Government Offices
The question of permanent buildings for the governorate offices in Kharkov arose immediately after 1764, when the city became the centre of the Sloboda-Ukrainian Governorate. The first provincial architect, Ivan Vilyanov, took up the work: in 1780, on the site of older houses fallen into disrepair, six single-storey buildings were raised to a design by Petro Yaroslavskyy to house the Civil and Criminal Chambers, the Conscience and Zemstvo Courts, the Treasury Chamber, the Treasury, the Public Charity Office and other institutions.
In 1785 work began on a new combined Government Offices building opposite the Uspenskyy Cathedral, to a design reworked by the Petersburg architect Andreyan Zakharov. Funds were short; the provincial government moved in only in 1805, the remaining institutions in 1808. The building was vast but inside cramped. Between 1850 and 1854, on the orders of General-Governor Sergei Aleksandrovich Kokoshkin, a more practical replacement was raised — the contractor, the Graivoron merchant of the second guild Yeliokin, was twice forced by the governor to dismantle sections of wall the masons had laid crookedly. In 1910—1911 the building was reworked inside, and the state coat of arms was added to the pediment.
From 1920 to 1925 the building housed Soviet institutions of the Kharkov governorate, later of the Kharkov district. In 1929 they were transferred to Gosprom, and the building itself was rebuilt as the House of the Red Army — with a concert hall and a cinema. The bombings of February-March and August 1943, together with the street fighting of March 1943, caused heavy damage; the structure was eventually demolished. Today its site is a public garden — originally dedicated to the "fighters for Soviet power," renamed in independent times for the fighters for Ukraine.
