Dolgov–Zhemochkin Estate

The grand house stands at the back of the courtyard, while wings ran along the street. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Nikolai Ivanovich Zhemochkin, the estate's last owner and a dealer in leather and transmission belts, used this arrangement in an unexpected way: he rented the main house to the Third Women's Gymnasium and moved his own family into the large southern wing.

Transmission belts were the wide leather belts that transferred motion from an engine to factory machinery. The Zhemochkin family business rested on such products. Nikolai's father, Ivan Petrovich, owned two tanneries, warehouses, and a shop in the Upper Trading Rows. He bought the estate in the middle of the nineteenth century. His granddaughters were among the gymnasium's pupils: the girls went to classes in the main house owned by their family, while living on the other side of the courtyard, in the wing.

After the revolution, all the Zhemochkins' property was nationalized. Nikolai Ivanovich and his wife, Vera Alexeyevna, were exiled to Tarusa. The southern wing was divided into communal apartments, but the former owners' children were allotted several rooms in it. They lost the factories, the shop, and the estate, yet continued to live at the same address for several more decades—now alongside other families. The Zhemochkins' descendants left here only in the nineteen sixties.

The first surname in the name appeared earlier. Afanasy Ivanovich Dolgov, a First Guild merchant and future mayor of Moscow, established an estate here in the seventeen seventies. The main house was built on the vaulted ground floor of older chambers. It is often attributed to Vasily Bazhenov, who was married to Dolgov's niece, but there is no documentary confirmation of the authorship: the family connection explains the assumption, but does not prove it.

Dolgov's main house has survived; it now houses the Institute of Latin America of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The large southern wing, where Nikolai Zhemochkin moved his family and where several rooms were later left to his children, no longer exists. A more massive new building stands in its place.