The Esders and Scheefhals building is a monumental building, originally a department store, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The building is a “historic and cultural monument of the people of the Russian Federation” and is located at Moyka Embankment 73-79 at the corner of Gorokhovaya Street, before the Red Bridge over the Moyka.
The building was constructed in 1906-07 by architects Konstantin de Rochefort and V.A. Lipskii.
Until 1919 it functioned as the “S. Esders and K. Scheyfals Trading House”, also known as “By the Red Bridge”. Signs on the building were in Russian and French — the French name indicated as Au Pont Rouge.
The basis of the building was a metal frame, the weight of which reached 70,000 pounds. The frame was made by E. Tillmans.
The building is decorated with rich stucco decor. Huge windows and narrow piers create a clear geometry of the facade. In the lower three floors, the windows are rectangular, in the fourth – with a semicircular ending, in the fifth – double window openings, in the attic – horseshoe-shaped windows. Water lilies are depicted above the windows of the fourth floor, and garlands descending from the medallions are on the piers. The facade from Gorokhovaya Street ended with a low attic with the names of the owners. The cut corner creates a smooth transition from the street to the embankment.
It was an undertaking of Stefan Esders, who had a factory in Brussels and department stores in Berlin, Paris, Rotterdam, Breslau (now Wrocław) and Vienna in addition to St. Petersburg. Scheefhals was the Dutch partner for the St. Petersburg branch.
After the revolution, in 1919, the building became a sewing factory producing menswear. In 1922 it was given the name Volodarsky Sewing Factory in honor of the Marxist revolutionary and early Soviet politician Moisei Goldstein, who went by the name of V. Volodarsky.
The nearest metro is Gostiny Dvor station.
