HISTORICAL BUILDINGS

1884

The one-story house of Grigor Yeghiazaryan, built of orange tuff stone, is located on Abovyan Street. It is attached to the mansion of his brother, Barsegh Yeghiazaryan.

The house was built in 1884 and consisted of three apartments.

Grigor Yeghiazaryan was one of the wealthy residents of Yerevan, a brick factory owner, a prominent public figure, and a deputy of the city council. He financed the construction of several important public buildings in the city.

At the beginning of the 20th century, several rooms of the house were allocated to the Indo-European Telegraph Office. Later, the building housed an orphanage operated by the American Committee for Relief in the Near East (Near East Relief), a charitable organization engaged in the care and education of Armenian orphans. According to contemporaries, during the Battle of Sardarapat the house served as a hospital for the wounded.

The house was nationalized in 1923. During the Soviet period, it housed the Yerevan City Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia (1923), the publishing house of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia, and later the State Committee for Vocational and Technical Education, followed by the Theater of the Center for Aesthetic Education.

The mansion is a one-story building with a high basement level. Its floor plan consists of a system of rooms grouped around a central hall (reception room: 73.9 sq m; hall: 37.2 sq m; ceiling height: 4.5 m). The hall is connected to the street through the main entrance vestibule (3.2 m wide). From the side of Pushkin Street, an entrance intersects the row of rooms, giving the plan an L-shaped configuration. The basement level has an almost identical layout.

The northwestern façade, where the main entrance is located, is the dominant element of the building’s volumetric composition. The wall surface here, as well as in the central section, is articulated with vertical projections. The recessed windows are rectangular, crowned with decorative cornices, and supported by brackets. All openings are framed with molded surrounds. The wall surfaces are decorated with horizontal bands, cornices, and pilasters. The upper part of the vertical articulations is ornamented with flat triglyphs. The continuous upper wall band is emphasized by a segmental pediment, which during the Soviet period was decorated with a five-pointed star. The street façade is faced with finely dressed orange tuff, while the remaining façades are built of roughly dressed tuff.

The ceilings are flat and wooden. The basement spaces are covered with semicircular stone vaults. The roof is pitched.