The house of Franco Osipovich Natalie was built by architect G.Y. Strizhevsky in 1904 at the corner of Kontorska and Dmytrivs’ka Streets.

It’s rare to see plaques on buildings in the city that name the architect, and even rarer to see ones that name the building’s original owners. But this is exactly that kind of case.

Interestingly, the plaque shows Kharkiv’s administrative divisions: 6th Precinct, 1st District. These districts were administratively linked to the corresponding police precinct (in the case of Natalie’s house, it is still located at Poltavskyi Shliakh Street, 50). The plaque does not indicate the largest administrative unit—the district. There were a total of 3 districts in Kharkiv.

At that time, the house itself was numbered 31. Its current address is Kontorska Street, 35. The address change took place between 1904 and 1909 (the 1909 directory already lists number 35).

Apparently, the house was originally a two-story building and was expanded in the 1920s and 1930s. Due to rapid population growth and a housing crisis linked to Kharkiv’s designation as the capital of Soviet Ukraine, many pre-revolutionary buildings were raised by several stories, though these additions often bore no resemblance in style to the original building and were extremely modest.

Franco Osipovich Natalie was an Italian citizen who taught sculpture at the Raevskaya School and owned a monument shop on Ekaterinoslavskaya Street. Architect Mikhail Fedorovich Piskunov lived in one of the apartments in the Natalie building.