The building of the Little Russian Post Office

The building of the Little Russian Post Office is the first structure of the new central square of Poltava, built in 1809.

Originally, the building was planned to be erected in Chernigov. This decision was made after the division of the Little Russian province created in 1796 to two provinces - Poltava and Chernigov. But thanks to the efforts of the then Governor-General A. Kurakin, permission was received to build the Little Russian Post Office in Poltava.

The project was executed by the famous Russian architect Yegor Timofeevich Sokolov, an academician of the Petersburg Academy of Arts.

The Little Russian Post Office at the beginning of the 19th century was a complex enterprise - the Communications House, divided into several expeditions (departments): a counting expedition, a foreign expedition, a secret expedition, a post office chancellery, an expedition for accepting money and parcels, checking the contents of incoming foreign newspapers and parcels, and others. The enterprise was engaged in reception and sending of letters, parcels, money packages. The very same building was made in a classical style, with a colonnade, a portico and side wings.

Soon the House of Communication was transferred to Chernigov, and in the building of the former Little Russian Post Office housed a county school and a boarding school for children, impoverished nobles. The supervisor of the boarding house was the great writer I. P. Kotlyarevsky. The boardinghouse lasted until 1841.

After, on June 15, 1860, Poltava Mariinsky Women's College was opened in this building, which subsequently became the Mariinskaya Gymnasium. In the late 70-ies of the XIX century. the building was rebuilt in the Neo-Renaissance style: a portico and one-story side wings were dismantled, instead, two-story side wings were completed, and the design of the central facade was changed.

After the final establishment of Soviet power in Poltava in 1919, the Mariinskaya Gymnasium was closed. Then, in the Soviet era, here is the 2nd women's school, in which from 1922 to 1941 the famous Ukrainian artist M.A. Dontsov. The school existed here before the war began.

Unfortunately, during the war in 1943 the building burned down. In 1960 - 1963, with the reconstruction of the entire area, the building of the former Little Russian Post Office was restored in its original form. In the reconstruction took part such famous architects as L.S. Weingort, D.S. Litvintsev, LI Sherstyuk, engineer P.S. Frost. In the building, in Soviet times, there were a party hill and a Komsomol hill.

Now the house is the Poltava Academy of Arts.

You can reach any public transport through the city center, stop Center.