Residential building of Isabay Hajinsky

The majestic waterfront building on the former Emperor Alexander II Street, (now Neftchilar Avenue) in Baku is one of the most striking and remarkable architectural monuments of the period 1870-1920, the first oil boom in Azerbaijan. To the older generation of the city’s residents, this beautiful old mansion, distinguished by its unusual architecture in Roman-Gothic style, is better known as the «Hajinsky Building».

This house epitomises the most characteristic features of the architecture of that time: the eclectic style and stone filigree work, the extraordinary flights of imagination from both the owner and the architect (who was Johann Wilhelm Edel (1863 – 14.02.1932). Like many pre-revolutionary mansions, Hajinsky's house is difficult to classify unambiguously as any particular architectural style. However, the charm of pre-revolutionary architecture in Baku is precisely in this variety of architectural trends and sometimes challenging individuality.

The building is one that stood out on Emperor Alexander II Street, which runs along the coastal strip and the city’s sea front. At the beginning of the XX century, buildings along that front were predominantly one- and two-storey. Isabey Hajinsky's five-storey property, with a bay windowed tower on the corner, instantly dominated, making it clear who was in charge there. Its active and picturesque outline and volumetric composition made it a leading structure in Baku’s historical quarter. Romanesque architecture was the principal component in the building’s architectural solution but, in the context of the artistic demands of the early XX century, with all the characteristic contradictions. The heads of unseen guards stared at passers-by from the pediment tops. The dominant verticality of the corner bay window and axial system, completed by the steep pediment on the main facade, served as an «clean sheet» for the building’s architecture.

The building’s facades, as was customary in modern style, are ruled by a relaxed mishmash of Romanesque motifs and stylizations of medieval fortresses with watchtowers and powerful columns - severity made playful. Mosaics, stained-glass windows, the bulky form of loggias, balconies and bay windows, of both aesthetic and artistic quality, are used extensively on facades and under windows. Aesthetically pleasing are the mosaics and stained-glass windows with vine and palm leaf reliefs. The interiors of the main staircase and living quarters, in which decorative moulding contributes the basic form of the walls and ceilings, were also very interestingly resolved.

Isabey gave the city a wonderful example of romantic Modern.

Isabey Hajinsky’s mansion near Maiden Tower seems to have been designed to reflect the status, social position and colossal authority of its owner. The lightness and airiness of its forms, emphasized by seven spires of different heights; the brilliant corner facade designed as a colourful turret, coupled with lush architectural décor executed within the best traditions and with ancient-Assyrian-style images in mosaic, are almost in the realms of fantasy, seeming to take us into some fairy world ... The owner's irrepressible imagination, the architect's delicacy of taste and the quality of execution created a true masterpiece of purely Baku architecture, which has managed to absorb and organically synthesize the influences of a variety of cultures.

The whole Hajinsky family once lived in this palace: his wife Kheyransa khanim from the no less eminent Khanlarov family, his sons Sadikbey, Ahmedbey, Alibey and daughter Zibeyda khanim. A cursory acquaintance with the portraits of Hajinsky's household is enough to convey their noble origins, refined manners and the family’s pure impressiveness and elegance.

The house was also intended to host large balls, so that the numerous guests who came from afar could stay there for several days. Alas, the history of both mansion and owners developed as dramatically as those turbulent and sometimes unpredictable times. The family was not spared the tragedy of 1918’s March events, during which the palace suffered serious damage.

Soon after that, in January 1919, Isabey Hajinsky died.

Every Baku mansion has its own history, the history of its former owners, and with them the history of an entire era. Isabey Hajinsky's palace is a clear example. Through the first period of rapid prosperity, then witnessing the bloody excesses of Armenian Dashnaks and Bolsheviks and surviving nationalization, this house has absorbed the whole turbulent history of the last century.

Following the October Revolution in Russia, almost until 1935, the palace housed the «AzSolTrest» Joint Stock Company.

At the height of World War II, in November 1944, General Charles de Gaulle, on a roundabout route to Moscow to meet Joseph Stalin, stopped over in Baku at the Hajinsky House. The Soviet Union’s telegraph agency reported the arrival of the General of the Resistance in the capital of Azerbaijan: «On 27 November at 2 pm, General de Gaulle, head of the provisional government of the French Republic, and his entourage arrived in Baku. At the airport, General de Gaulle was greeted by representatives of the government of the Azerbaijan SSR, representatives of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and the People's Defence Committee, who had arrived from Moscow to meet him. In the evening, General de Gaulle attended a performance of «Koroghlu» at the Azerbaijan Opera House». Charles de Gaulle's short stay in the building is recalled by the bas-relief installed on the façade. Later occupants of the apartments were the family of the outstanding scientist-chemist and President of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan Yusif Heydar oghlu Mammadaliyev, whose centenary was officially celebrated by UNESCO in 2005.

It is gratifying that today the facade of the «House of Hajinsky» has plates perpetuating the memory of its outstanding residents and guests. However, unfortunately, to this day, there is nothing to remind us of the building’s original owner, although in old photographs you can see the name of Isabey Hajinsky on both sides of the facade, inscribed in stone in Arabic and Cyrillic scripts. But these decorative elements, as well as the luxurious outlines in high relief of a chest with lion's paws above the main portal, disappeared without a trace in the communist era and were not restored. And Isabey’s descendants did not manage to have a memorial plaque set on any of the patron’s five houses.

The Hajinsky Residential House is part of a rich architectural heritage and an architectural monument of Baku’s early capitalist era.