Эрмитажный гараж, Imperial garage at State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The Hermitage Garage is a single-storey utilitarian building under a hipped roof in the Zapadina Chyornogo Proyezda courtyard of the Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg. Architect Nikolai Kramskoy designed it in 1910–1911 from slag-concrete blocks on high-grade Portland cement mortar. Its facades, restored to their original red-brick colour, have almost no ornament; the iron roof trusses were made by the Saint Petersburg Metal Works.
Emperor Nicholas II had this building constructed between 1910 and 1911 to serve the needs of the imperial court, with architect Nikolai Kramskoy leading the project. The walls were built using slag blocks, a material that was new and experimental at the time.
The garage kept the imperial fleet of Delaunay-Belleville, Rolls-Royce and Mercedes-Benz cars, among the largest and best-equipped motor pools of the Russian Empire. The washing bay just behind the entrance gates still holds the cast-iron base of a petrol pump and drains linked to the courtyard sewer.
The garage stands in the Zapadina Chyornogo proyezda, the inner courtyard of the Winter Palace, and is visible from the windows of the Georgievsky Hall and the Sivkovsky passage. It is not a museum display: the building still serves as the garage of the State Hermitage's motor transport department, so it is not open to visitors.
The roof still carries the original ventilation heads, shaped like pieces of knight's armour. Inside, the washing bay keeps its cast-iron base for a petrol pump and drains linked to the courtyard sewer. A brick-red facade was restored for the building's centenary in 2011, under architect V. V. Yefimov.
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