Vul. Glinky, 5 – residential building (villa)

The villa is located separately amidst residential houses dating back to the late 19^th - early 20^th c., to the south of the city center. Its west façade overlooks Hlinky street. The plot is encircled by a fence, which serves as a retaining wall due to an elevation drop between the street and the plot.

As regards the plot configuration, it had a rectangular shape, which is indicated in the design drawings. There is an elevation drop between the plot territory and the street. The villa is located separately closer to the street. A recreation area near the villa is divided by paths, there is also a doorgarden and a utility zone there.

According to the 1903 design drawing,  one could enter the villa’s ground floor rectangular lobby, where a staircase was arranged, with the following premises grouped around: a pantry, a kitchen, from where a toilet and a bathroom could be entered, as well as a dining room, a living room, and a study. There was a door leading to the garden in the kitchen, on the north side. The staircase connected the basement, the ground floor and the second floor. There were bedrooms, a toilet, a bathroom, and terraces on the second floor. In the second floor hall, there are also stairs leading to the attic. In the basement, there were the caretaker’s room, a laundry and an ironing room, a toilet and cellars.

In 1935 the villa’s interior layout was somewhat supplemented and changed as a vestibule was separated in the hall, an entrance to the toilet and bathroom was arranged from the corridor, and a door out to the garden was made from an additional vestibule. On the second floor, a bedroom and an ironing room were arranged after a large room was divided. In the basement, an additional entrance to the villa was arranged from the hall with the staircase, and a kitchen for the caretaker was made in one of the cellars.

According to the design drawings, the bridging between the floors consists of Klein vaults while the beams were made of reinforced concrete with the use of the then up-to-date Hennebique system (DALO 2/1/2261). The roof structure is made of wooden rafters.

Due to an elevation drop the villa has different heights. The building’s architectural composition is characterized by a dynamic and asymmetric combination of the two-storied volumes.

The two-storied villa with a terrace on its south-west façade is rectangular in plan. On its façades one can see open stonework and plastered surfaces based on lime-sand mortar, metal lattices of the windows, balcony fencing, and stairs railing. The villa can be entered via stairs through a semicircular portal, supported by a stylized Gothic column on one side and an impost shaped as a male moustached head in a high hat on the other side. The ground floor windows are segmental, rectangular, and semicircular; the second floor windows are rectangular and semicircular biforia and rectangular triforia having Gothic plastered trimming. The staircase windows (the north façade) have retained the original glass panes.

On the main (west) façade’s second floor level, there is a semicircular niche, with underneath a sculpture of a chimera, a creature with big ears and a stuck-out tongue, which supports its head with its hands. The stepped gable has a stylized Gothic top and roof windows in the shape of a semicircular triforium. The corner of the south and west façades is accentuated by a stylized buttress supporting a water sprout arranged there to drain water from the second floor terrace. The villa has gable and pyramidal roofs whose overhangs are supported by a profiled cornice.

The stylistic design of the façades is characterized by the use of decorative stylized Neo-Gothic elements, including a gable, a buttress, typical profiles and shapes of windows, doors, cornices, and a balustrade, as well as the presence of a water sprout, a column with a capital, a chimera sculpture, stained glass windows, the front door metal hinges, window and lantern lattices.