Kontorska Street begins with the building of the former “Versailles” Hotel (Kontorska Street, 1). Its history is very interesting and turbulent.

The plot was developed in the 1830s and 1840s by the Kuzin family. It was the merchant Kuzma Kuzin who managed the wine purchase office, which gave its name to Kontorska Street. This system was a kind of “outsourcing” that the state gave to private individuals for tax collection, sales, and control over the production of alcoholic beverages.

In 1878, the plot was purchased by Professor Ivan Obolensky (whom we have already mentioned as the founder of the Ambulance Society at Kontorska Street, 41). In the early 1880s, the first reconstruction of the complex of buildings, which housed the Obolenskys’ apartments, rooms for rent, and the women’s gymnasium of Daria Obolenskaya, the professor’s wife, was carried out according to a project by Ivan Ginsh.

In 1888, the Kontorsky Bridge was built – and traffic on the street became even busier.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the plot was leased by K. Shchogolev for the construction of the Versailles Hotel. In 1907, according to the project of architect Jūlijs Caune, various buildings were united by a single facade in an eclectic style. The menu of the first-class restaurant at the hotel included both Ukrainian and exotic dishes such as “Portuguese soup” or “Maria-Louise” soup, as well as wines from Bordeaux or the Rhine.

In warm weather, you could eat outside in gazebos or summer terraces to the sounds of various orchestras.

At the same time, the press could find complaints about the poor sanitary condition of the hotel grounds; its owners, like many in Kharkiv at the time, threw garbage into the river and clients committed suicide in the rooms.

In January 1918, the “Versailles” became a zone of local hostilities. Revolutionary Kronstadt sailors accused the “red” top of the city of drunkenness in the restaurant, each side called for help and staged a kind of “battle for Kontorsky Bridge”. The hotel was machine-gunned from the other side of the Lopan river.

In the early 1920s, Soviet official M. Eisenmeister set up an underground brothel in the building.

From 1944 to 1955, the former hotel housed the Air Force Special School, now the building houses the third building of the Kharkiv State Academy of Culture (Faculty of Performing Arts). Its walls still hide bricks from the estate of the 1830s, perhaps if they had a memory, they would tell a long story about all the turbulent events that Kontorska has gone through over the centuries.

The internal structures of the building were damaged as a result of near Russian shelling in 2022-2024.