Museum

6, Peter the Great Street Street

Old Museum Building

It is not surprising that in the general context of Russia’s museum boom in the 1870-80s, there was a demand--as early as 1883--to create a museum also in Vladivostok, but due to financial difficulties the project could not begin until seven years later. In 1890 a military engineer, G. K. Sergiyenko, constructed a classical building for the city’s first museum of regional and local studies, and in 1909 architect F. F. Postnikov designed a two-story addition in the style of art nouveau. Now both of these are not large enough to house the wide variety of exhibits that comprise only a small part of the Consolidated State Museum of Primorye, Named after V. K. Arsenyev (see 20, Svetlanskaya Street).

Almost immediately after the Museum opened on October 16-19, 1890, the famous Russian short-story writer and playwright Anton P. Chekhov (1860-1904) studied in its library. He visited Vladivostok on his way back to Moscow from the Island of Sakhalin, where he had studied the penal colony. In honor of the visit of this outstanding person, whose plays including The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull, and Three Sisters have had an enormous impact on Russian and world literature, a memorial plaque was established on the museum wall in 1985. Many other famous scholars and scientists have pursued their research here, e.g. Vladimir Arsenyev, Vladimir L. Komarov, and A. I. Kurentsov.

/ HOME / BACK / ITINERARY / CONTINUE TOUR /