M. Ponizovsky's city estate

Povarskaya Street runs through one of Moscow's historical areas, Zemlyanoy Gorod. In the 16-17th century, it was a place for trade neighborhoods that still persist in the surviving names of local streets and alleys: Skatertny (Tablecloth), Stolovy (Table), Nozhovy (Knife), Khlebny (Bread) pereuloks. When the capital moved to Saint Petersburg in the early 18th century, however, lots of tradesmen and craftsmen started selling their houses to the gentry. The street got its aristocratic appearance then and has preserved it to this day.

The first mentions of the property under the modern number 42 are dated to the mid-1740s when it was owned by 'captain and mounted guardsman' Ivan Khrushchov. A wooden palace was built there three decades later, but perished completely in the fire of 1812.

In 1815, the estate was built anew, following the old layout and style to the previous ones. A string of new owners followed and in 1886, a new tree-story stone house designed by notable architect N.Strukov, was built there, featuring expensive 8-bedroom apartments on each of the floors. The property became a revenue house, rented out to the last room.

Jacob Rekk's Moscow Trade and Construction Society bought the former Khrushchovs' plot in 1902. Notably, Rekk's company was among the first to practice 'turnkey' residential construction for sale. The new investment method was pushed both by businessmen and some architects such as Lev Kekushev.

The latter was contracted to design the 'renovation' project for the property and made it so that it could fit two neighboring mansions. In 1904, the property was split in two and sold: the one on the left, the number 44, went to Ivan Mindovsky, a major textile manufacturer from the upper reaches of the Volga; a few years later the number 42 on the right was sold to Matvey Ponizovsky, merchant 1st guild, Director and heir to the Trade & Manufactory Company of G.S. Ponizovsky with offices in Saint Petersburg, Kharkov, Warsaw, Lodz and the Nizhny Novgorod Fair.

In order to be able to afford the new property, however, he still had to take a loan and insure it with the Salamandra Insurance Society. The new residential house was built in the Art Nouveau style with a corner tower at the Sketerny Pereulok intersection which featured a curvilinear attic and an unorthodox flat tetragonal metal dome. Large windows with arched caps completed the building's exterior. The fancy fence with wrought-iron grills and granite posts on the wall base was built at the same time with the mansion. Some sources say that Ponizovsky was so impressed with Kekushev's talent, he asked the architect to design his new factory building in Kharkov. Nevertheless, as early as in 1913, an entry arch was made in the annex to the mansion and the main building's façades were redone in the Classicist style. All the Art Nouveau finishes were replaced with more traditional, 'classic' forms. The central dome was removed; window shapes changed. The style priorities were the likely reason for the change, but it is also possible that the owner wanted his residence to be less of an attention magnet.

The property was nationalized after the Revolution of 1917 and five years later it was occupied by the Authorized Representative Office of the RSFSR and USSR with all foreign Hunger Relief organizations. In the late 1920s, it was designated for the Embassy of Afghanistan, the first country to establish diplomatic relations with the new Soviet Republic, and has serviced the diplomatic corps ever since.