Grand Hotel (Rostov-on-Don)


Grand Hotel in Rostov-on-Don is a former hotel located in Rostov-on-Don. It was burned down in 1911.
The building of the Grand Hotel was built in the second half of the 19th century and was located in Rostov-on-Don at the northeast corner of the intersection of Bolshaya Sadovaya Street and Taganrog Avenue. Levtunovsky was the first owner of the hotel. It was one of the most beautiful three-storey brick buildings of old Rostov.
For a long time, the Grand Hotel, located in the tenement building of Alexander Petrov and Alexandra Petrova, has been regarded as the main hotel of the city. Ordinarily, traveling salesmen, manufacturers, rich cocottes and foreigners stayed here.
The house had a garden, a lot of terraces, porches and galleries. The building was supplied with electricity. Also, there was a restaurant, a reading hall, public telephones, shower and baths in the house. In the shopping stalls, rows of the first floor placed some firms and workshops: Bakhsimyants' wine cellars, the Pavlovsky's shop, the haberdasher's, the jewelry shop "Paris Jeweler", a watch shop of Mark Miesirov. In 1904 the Taganrog District court registry rented accommodation in the building for circuit sessions. On the second and third floors there were 60 hotel rooms in the value of 1 ruble and more.
Levtunovsky was the original owner of the hotel, he died of a cardiac rupture in the hotel on 23 January 1883 and on 23 March of the same year, one of the founding figures of the Rostov Operetta Theatre was gone after serious illness.
The criminal life of Rostov also took fancy to the hotel. Here there was Sophia Hoffmann, who was called «Sonka the Golden Hand» in Rostov. A woman entered a hotel's unlocked rooms and took away guest’s personal things. If she was noticed, she pretended to be a lost foreigner. Sophia Hoffmann was shot by the members of the Medic and Reiki gang in the 1920s. The Soviet scriptwriter and playwright Pogodin Nikolay Fyodorovich used prototype of Sophia Hoffmann in his play "The Aristocrats".
Since 16 March 1911 the firm "A. L. Shavgulidze and Co" has become the owner of the hotel. But on 11 July 1911 the building caught fire and the fire was extinguished for five days. The fire was so strong that the windows shattered in the house of Pustovoitov from the side of Bolshaya Sadovaya Street. The hotel was completely destroyed by fire. The Grand Hotel's story came to the end after this event.
During the Soviet time, a one-storied building was constructed on the side of hotel. In this house worked Trade Organization named The Unified Workers – and – Peasant's Cooperative Society, which was the largest organization in Rostov and Nakhichevan, occupied the third place in the RSFSR in terms of trade.
In the thirties, the building was demolished in order to build a multistorey apartment block here. However, the Great Patriotic War made adjustments. The construction started after the war in 1949. The architect of the new building was G. A. Petrov who had built a house of the Higher Party School and Rostov circus. In 1951 upon completion of the building, there the confectionery "Zolotoy Kolos" began to work.
Currently, the four-storey building, built on the site of the Grand Hotel, is occupied by many shops.

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