VLADIVOSTOK: A HISTORIC WALKING TOUR 

PRESIDIUIM OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

    Of the many buildings erected in the early years of the 20th century few are as impressive as the Bolshoy Muzykalny Teatr (Grand Musical Theater).  The central element on the side facing Svetlanskaya Street is an accented oriental pediment.  This single Eastern detail is mixed with forms of classical orderliness as well as the more modern design of art nouveau.  Art critics refer to this style as postmodern.  Breathing eclecticism, the building produces a solid, quite massive impression.

     Designed by architect N. D. Fedoseyev and sponsored by local entrepreneurs including the Burlakov brothers, Radov, and Zimmerman, this building was constructed in 1915.  The theater season that year opened with one of the operettas of Franz Lehar (1870-1948), the Hungarian composer.    In addition, the building was home to the cabarets Letuchaya Mysh (The Bat) and Bi-Ba-Bo, which disappeared after the Revolution; and Futurist poets Nikolai Aseyev and David Burlyuk rented rooms here (see also13, Svetlanskaya Street).  The international police, Interpol, worked here during the Civil War and the Intervention (1918-22).  In 1923 the building was remodeled for the movie theater Komsomolets (The Young Communist-League Member) and has housed it ever since.

     In 1932, the top floors became the offices of a branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR headed by academician V. L. Komarov.  Since 1971 the building has housed this organization’s local Presidium, that is, the administrative committee of the Far Eastern Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences (formerly the Far Eastern Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR).

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