On 18 April 2014, a solemn ceremony of transfer of the Stock Exchange Building to the State Hermitage Museum took place.
Georgy Poltavchenko, St. Petersburg Governor, and Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum, greeted the audience consisting of the city intellectuals, media representatives and the Hermitage employees who gathered in the central hall of the Stock Exchange Building.
The contract for the Stock Exchange transfer was signed by M.K. Smirnova, Chair of the Committee for City Property Management, and Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum.
The guests were welcomed by Grigory Pirumov, Deputy Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation.
At the end of the ceremony, the Admiralty Orchestra of the Leningrad Naval Base (conductor V.K. Lyaschenko) performed the “Hymn to the Great City” by R.M. Gliere.
Stock Exchange Building
Summary
The Stock Exchange Building was constructed on the Spit of Vasilievsky Island in 1805-1810 by the architect Thomas de Thomon. The architect placed two rostral columns decorated with the statues of sea gods (another version: the images of the rivers Neva, Volkhov, Volga and Dnieper) in front of the building. In 1913-1914, a reinforced concrete vault designed by architects M.M. Peretyatkovich and F.I. Lidvalin was built in the main hall of the Stock Exchange.
Since 1939, the building had housed the Central Naval Museum. In the early 2000s, the city government planned to restore the building to its original purpose and to transfer it to the Commodity Exchange. In 2007, the Committee for State Control on the Use and Protection of Monuments decided to move the museum to the Kryukov (Marine) barracks building, which was done in 2010.
In June 2011, the Stock Exchange Building was transferred from the federal to the city ownership. The Government of St. Petersburg proposed two options for the use of the historic Stock Exchange building: either to accommodate a museum forming part of the State Hermitage Museum (the suggestion was made by Mikhail Piotrovsky), or to organize oil trading. Later, there was another option – to use the building in a project of moving the Supreme Court and the Supreme Arbitration Court to St. Petersburg. But in 2013, this idea, as well as a number of other ideas, was abandoned.
In December 2013, Georgy Poltavchenko, St. Petersburg Governor, made a final decision on the transfer of the Stock Exchange to the State Hermitage Museum for the creation of the Museum of Heraldry and Awards.
