It’s not always a good idea to mess with something old just to fix it up.

Sometimes old things are fine just the way they are, and most attempts to repair them will only make them worse.

For example, at Kulykivskyj Descent, 5, there was a magnificent house in an eclectic style, built approximately at the end of the 19th century, with a black facade—a feature extremely rare for the city.

It is quite rare for the facades of historic buildings to be painted black; it is believed that this color lends the street an air of sadness, gloom, and melancholy.

But sometimes this color suits certain buildings; they can become a highlight and add variety to the city’s skyline. The building at Kulykivskyj Descent, 5 was first disfigured during the “housing crisis” of the 1920s and 1930s, when many buildings in Kharkiv had 2–3 additional stories hastily added on top.. Often, these added stories had flat facades and small windows that clashed completely with the original style.

Alas, following its recent renovation, this house has lost its black facade and now sports a tortoiseshell-and-canary-yellow appearance, with shades of gray, white, and yellow.

It’s particularly amusing to see the attempts to blend both the two-story addition and the balcony-birdhouse—which was added to the solid wall at a later date—into the overall color scheme.