The creation of the Teacher’s House is a phenomenon unique even for such a cultural center of Europe, which is the city of Kiev.
The presence of the Teacher’s House enriched the architecture of Kiev in 1912. On October 5, on Vladimirskaya Street, a building dedicated to the teaching community of the city was opened. The architect of the luxurious white building in neoclassical style was the famous Kiev architect Pavel Aloshin.
The idea of the «epicenter of education and culture» was based on the desire of the founders of the Pedagogical Museum to get their own building.
It was created in 1901, but the exposition had no permanent location, migrating between the Higher Women’s Courses and the Operetta Theater. This negatively affected the exhibits, so in 1909 Mr. Zilov — trustee of the Kiev district, appealed to Semyon Mogilevtsev — chairman of the stock exchange committee, with a request to assist in the construction of a special room for the Pedagogical Museum. The chairman of the Kiev stock exchange committee had a soft heart — Semyon Mogilevtsev personally donated 500 thousand rubles. They ordered a project and even made a «3D-visualization» of the conceived — a silver model sent as a gift to Tsesarevich Alexei.
The first stone was laid at the end of July 1910, and already at the end of August 1911 in the presence of Pyotr Stolypin the building was consecrated.
The Pedagogical Museum and the first reception for the teaching community of Kiev took place on October 5, 1912. At the time of construction, the Teacher’s House was the only specialized institution of this type in Europe. Three floors, a hemisphere facade, emphasized by a dome-shaped roof and a fundamentally white color of the building, as well as the filling — a room for a library, offices for demonstration of pedagogical novelties, a reference bureau and a hall for public events, made the whole enlightened Russian Empire and the Old World talk about itself.
The first director of the Pedagogical Museum was Alexander Muzychenko, a famous Ukrainian teacher-methodist.
A separate milestone in the history of the Teacher’s House was the placement of the administration of the Central Rada in it. That is, all the Universals, by which the country lived until 1922, were written out and accepted in the Teacher’s House.
What is the peculiarity of this institution? First, the Pedagogical Museum functions within its walls.
Similar panopticon in the world can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Secondly, the Teacher’s House, located at 57 Vladimirskaya Street, has become a real hub of knowledge in the field of pedagogy. It is from here that information waves in the sphere of educational innovations and professional competence of teachers spread to all regions of the country. Thirdly, it hosts conferences and seminars for teachers, who willingly come from all over Ukraine for a productive vacation in Kiev. Fourthly, the building of the Teacher’s House itself has such a history that even such «cultural aksakals» as Brodsky’s synagogue, located at 13 Shota Rustaveli Street, and the House of Turbinykhs, at 13 Andreevsky Spusk, in which the Bulgakov Museum is now «settled», pale in comparison.
Fifth, in addition to the main players, the Trade Union of Workers of Education and Science of Ukraine, the Museum of the Ukrainian Revolution (1971-1921), the Sukhomlinsky Theme Library, and the Kievlanka Cultural Center feel great under the roof of the Teacher’s House.
In addition to organizing thematic recreation in Kiev for education workers, the premises became a «maternity home» for the Ukrainian Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, for the House of Education Workers, as well as a place to store the Archaeological Collection of Kievo-Pechersk Lavra during World War II. When exploring the Ukrainian capital, connoisseurs of architecture in Kiev are sure to include the Teacher’s House in their itinerary as a truly unique, original-beautiful and the smartest structure in the city.