The ruins of the Bread Store

It was still an hour and a half until the next electric train to St. Petersburg, and I had a choice: go to the bus, or spend that time walking around the neighborhood of the station. I decided that I was in no hurry to get anywhere, and a walk would be the perfect solution. I opened the map to see if there were any landmarks nearby. The nearest streets were the usual streets of a suburban village, but a little farther away I saw a green star that marked a historical landmark. The place was called The Bread Store, and in the attached photos you could see something that looked like a ruin.

If I hadn't found this place on the map beforehand, I might have just walked by without paying any attention to the unimpressive wall. I almost walked past it, even though I knew what I wanted to find - from the main street, this low wall appears to be the wall of one of the outbuildings on the homestead. But I was attentive, and turned onto a side path just in time.

From this angle, the building gave a completely different impression. The old brickwork allowed us to confidently date these walls to the 19th century at the latest. One of the ends of the building was on the territory enclosed by a blind fence, but on the other side of the house was still accessible for inspection. I came closer to examine everything as closely as possible. The bricks of the lower and upper floors were very different and clearly belonged to different eras. Obviously, the second floor was added in the XX century.

The windows on the first floor have a harmonious arched form. The masonry wall near these windows is clearly very old. I walked along the wall hoping to get a peek inside the building. Soon I noticed that there was a small gap in one of the windows - but on the other side of the wall some bushes were growing lushly. I walked further and found an ajar window through which I could see the center portion of the former Bread Shop.

It was not very easy to find reliable information about the history of this building. Most likely, the bread store in Kavelakhte village was built in the middle of the 19th century, but some sources attribute this building to the 18th century. Unfortunately, the plot where the building is located is outside the administrative boundaries of St. Petersburg. From the border of the city to this building is only about thirty meters - but this small distance was enough to keep the building out of the list of city landmarks. Finding historical information on sites outside the city limits is much more difficult. But I did find some interesting facts and old photos.

A bread store in the 19th century was not a store in its modern sense. It was something between a barn and a store. Such stores were used to store grain in case of a bad harvest. Bread stores began to be built everywhere in the early XVIII century, by order of Emperor Peter the Great. Before that, the construction of barns for storing stocks was not subject to central authority and control. The need to build a new stone bread store in this area arose after five neighboring villages were given to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. The archives have preserved drawings of the structure dated 1845.

G. Shvarts "Big Maneuvers in Krasnoye Selo", fragment. 1850s. State Museum of Fine Arts "Tsarskoye Selo".

The building of the bread store can be seen on the painting by Gustav Schwartz "Grand Maneuvers in Krasnoye Selo", created in the 1850s. After World War II the building was rebuilt and became a movie theater. It was then that the second floor appeared and the general silhouette of the building changed. According to the memories of old residents, the movie theater was closed in the late 1980s.

A movie theater. 1968 - 1974. The author of the photograph is unknown