Blockade Substation

The building was built according to a pilot project developed in the 1920s. Some researchers attribute authorship to the Leningrad architect R.N. Kokhanova. However, this fact is highly doubtful, since during this period Raisa Kokhanova was a student and graduated from LIIKS (modern name St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering) in 1930.

A striking example of the Suprematist architecture of Leningrad. The building is a rare example in the central districts of St. Petersburg of an industrial structure, solved in constructivism. Similar projects were created at that time under the influence of Lenin’s plans for electrifying the country and the task of providing workers with a new mode of transport, which was to be developed. The building is a historical monument to the Soviet GOELRO plan and a work of architecture, made in the spirit of the ideas and stylistics of constructivism.

The building is correctly inscribed in the line of the embankment from the urban development point of view. This chamber office building is slightly deepened beyond the red line. The building does not dominate, does not stand out in color, does not exceed the height of the circus – a step-by-step staircase goes down from the circus. The functional purpose of the building gives the asymmetry of the plan. The architectural composition directly correlates with the function and is strictly thought out, it is a combination of simple geometric elements in a certain regularity: the game of increase-decrease from vertically oriented volumes goes into horizontal “attenuation”. The window breakdown is rhythmic and also has a certain regularity: the volumes that dominate the composition are emphasized by a vertical glazing strip, and the volume elongated along the embankment has a horizontal ribbon with alternating windows and painted facade planes.

The building belongs to the State Unitary Enterprise St. Petersburg “Gorelektrotrans” and until 2014 provided voltage to the trolleybus and tram network of the Central District of the city, generating a voltage of 550V. There was a district dispatch center on which control of dozens of Gorelektrotrans substations was tied. In the spring of 2014, the substation was disconnected, on March 5 it was accepted as decommissioned.