Gospromural Houses

Brief information

The Gospromural Houses face Yekaterinburg’s main avenue not with ceremonial facades, but with their end walls, and these ends are raised on columns. In this way, the residential complex immediately conveys the idea of the early 1930s: the buildings are arranged in rows, like parts of one large shared system, rather than as separate representative buildings.

The two complexes at 52 and 54 Lenin Avenue were built in 1930-1937 as communal houses. Housing here was combined with social infrastructure: a polyclinic, a kindergarten, a nursery, a laundry, and garden courtyards. That is why not only the external Constructivist style is important, but also the layout itself: blocks with different floor plans were joined into a quarter where everyday life was meant to continue beyond the apartment. Because of their elongated layout, clearly legible from above, these buildings are called “comb houses.”

What to notice first

In complex No. 52, it is worth comparing the strict regularity of the blocks with the way they face the avenue. The absence of a striking main facade, the end walls on columns, and the entrances in the first sections show that the composition was built around residential rows and internal connections, not around street-facing ceremony. Green areas remain between the blocks, and between blocks 2 and 3 there is mention of a now non-functioning fountain: the courtyard here was conceived as an extension of the housing.

Complex No. 54 reads differently. The buildings have cornices, molded sickles and hammers, a hammer with a gear, and balcony railings. Blocks 4 and 5 are not connected to the other residential buildings; the source directly links this with the transition from Constructivism to Neoclassicism. Comparing the two addresses helps reveal how the overall communal concept began to give way to a more decorative and separate appearance.