On May 21, 2025, the Executive Committee of the Kharkiv City Council announced the planned dismantling of the historic building at Geroev Nebesnoj Sotni Square, 7 due to the risk of an emergency collapse – 81% of its structures were destroyed.

In November 2024, the non-governmental organization HeMo, which monitors the destruction of architectural heritage, wrote that all the buildings in this quarter can be restored, although they have severe damage from the blast wave (the quarter suffered a massive Russian missile strike on March 6, 2022), and building number 7 is without a roof.

But the strange thing is that in the satellite photos of 2022, after the impact, the roof of the house is still there. But in 2024 – there is no more.

The fact is that in the second half of 2022, someone decided to build on the third floor of the building during its restoration.

But something went wrong, perhaps the damaged walls could not withstand the load of the superstructure, or it began to collapse rapidly without a roof.

In fact, number 7 combines 2 different buildings, built approximately in the 1880s in an eclectic style, one of which stands in corner of Yevhena Chykalenka Ln.

At the end of the 19th century it was Bulgakovsky Lane, it was renamed after the WWII in honor of the Soviet general D. Karbyshev, who from 1920 to 1923 lived and worked in the nearby historical building on Himnaziyna Embankment, 1.

In 2024, the lane was renamed in honor of Yevhen Chikalenko, a prominent Ukrainian agronomist, publicist and philanthropist, who was educated at Kharkiv University in the 1880s and was the initiator of the convocation of the Ukrainian Central Rada in 1917.

Most likely, the last, most famous owner of this plot, who owned it from 1895 to 1915, tried to “unify” their facades.

He was a Jewish philanthropist and merchant Peysakh Buras, the products of whose tobacco factories were known not only in Kharkiv. One of these factories was located in this area. You can read more in Anton Bondarev’s article about the activities of Buras the patron and Jewish charitable organizations.

It is quite possible to assume that the building next to the 7th in Yevhen Chikalenko Ln also belonged to the Buras factory. The contours of a huge oval window can be seen in its wall, perhaps it was a showcase with factory products or a luxurious entrance group.

It is a pity that in this way another piece of the historical “fabric” of Kharkiv will be lost.