Residential building on 28 May street

The three-story tenement house with shops on the ground floor, designed by the German architect Johann Wilhelm Edel (1863 - 14.02.1932), was built in 1896-1899.

The apartment building, one of the most beautiful buildings in Baku, occupies an important urban planning position, being situated at the intersection of two central city highways and. At the same time, reaching three streets: Kamenistaya Street (currently Bashir Safaroglu Street), Kaspiyskaya Street (currently Rashid Behbudov Street) and Telefonnaya Street (currently 28 May Street). The area of the building’s development site is almost the same size as the area of the entire block.

According to its architectural and planning features, this architectural monument belongs to the French Renaissance style monumental buildings of the city. Volumetrically underlined corners with domes, facades built in large sections of the order system with strongly protruding Corinthian columns, the vertical rhythm of the axes, and silhouette have defined the character of the architectural composition of the apartment building.

The building is distinguished for its rich plasticity of facades, artistic painting in stairwells, and a subtle professional solution of decor in Oriental and European motifs in the interiors of a tenement house.

In addition to the complex composition of the building, the architect Johann Edel paid special attention in his constructions to numerous architectural details, introducing a unique and rich artistic palette to the image of Baku. Voluminous plasticity emerged on the surface of the facades of the buildings designed by him due to the atmosphere of light and shadow.

In a heavyweight and monumental volume of an apartment building situated at the intersection of Kaspiyskaya (currently Rashid Beibudov Street) and Telefonnaya Streets (now May 28 Street), the author conveyed a complete modulation of architectural techniques, forms, elements and details in beautiful stone expression, approaching to a distinctive stylistic eclecticism at the turn of the XIX - beginning of XX centuries.