The Stock Exchange building was designed by the architect Thomas de Thomon in 1805–1810 on the site of the Stock Exchange, the construction of which had initially been entrusted to the architect Giacomo Quarenghi. His uncompleted building was demolished in 1804. Having been erected on the Spit of Vasilievsky Island, where the commercial port of St.Petersburg was located at that time, the Empire style Stock Exchange by Thomas de Thomon is a rectangular building, which due to its grandeur resembles a Greek temple. Placed on the high granite stylobate, it is encircled by the massive Doric columns. The pediment is adorned with the allegorical sculptural groups of the sea god Neptune and the god of trade Mercury. A semi-circular square on the artificially created cape in front of the Stock Exchange building was also designed by Thomas de Thomon. On each side of the square two Rostral Columns were set up. The Pudostsky stone statues of the sea gods, the allegorical representations of the Neva, Volkhov, Volga and Dnieper Rivers, decorate the bases of the columns. In 1913-1914 the concrete vault of the Great Hall in the Stock Exchange building was constructed upon the project by the architects M.M. Peretyatkovich and F.I. Lidval.
From 1939 the building housed the Central Naval Museum. In the early 2000s the City Government planned to recover the original function of the building and hand it over to the Commodity Exchange. In 2007 the Committee for the State Control, Use and Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments of St. Petersburg made the decision to move the museum into the Kryukov Naval Barracks, which was carried out in 2010.
In June 2011 the Stock Exchange building was transferred from federal into city ownership. The St. Petersburg City Administration put forward two alternatives for the use of the Stock Exchange historical building: either setting up a museum which will form part of the State Hermitage Museum complex (proposed by Mikhail Piotrovsky) or establishing oil trading there. Later on another possibility came up for discussion, to use this building in the project for the relocation of the Supreme and High Arbitration Courts of the Russian Federation to St.Petersburg. However, in 2013 this idea was renounced, as well as a number of others.
In December 2013 the Governor of St. Petersburg Georgy Poltavchenko took the decision to hand the Stock Exchange building over to the State Hermitage Museum for the creation of the Museum of Heraldry and Awards.
Latest Project News
Solemn Ceremony of Transfer of the Stock Exchange Building to the State Hermitage Museum
18 April 2014
