At the “crossroads of 5 roads” in Kharkiv, you can see a house with a tower, which was recently black, but has become beige.

According to the list of architectural landmarks of Kharkiv, the house was built in 1910-1912. In the list of homeowners in 1909, the yard belonged to Kuksyn Andriy Petrovych, a burgher. The address then was Chernyshevska, 23, not 25, as it is now.

Kharkiv researcher A. Paramonov suggest that the house was built much earlier, around 1890, and the author of the project could have been Johann Ginsch. Andriy Kuksin was a member of the board of Oleksiy Alchevsky’s Kharkiv Commercial Bank.

After the 1917 revolution, the building housed the NKVD and a scientific and demonstration museum under the Main Directorate of Police and Investigation.

Currently, a similar museum is located in the former Alchevsky Estate on Zhon Mironosyts Street.

For a long time, the house was a dark gray, almost black shade.

The house is located at a famous Kharkiv location – the “crossroads of five roads.” In fact, only three streets converge here: Chernyshevska, Hirshmana, and Alchevskyh. But Hirshmana and Chernyshevska make such turns that it seems as if the streets are starting anew.

As a result of a Russian missile strike on March 6, 2022, the building suffered serious damage, with its roof and upper floor partially burned, the tower damaged, and windows broken. A temp conservation roof was installed in the fall of 2023.