History

In 1902 the Russian branch of the Singer Manufacturing Company paid approximately one million rubles for the plot at Nevsky Prospekt 28, one of the most commercially coveted addresses in the Russian Empire. The American sewing-machine giant — then dominant across European markets — wanted a building that would function simultaneously as its regional headquarters and as a monumental advertisement for the brand. It engaged Pavel Yulievich Suzor, the leading Petersburg architect of the day and a master of large commercial commissions, to design it.

Suzor faced an immediate constraint. Saint Petersburg’s building code, in place to protect the visual dominance of the Winter Palace, prohibited any structure from exceeding 23.5 metres at the cornice line. Rather than surrendering to that limit, Suzor turned it into a formal gesture: he kept the six-storey facade within regulation height, then placed a glass-and-iron tower above the cornice that lifted the building’s silhouette without technically violating the rule. The tower is capped by a glass globe about 2.8 metres in diameter — a beacon visible from far along Nevsky Prospekt and, by night, illuminated from within. The sculpture atop the globe is attributed to Amandus Adamson, the Estonian sculptor who contributed decorative work to several landmarks of the Russian capital.

The building was completed in 1904. Structurally it was ahead of its time for Saint Petersburg: Suzor employed a metal frame rather than load-bearing masonry walls, allowing the broad shop windows and the open, light-filled interior that Singer’s retail strategy required. The ornate facade — curves, atlantes, gilded detailing, and art glass — placed the building firmly within the vocabulary of Style Moderne, the Russian inflection of the wider Art Nouveau movement then sweeping European commercial architecture from Brussels to Riga.

Singer used the building as its Russian commercial base until the First World War, during which the American Embassy briefly occupied the upper floors. After the October Revolution of 1917, the Soviet state nationalised the property. In 1919 it was assigned to Petrogosizdat, the state publishing house, and the ground-floor retail space was converted into a bookshop. The landmark name Dom Knigi — House of Books — became established by 1938. The bookshop has operated continuously ever since, surviving the Siege of Leningrad and the Soviet decades to remain one of the largest and most visited book retailers in Russia.