Pogodinskaya Street, Building 12 Pogodinskaya Street is located in the southeast of Moscow, in a historic area of the capital formerly known as "Devichye Pole" (Maiden Field) after the Novodevichy Convent located there. By the second half of the 18th century, the area began to be filled with noble estates, or more precisely, country houses, belonging to members of the nobility of the time—the Trubetskoys, Golitsyns, Apraksins, and Naryshkins. The property currently numbered 12 was part of a larger estate between Bolshoy Savvinsky Lane and Pogodinskaya Street from the 1740s until the end of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 18th century, these lands belonged to the Novodevichy Convent, but in 1747, the courtyard, garden, and pond were transferred to Major General Ivan Ivanovich Golovin, a member of the Golovin boyar family. By the end of the century, the estate passed into the ownership of Colonel Alexander Alexandrovich Urusov, a member of an ancient princely family whose ancestors had descended from the Golden Horde. However, in 1808, the estate was sold for four thousand rubles to Lieutenant Colonel Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Shcherbatov. The new owner's father, Mikhail Mikhailovich Shcherbatov, was a member of the Academy of Sciences, a senator, a Knight of St. Alexander Nevsky, and the author of the book "Russian History from Ancient Times." Dmitry Mikhailovich himself received a European education and, according to eyewitnesses, "established a very refined European comfort in his home and was indifferent to the people and the government." He was widowed early and devoted his life to raising his children: daughters Elizaveta and Natalia and son Ivan. The latter, incidentally, served in the Semenovsky Regiment and, after a soldiers' revolt in 1820, was arrested and imprisoned for six years. The Shcherbatov house was frequently visited by I.D. Yakushkin, Prince F.P. Shakhovsky, and M.M. Spiridov—all of whom would later become members of the Decembrist secret societies, and all of whom would suffer a difficult fate. In December 1835, the estate was sold to Elizaveta Vasilyevna Pogodina, the wife of the renowned Russian historian, writer, publisher, and public figure Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin. The main house at that time was a single-story wooden building on a stone foundation with a mezzanine, a balcony, and a suite of formal rooms. Unfortunately, the building was destroyed during a German air raid in 1941. The Pogodin estate covered an area of ten thousand square sazhens, with part of the land leased to a vegetable garden. In 1856, with funding from the renowned industrialist and family friend V.A. Kokorev, the so-called "Pogodinskaya Izba" was built: a one-story wooden house with a mezzanine, designed in the style of Russian wooden architecture. The building's façade was decorated with fine carvings, ornate shutters, and carved towels. Today, the "Pogodinskaya Izba" is a cultural monument of federal significance and remains the only surviving structure from the estate of that time (currently numbered 12A). The Pogodin House was visited by many prominent figures of Russian culture. Among those who stayed there were P.V. Nashchokin, I.S. Turgenev, P.A. Vyazemsky, M.S. Shchepkin, and A.N. Ostrovsky; N.V. Gogol also spent long periods of time there. Pogodin himself assembled a unique collection of Russian antiquities here, which was later purchased by Nicholas I for the then-enormous sum of 150,000 rubles. Parts of it are now housed in the Hermitage and the Armory. After Mikhail Petrovich's death, the estate passed to his children, and in 1886, the property was divided: two plots of land on the side of Bolshoi Savvinsky Lane were separated and subsequently resold. After Mikhail Pogodin's death, the estate was inherited by his youngest son, Ivan, and then by his wife, Anna Petrovna. During this period, the estate was divided into five parts and sold off. The main mansion became the private psychiatric clinic of Fyodor Alexandrovich Savey-Mogilevich, where Mikhail Vrubel was one of the patients. By the early 20th century, the estate's boundaries included a two-story main house on Pogodinskaya Street, five wooden one-story residential buildings, and a three-story stone structure on the corner of B. Savvinsky Lane. Most of the wooden structures housed the psychiatric hospital of Doctors Bryukhansky and Vysotsky, while two buildings were rented out as residential units. As mentioned earlier, the main house and some of the surrounding wooden structures were destroyed during an air raid in 1941. The site remained vacant for some time after the war, and in the 1950s, it was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Main Administration for Service to the Diplomatic Corps. Soon after, the wooden buildings were finally demolished, and construction began on a building for the Albanian Embassy (though, upon completion, the Iraqi Embassy was housed there). The architects A.D. Suris and A.M. Bobrusov designed the three-story administrative and residential building. The façade of the new mansion featured laconic forms and stylized elements of Russian classical architecture. Interestingly, shortly before construction was completed, the infamous decree prohibiting architectural "excesses" was issued, making the mansion on Pogodinskaya Street one of the last examples of so-called "Soviet classicism."