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Summer 2004 (12.2)
The Ali and Nino Walking Tour
by Betty Blair and Fuad
Akhundov
City Hall
Istiglaliyyat 4
(Pre-Soviet: Nikolayevskaya Street)
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to Ali & Nino Walking Tour Index
  Left: City Hall, completed in 1904, was designed by
the Polish architect, Joseph Goslavski.
The City Hall is one of the most prominent buildings in Baku.
Originally planned as a monumental and ceremonial building, its
main façade looks out onto Istiglaliyyat Avenue. The building
was under construction from 1900 to 1904. It has two additional
wings that serve as administrative offices for Baku's municipality.
The architect for this project, Joseph V. Goslavski (1865-1904),
was of Polish descent and came to Baku in 1891 after graduating
from the Institute of Civil Engineers in St. Petersburg. He soon
became one of the most sought-after architects in the city. Other
buildings that Goslavski designed include: residences for the
Oil Baron Ashurbeyli (See No. 29) and the Alexander Nevski Russian
Orthodox Cathedral, which Stalin had dynamited in the mid-1930s
(See the cathedral in
"Then and Now" photo of City Hall).
Goslavski's biggest client was Oil Baron Zeynalabdin Taghiyev,
for whom he designed his own home (now the National
History Museum, No. 25), the first boarding school for Muslim
girls named the Alexandrian Russian Muslim Female Boarding School
(now Institute of Manuscripts,
No. 13), and the Music Comedy Theater.
Tragically, Goslavski succumbed to tuberculosis and died shortly
after he had completed City Hall. He was only 39 years old.
The City Hall is mentioned in "Ali & Nino" in the
context of being adjacent to Duma Square (now Baksovet Metro)
where Azerbaijanis gathered to resist the aggression of Armenians
and Bolsheviks in March 1918. They weren't very successful and
an estimated 10,000 Azerbaijanis were killed within a few days.
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2004)
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