Every outbuilding dreams of becoming a castle… or even Derzhprom, judging by the poster. Chornoglazivska Street, 10A.

And here is a charming old house at Oboronnyi Val Square, 9B, notable for its turret-like bay window, which resembles a miniature castle—it can be seen from Frankivska Street. It’s a shame that the windows in the “tower” have lost their pointed arches and have been partially bricked up at the top, while some have simply disappeared into the wall.

The history of this house deserves a closer look. This building was part of the complex where the governor of Kharkiv lived in the late 1880s. It was built around 1886 (at that time, the courtyard was located at Voznesenska Square, 9) and consisted of at least two buildings. In addition to the building mentioned above, the complex included the “main” structure at number 9, which faces the square with its windows. This house also features a distinctive bay window resembling a turret.

The second building, numbered 9B, has an even more distinctive “turret.”

In 2015, the old Soviet signs were still hanging there; one of them stated that it was prohibited to “wash dishes or trash cans, do laundry, or pour out dirty water under the water spigot in the courtyard.”

From approximately 1908 to 1917, Valentina Shekun-Budakova’s private girls’ gymnasium was located here. It is known that in the final years before the 1917 revolution, Academician Nikolai Sumtsov served as the head of the school board. The roof of the main building once featured beautiful finials at the corners and a portico with columns at the main entrance, but these have since been lost.