GUM

35, Svetlanskaya Street

GUM

When the masonry structure of the present-day State Department Store, GUM, replaced the old wooden building in 1885, it immediately became a Vladivostok landmark. Today il remains one of the finest examples of the city’s commercial architecture. Known officially as the Kunst and Albers Trading House in the past, it was one of the oldest masonry multi-story buildings in the region.

Having met in China, the two German entrepreneurs Gustav Kunst and Gustav Albers decided to go to Vladivostok and establish a trading house together (1864). Supported by the Deutscher Bank and different companies in Germany, Great Britain, and Japan, the Kunst and Albers Trading House soon grew into the largest trading house in Eastern Siberia with 16 affiliates in Russia, five in Manchuria, and one in Japan. Living in Hamburg, Kunst, who served as the head of the company, supplied mostly German commodities. The enormously beneficial impact of the trading house on commerce and everyday life in the region is impossible to exaggerate.

The architectural features of the building are outstanding. Having designed several other noteworthy structures in Vladivostok, Junghändel was commissioned for this building, too; it was his most important commission. Art critics have pointed out the direct architectural influence of the famous Zwinger Ensemble in baroque style that was erected in 1711-21 in Dresden. Albeit primarily in art nouveau, “Kunst & Albers” has many elements of the baroque: the capitals decorated with a portrait of Wotan, the main Germanic god, for example. Other Old Germanic epic characters can be seen in the impressive embellishment on the façade. Holding an anchor and the winged baton of Mercury, the ancient Roman god of commerce, two angels symbolize trade by sea. Mercury’s baton is wound with two snakes that represent cunning and wisdom. The severe gray walls of brick--which was, incidentally, brought all the way from Germany by sea--contrast the lavish baroque decoration. As a commercial structure, the building was intended both to be serviceable and to have aesthetic appeal. Doctor A. Eliseyev who visited Vladivostok in 1889 said, “It was an encyclopedic store” where you could reportedly buy everything: from a needle to a live tiger. As such, Kunst & Albers had no parallel in the western part of Russia.

The Kunst and Albers Trading House was the first to establish an electric power station to meet its needs, sharing the power that it generated with some of its neighbors. Electric elevators took customers upstairs, and one of the Bryner descendants (see 15, Svetlanskaya Street) recollected his surprise, in 1926, at finding no electric devices in the stores of San Francisco, where the family had emigrated.

After the Revolution, Kunst & Albers was nationalized. In 1929, instead of the gilded sign saying the Kunst and Albers Trading House, there appeared a new one with the abbreviation TsKR, meaning “the Central Workers’ Cooperative.” The building has served as the State Department Store of Vladivostok since 1934.

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