The Kharkiv “house with the chupacabra” (as journalists have dubbed it) is located at Sumska Street, 96.

According to O. Leibfreid, M. Dikansky built it in 1905, and it is Moses Gershovich who is listed as the owner of the house in the 1909 property owners’ directory. However, it is worth noting that Dikansky was not an architect but the owner of a construction firm, and the design itself may have been executed by someone else. On the facade, one can see a flower from which a beautiful girl and her alter ego—a bat—peek out.

As architect Vladimir Lopat’ko noted, many of these female heads—which are one of the defining features of Art Nouveau or Modernist buildings—were standardized.

In other words, there were factories that mass-produced them. It is therefore quite common to see identical elements in the entryways of buildings designed by different architects, and there is no reason to be surprised by this.

But this probably doesn’t apply to the “Dikansky’s Chupacabra.” It’s likely unique to Kharkiv.

Thanks to a pre-revolutionary photograph found by Anton Bondarev in city archive, we can assess the extent of the damage to the building.

Above the upper windows on either end was a beautiful stucco decoration—now completely lost. Judging by its outline, the door was no less ornate than those found in Parisian Art Nouveau mansions.

On the right was the entrance to the courtyard; it was bricked up and a window was installed at sidewalk level. The side finials at the roof cornice are missing, and the two that remain have been altered. But the greatest loss is the windows: they used to be narrow and double-paned, and triple-paned where the balconies are. The partitions between them were torn down and replaced with large, combined windows, which significantly degraded the building’s visual appearance.

And while the green, colorful facade of the first floor can be fixed with minimal effort, the windows cannot. As you can see, there was no canopy above entrance in original photo. However, the balconies now remain exactly the same, and they look great. This building remains a beautiful gem of Sumska Street, although its facade is in need of repair.

In general, the engineers and sculptors at Moisey Dikansky’s architectural firm, which built the house at Sumskaya Street, 96 in 1905, were clearly inspired by architect Lavirotte’s apartment building in Paris when designing the entrance area. The latter was built in 1901 in collaboration with ceramicist Alexander Biggo and a group of sculptors.

In this 2007 photo, the facade of the building at Sumskaya Street was still yellow. But who knows what color it was originally.