Vladimir Alekseevich Shchuko

Born July 5 (17), 1878, in Tambov; died Jan. 18, 1939, in Moscow. Soviet architect and theater artist.

Shchuko studied with L. N. Benois at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1896 to 1904. He became an academician of architecture in 1911. Shchuko’s best works are marked by a creative application of the principles of classical architecture and a search for simple forms closely related to the new types of public buildings and new equipment. In the prerevolutionary period he designed Building No. 63–65 on Kirov Prospect (formerly Ka-mennoostrovskii Prospect) in Leningrad (1908–11) and the Russian pavilion at the International Exhibition in Rome (1911).

Shchuko’s major projects during the Soviet period were done in collaboration with V. G. Gel’freikh. They include the monumental entry to Smolny (1923–25), the architectural part of the monument to V. I. Lenin at Finland Station in Leningrad (1926), the M. Gorky Drama Theater in Rostov-on-Don (1930–35), the new building of the V. I. Lenin Library of the USSR (1928–40, Moscow), the Bol’shoi Kamennyi Bridge (1936–38, Moscow, with participation by M. A. Minkus), the main pavilion of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (1939, Moscow), the Government Building of the Abkhaz ASSR in Sukhumi (1932–39), and the viaduct in Sochi (1936–37, with others).

Shchuko also was a theater artist. He designed the set and costumes for the Starinnyi Theater in St. Petersburg in 1907 and for various theaters in Leningrad from 1919 to 1932. He also was the set and costume designer for a production of Boris Godunov at the Malyi Theater in Moscow in 1937. Shchuko was an accomplished graphic artist and watercolorist (V. A. Shchuko Album: Drawings and Watercolors, Moscow, 1940).