Aleksandr Artem’evich Poleshchuk (1863-1944)

From Parish School Teacher to Imperial and Estonian Architect

Aleksandr Artem’evich Poleshchuk was the most famous Russo-Estonian architect in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This teacher, master designer, and architectural theorist was born on 26 June 1863 in Kuresaare (Arensburg) on the island of Saarema. His father was a customs guard and the grandson of a Belarusian from Poles’ia who had served in the army in Viatka province. His mother, Ustin’ia Ivanovna (nee Vali), was an Estonian born in Haapsalu. Aleksandr grew up in a house on 24 Roomasaare, to which a memorial plaque was attached on 14 May 2009.

The future architect began his studies at the Arensburg city school and a model school under the supervision of the Ministry of Education. Between 1879 and 1882, he studied at the second Tartu Teacher’s Seminary, upon graduation receiving the right to become a teacher: this he used to work at the Orthodox parish school in the large Russian-speaking village of Vasknarva (eastern Estonia), receiving a salary of 250 roubles a year. From August 1886, he took the position of psalmist and parish teacher at the Petropavlovskaia church of Vändra. In 1888, he prepared a textbook for Russian-language studies in Estonian schools.

However, the young man evidently sought a career change: already in 1886, he had taken higher-level courses at the Narva gymnasium (with the exception of ancient languages, although he spoke both Estonian and German well). On 5 May 1888, he applied to enter the architectural department of the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg. Beginning his studies in August, he almost immediately sought a stipend from the Baltic Orthodox Brotherhood (the largest such association in the Baltic provinces), but he was refused since he ‘did not manifest any especial artistic talent.’ He received another rejection in October 1890, even though he claimed that he ‘did not have any means to live in St Petersburg.’ At this time, he was characterised as ‘a capable and successful’, if impecunious, student. During his studies, Aleksandr won two silver medals for theatre designs and received mostly excellent marks in class. This impressive academic performance gained him an imperial stipend of 350 roubles a month as of late 1893. On 30 April 1895, the young Poleshchuk married Anna Konstantinovna Viatkina, the daughter of a St Petersburg tradesman.

Poleshchuk began his creative activities during his student years, working as an assistant for Professor Mikhail Preobrazhenskii, one of the greatest masters of the Russian style in architecture. On 17 April 1892, Preobrazhenskii presented blueprints for the reconstruction of the Lutheran church on Pühtitsa hill in eastern Estonia into an Orthodox convent church, a plan that was confirmed a few months later. Poleshchuk directly managed this work, receiving 200 roubles for his efforts. On 17 March, Preobrazhenskii wrote to the Imperial Academy of Arts that Poleshchuk had ‘fulfilled all instructions wonderfully, with full knowledge of the business and being fully capable of managing the workers.’

Poleshchuk joined Preobrazhenskii on yet another important Orthodox project in Estland province, the Aleksandro-Nevskii cathedral in Tallinn. He was to remain associated with this project even after its completion: in 1910, for the two-hundredth anniversary of Estland province’s annexation by the Russian Empire, he both designed and budgeted repairs to the cathedral. Three days after the end of his renovations, Emperor Nicholas II visited the cathedral. In his hometown of Kuresaare, the architect also designed a residential home. Elsewhere in the Baltic provinces, he participated in the construction of the building for the Tallinn Russian Social Assembly (today the Tallinn Central Library), following plans laid out by his mentor Preobrazhenkii.

Poleshchuk graduated from the Imperial Academy of Arts on 30 October 1896. For his ‘excellent knowledge of the arts and sciences,’ he was awarded the rank of artist-architect with the right to undertake building projects. Initially undergoing further training as a teacher of architecture, he was appointed on 1 January 1897 as an assistant engineer for the Holy Synod, the Russian Orthodox Church’s governing institution: he also began lecturing at the Higher School of Art. Around this time, he published a book on architectural theory, an activity he continued over the next few years, printing numerous primers for students.  

Poleshchuk’s first major solo project highlighted his Estonian connections. In 1898, the St Petersburg Orthodox Estonian Brotherhood of St Isidor of Tartu was founded: at the brotherhood’s first annual assembly on 17 January 1899, the architect was elected as a member of the organisation’s guiding council. Poleshchuk’s main duty was to construct an ensemble of buildings for the new religious fraternity. At the initiative of the Estonian priest Pavel Kulbusch (the future Bishop Platon), work on a church for Orthodox Estonians in the empire’s capital began in 1901. On 14 October, the brotherhood accepted Poleshchuk’s blueprints for both a church and a building that would house educational and charitable institutions. The dominant object in the ensemble was a five-domed, two-storey church, joined by a house that would contain the clergy’s apartments, a parish school, a ‘working room,’ a library, and a book shop. Poleshchuk also planned a chapel with a room for the churchwarden. On 25 November 1902, the Synod’s architectural commission accepted the blueprints: the first donation to the new building was made by Father Ioann Sergeev, later more widely known as St Ioann of Kronshtadt.

