Leontyevsky Lane, Building 9. N.A. Alekseev's City Estate, 1882, architect D.N. Chichagov Leontyevsky Lane stretches from Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street to Tverskaya Street, almost parallel to Tverskoy Boulevard. Since the early 18th century, the area has become a hub for antiques trading (A.N. Yerykalov's shops on the ground floor of Building 11, Starina i Rarekost' (Old Things and Rare Things) at Building 26, and A.M. Staritsyn's Bookstore at Building 3 were renowned throughout the country), and the street itself retains the hallmarks of aristocratic pre-revolutionary Moscow to this day. Particularly noteworthy is the building now numbered 9. It belonged in the final quarter of the 19th century to Nikolai Alexandrovich Alekseev, Moscow's mayor. During his brief tenure as mayor (1885–1893), he accomplished an incredible amount to transform Moscow into a modern, dynamic city. On his initiative, construction of modern sewer and water supply systems began in Moscow. Nikolai Alekseev personally oversaw the construction of the new Mytishchi water supply system, and he personally financed the construction of the Krestovsky water towers. The ban on wooden buildings within the Garden Ring significantly accelerated what would today be called the renovation of the housing stock. The number of fires, which had plagued the city for centuries, decreased. New schools and hospitals were actively built, among which the project for the city's first specialized mental hospital, now known as Alekseevskaya, stood out. In the first half of the 1880s, commissioned by Alekseev, construction began on his own city estate on Leontyevsky Lane under the supervision of architect Dmitry Nikolaevich Chichagov. The complex consisted of a main house and an outbuilding, enclosed by a fence and gate. The main decoration of the extremely laconic façade was the second-floor balcony, and the cornices of the large side windows featured "antique" female heads. The exterior walls were painted an unusual shade: the mayor's wife, Alexandra Vladimirovna, preferred light blue, and the interiors of the house were also decorated in this tone. After Alekseev's tragic death (he was fatally shot with a revolver by a mentally ill man in his office), the estate passed to the renowned manufacturer I.A. Mindovsky, and then to the Baku oil industrialist Age Shamsi Asadullayev. Under Soviet rule, the building complex was nationalized, and soon communal apartments were located there. After the estate was transferred to the management of the Main Administration for Service to the Diplomatic Corps of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs (now the GlavUpDK), it was occupied by the Embassy of the Republic of Cuba.