The building of secondary school No. 83 Volgograd built in 1875, a former hotel, a women’s gymnasium

School No. 83 has seen a lot: it was a hotel and a women’s gymnasium, a medical institute and a hospital. Guests of Volgograd and even some local residents believe that the Battle of Stalingrad destroyed everything that was left of Tsaritsyn. And what the battle did not touch was completed by the 90s and zero. Fortunately, this is not the case. There are buildings of the Tsaritsyn era in Volgograd, most often not very well maintained, but capable of giving some idea of ​​the architecture of the 19th century. One of them is the current school number 83, also known as the Second Women’s Gymnasium in the city of Tsaritsyn. The building at the crossroads of modern Lenin Street and the 10th Division of the NKVD, and then on Uspenskaya Street, not far from Skorbyashchenskaya Square, was built by the Serebryakov brothers in 1875. It originally had two floors. Those who came to the enterprises of the famous Tsaritsyn brothers-industrialists stayed here. In 1908, the city rented the Serebryakov Hotel for a women’s gymnasium, which received number 2 from the Ministry of Public Education. they were no longer enough. Girls of all classes could study in the new gymnasium. The new gymnasium quickly gained prestige thanks to professional teachers and a good material base. Already two years after the opening, in 1910, the educational institution had a library for 900 publications, several volumes each, and its own physics room. The gymnasium was headed by French teacher Margarita Konstantinovna Germezi. Her apartment was located in the same building - at that time this practice was common. Needlework, housekeeping and hygiene rules acted as additional subjects. The students of the gymnasium wore a uniform - a green dress and a black apron. In 1911, 319 girls studied at the Second Women’s Gymnasium. Residents of Tsaritsyn paid 55 rubles a year for education, non-residents - 75. Soon after the opening of the gymnasium, a society was created to help “insufficient“ students - those who wanted to get an education, but did not have the financial opportunity for this. They were helped together - in the newspapers there were often advertisements for raising funds for “insufficient“ students and reports on receipts. There was a parent committee in the gymnasium, and among the trustees were well-known people in the city: Baron Alexei von Osten-Saken and Vasily Klenov (who were Tsaritsyn mayors at different times), merchants and entrepreneurs Alexander Repnikov, Grigory Serebryakov, Alexander Gerhardt and others. After the October Revolution of 1917, the editorial office of the newspaper Borba was located in the building of the gymnasium for some time. In 1919, the history of the Second Women’s Gymnasium ended - then the gymnasiums were liquidated throughout the country. During the Civil War, a hospital was located here, after that - the regional police department. In the 1920s, the former Second Gymnasium became a second-level school with a four-year course of study called the Fourth Belinsky Soviet School. In 1925–1928, the Stalingrad Provincial Executive Committee worked here. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the center of the Lower Volga Territory was transferred to Stalingrad from Saratov. Due to the large influx of institutions and people, new buildings were built and the Tsaritsyn ones were actively built on. In 1930–1933, the building of the former gymnasium also received an additional, third, floor. Soon, classes began again here - the building housed the Darwin School, and on October 1, 1930, the first students of the newly formed Stalingrad Construction Institute began to study. For some time, KrayONO, the Regional Department of Public Education, worked here. In 1932, the former gymnasium became an exemplary school No. 9 named after V.I. Lenin - in those years it was customary to assign to schools, in addition to numbers, the names of famous people. From 1932 to 1936, the director of School No. 9 was Dmitry Osnovin, who gained fame during the Great Patriotic War as an organizer of the partisan movement and a fearless soldier. During the Battle of Stalingrad, the school, like many others, had a hospital. As a result of hostilities, the building survived, although it received significant damage. In 1946, the famous women’s team of Alexandra Cherkasova restored the building of the former gymnasium. School No. 9 moved to a new building on Pushkin Street in the 1950s, and the Stalingrad Medical Institute took its place. School No. 83, which operates here to this day, was located in the premises of the former women’s gymnasium in 1961 - after the medical institute moved to the building of the highest party school on the Square of the Fallen Fighters. The former gymnasium became a school again. Children study here, now not only girls, and the glorious history of the educational institution continues. In 2014, the school was named after her student Mikhail Gureev.