Although work on the school and a temporary church were finished by 1903-04, funds for the building work were exhausted by 1906: the commission established to solve this problem managed to gain donations of 3,000 roubles from Nicholas II and a further 5,000 roubles from the Synod’s education committee. During the work, a conflict emerged between the brotherhood’s building commission and Poleshchuk, who continued to visit the site but formally refused to supervise the work. At the root of this was the fact that Poleshchuk had promised to finish work on the cupola before the winter: however, the commission ‘did not dispatch to him all of the money he required for the work in advance (giving 500 roubles not 1,000): this delayed the work, so by the winter the cupola was not completed.’ Ultimately, Father Pavel Kulbusch issued an order that restored Poleshchuk to his position as ‘chief architect.’ In 1914, he became a life-long member of the Brotherhood.

Altogether, the entire project cost the massive sum of 240,000 roubles. At the end of the building process, the debts accrued by the Brotherhood of St Isidor stood at more than 20% the cost of the project. Over the next six years, several suppliers and contractors took the brotherhood to court in an effort to reclaim the money: by 1914, the debts still had not been cleared up.

Today, the church of St Isidor dominates the architecture of Petersburg’s Kolomna district. It combines a rather archaic “tonal” composition and facade with the use of early twentieth-century elements and materials (such as reinforced concrete). The modest décor includes important motifs from old Russian architecture (like an onion-shaped pentagon), while aspects of late classical architecture are also present. The exterior of the building was affected by the lack of funds: a simplified version of Poleshchuk's design had to be implemented. On 25 February 1935, the church was closed: all its interiors were destroyed, while the crosses and central cupola were taken down. Initially employed as a dormitory, following the Second World War the church buildings were used for a decorative art collective. Only in 1993 was the parish returned to St Petersburg diocese.

Perhaps Poleshchuk’s most important architectural contribution was the magnificent Uspenskii cathedral of the Pühtitsa convent in eastern Estland, built on money given by Major General I. F. Tereshchenko. Poleshchuk somewhat changed the original plans and supervised the workers during the construction itself. He also designed the iconostasis of the cathedral (Fig. 6) and checked all the sketches of the icons. Writing to the icon painter F. E. Egorov, Poleshchuk requested that the icons be ‘close to the style of the Italian Renaissance, although quite in the spirit of Orthodoxy. The best Russian artists of the first half of the nineteenth century can serve as examples: Neff, Bruni, Vereshchagin, Borovikovskii and the like.’ Painted in 1909-10, the icons are very reminiscent of those painted for the Kazanskii cathedral in St Petersburg by some of the aforementioned artists.

Poleshchuk’s projects over the next couple of years involved both secular and ecclesiastical buildings. One of the most interesting was the wooden Preobrazhenskaia church built in Vyborg for the three-hundredth anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. Created in the style of old northern wooden churches (in particular the church of St Paraskeva in the village of Shua, built in 1666), the church fused influences of both the baroque and the style moderne. Lieutenant General Nikolai Bel’gard, the chair of the building committee for this project, turned to his brother Aleksei, the governor of Estland province and chair of the Baltic Orthodox Brotherhood, for assistance: he evidently recommended Poleshchuk. Other wooden temples designed by Poleshchuk in these years include a church for the Kholm Antonievskii convent (1911-13) and a place of worship for the St Aleksandr Nevskii Temperance Society in St Petersburg. He also participated in work on Petersburg’s Cathedral on the Blood, the Feodorovskii cathedral in the imperial residence of Tsarskoe Selo, and the capital’s infamous statue of Emperor Alexander III. Between 1912 and 1914, Poleshchuk provided the design for the neoclassical building of the Academy of Science’s Geological Committee on Vasil’evskii Island in St Petersburg, using so-called ‘Saaremaa marble’ as a facing material. This choice in stone united his birthplace and his new home, as he and his expanding family of five children lived together on Vasil’evskii Island. On 24 October 1911, Poleshchuk was successfully (though narrowly) nominated as an academic of the Academy of the Arts: throughout the war years, he continued to serve both as an architect for the Holy Synod and a teacher. He did not neglect his home province, establishing and chairing the Estland Engineering Association in 1915 and the Estland Technical Association in 1917.

Following the revolution, Poleshchuk worked for the former Academy of the Arts as a professor and headed the University of the Estonian Workers’ Commune in Petrograd. In September 1920, however, he and his family left Russia for Estonia. Here, he once again took up teaching, lecturing as a professor of architecture at the Tallinn Polytechnic from 1921 to 1932. Nor did he abandon his more practical activities, designing the railway on Saaremaa and several government buildings, including those of the Narva hydrological station, the custom’s authorities in the port of Tallinn, and a state publishing house. He was also invited to attend research institutions in France, the Netherlands, and Germany.

In 1939, following the death of his wife, the architect moved to live with his daughter Ekaterina in Kiviõli. During the Soviet occupation, Poleshchuk was taken to the rear in Kuibyshev, where, some evidence suggests, he organised the production of cement. Dying on 11 September 1944, his resting place is unknown. Coming from humble beginnings, Poleshchuk was one of the most brilliant exponents of the retrospective trend in Russian architecture and became one of the founders of professional architecture in Estonia. His enduring legacy has helped shape Estonia’s Orthodox landscape. 

Author

Archpriest Aleksandr Bertash

Translator and editor

James M. White

Original article

‘A. A. Poleshchuk: Tvorcheskaia biografiia Russko-Estonskogo zodchego i retrospektivnoe napravlenie v Russkoi tserkovnoi arkhitekture nachala XX veka,’ Vestnik Sankt-Peterburgskogo Universiteta, vol. 12, no. 4 (2022): 647-665