marian Peretiatkowicz's cooperation with the excellent Polish architect Marian Lalewicz (1876-1944), who made a career in St. Petersburg between 1903 and 1918, was very fruitful. Together they designed, among other things, a market hall on Sytny Square (5 Sytninskaya Street), the House of Municipal Institutions (49 Kronwerkski Prospekt) and numerous tenement houses. Both took part in a competition in 1905 for the design of the architectural setting of the viaduct and the Nikolaevsky Bridge in Warsaw (now the Prince Józef Poniatowski Bridge), but their concept was not recognised by the competition committee.

Peretiatkovich also created designs for other cities in the empire: Moscow, Rostov-on-Don, a spa complex in Mineralnye Vody in the Caucasus and others. In addition, he taught for many years at the Institute of Civil Engineers, the Nikolaev Military Engineering Academy, the Technological Institute and the Higher Female Polytechnic Courses. He was also socially active in the Polish Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts, the Russian Society of Artists Architects and the Polish commission for the reconstruction of the buildings belonging to St Catherine of Alexandria Church (Nevsky Prospekt 32-34).

Marian Peretiatkovich is considered one of the leading representatives of Russian Neoclassicism in architecture. He died in Kyiv, not living to his forty-fourth birthday.

Investor Mikhail Vavelberg

At the beginning of the 20th century, at the junction of Nevsky Prospect and Mala Morska Street, two adjacent properties were purchased for a new development by the merchant Mikhail Wawelberg (1880-1947). He was the son of Hipolit Wawelberg (1843-1901), a well-known Warsaw financier and philanthropist, owner of the Banking House of his name in Warsaw and St Petersburg, where he was actively involved in Polish communities and was one of the founders of the St Petersburg weekly "Kraj".

Mikhail Wawelberg, a graduate of the Imperial Gymnasium in Tsarskoye Selo and the Faculty of Law at St Petersburg University, took over the banking empire after his father's death, which from 1912 was called the St Petersburg Commercial Bank (it was one of the most powerful banks in Russia at the time). In that year, it gained a new headquarters on the main artery of the Northern Capital, Nevsky Prospekt.

Wawelberg Banking House - architecture

The competition for the bank's design was won by Marian Peretiatkovich. The building was constructed in 1911-1912 and became his most famous work. It entered the history of St Petersburg architecture under the name of the Wawelberg House after the owner. The massive edifice was referred to as the Doge's Palace or the Money Palazzo. Indeed, its facades are reminiscent of the famous seat of the Venetian sovereigns, as well as the Medici palace (Palazzo Medici-Riccardi) in Florence and the Bank of the Holy Spirit in Rome.

The Wawelberg House is a Neo-Renaissance building that bears clear features of the Italian Renaissance from the 15th to the 16th century. Due to the irregular shape of the three-front plot, the building was constructed on a trapezoidal plan with a triangular inner courtyard. A foundation in the form of a reinforced concrete slab was used under the deep cellars. The facades are faced with dark grey granite rustication, as are the columns, pilasters and window frames. The building is complemented by sculptural decoration by Leopold August Dietrich (1877-1954) and Vasily Kozlov (1887-1940). Crowned by an attic, the three distinct facades are divided into two parts - the lower two-storey with rows of glazed arcades and columns, and the upper three-storey. The windows get smaller with each storey, with more than a dozen window types used, including biforia (windows divided by an arcade into two parts). The facades are decorated with a whole collection of mascarons - ram and lion heads, horns of plenty, garlands. In addition, the gables bear the initials of the founder of the banking empire 'HW' and the year of completion MCMXII (still preserved today).

The main room on the ground floor - the operating room with two rows of Ionic columns and a coffered ceiling - was in the Neo-Renaissance style. Similarly, the entrance hall had a circular plan. The clear division of the façades resulted from the function of the building. The lower floor was primarily intended for customers. In addition to the bank, the building housed the "Gerlach" surveying and drafting instrument factory. The upper floors were occupied by offices and the flat of the owner and his family.

In the interwar period, the Wawelberg House housed various shops and businesses. During the blockade of Leningrad, it housed the laboratory of the Vitamin Institute, which in autumn 1941 synthesised vitamin B1 to produce a preparation used to treat the city's wounded defenders. In Soviet times, the legendary currency shop "Beryozka" was located here, and for decades the main ticket offices of Aeroflot. To this day, the building is an ornament of Nevsky Prospekt. After extensive renovation by an Irkutsk investor in 2011-2021, it houses the luxury 'Vavelberg Hotel'.

The Year of Marian Peretiatkovich

At the beginning of 2022, the Polish Institute in Saint Petersburg initiated the Year of Marian Peretiatkowicz to mark the 150th anniversary of the architect's birth. A jubilee calendar was published and an exhibition entitled. "Architect M.M. Peretiatkowicz: choosing his own path. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth", which was shown in several places in St Petersburg and Moscow. It was accompanied by lectures, talks, curatorial tours, publications and social media resonance. The main event of the celebration was the conference 'Architect M.M. Peretiatkowicz and his time of change (1872-1916)', held on 28 October 2022 at the Wawelberg House. In addition, the monograph "Marian Peretiatkowicz: from Art Nouveau to Neoclassicism" by Prof. Boris Kirikov was published by the St Petersburg Publishing House "Kolo".