Merchant House Genç-Oglueva, Federal cultural heritage building in Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, Rostov-on-Don, Russia.
The Gench-Ogluev House is a four-storey building, with a mansard top floor, occupying the narrow end of a block at 68 Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, at the corner of Semashko Lane. Its U-shaped plan and corner main entrance face the city hall. The facade mixes Baroque decoration, classical rustication and cornices, and a Gothic-style tower on the pediment.
Stepan Gench-Ogluev, a leading Rostov merchant, commissioned the house in the late 1870s; Alexander Pomerantsev designed it, and construction ran from 1880 to 1883, Pomerantsev's first project in the city. Nationalized after Soviet rule, it housed a South-Western Commercial bank branch, the Neftesindikat district office and a butcher shop by 1925. The roof was destroyed in the Great Patriotic War and rebuilt in 1948-1949 under architect G. O. Kalaidzhan, with a lower tower and no spire; the 2014 restoration returned the original look.
The ground floor held shops, with offices and flats above; the building housed the printing press of the newspaper Priazovsky Krai and, from 1897, a branch of the Volga-Kama Commercial Bank. On 1 February 1936 the Ryba fish shop opened here, run by the Azov-Black Sea fishing trust and then the city's largest fish retailer.
The building is located in the central part of Rostov-on-Don and can be easily viewed while walking through the historic district. The ornamental details on the facade are best observed from across the street, where the full architectural features become more visible.
The 1948–1949 restoration under architect G. O. Kalaydzhan departed from Pomerantsev's design: the tower was rebuilt lower and without its spire, topped instead with a sea horse, brick dormer windows were added, and several lost balconies were left off. The 2014 restoration returned the building to its original appearance.
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