Residential building of Mikayel Ovsepovich Aramyants

The luxurious three-storey building, which turns 128 in 2024, has dominated the Baku square, now called «Azneft», for more than a hundred years. The building has been resold several times since its construction, it was used as a revenue house, and after the October communist coup of 1917 in Imperial Russia, which included the South Caucasus, the Azerbaijan government presided here.

Until 1878, the area of Sadovaya (now Niyazi) Street was occupied by the businesses engaged in the manufacture of containers for transporting petroleum products by sea. Due to the liquidation and transfer of cooperages closer to the so-called Black City industrial zone, the Sadovaya street area had become an area of bourgeois «clean» neighborhoods, the development of which began in 1885 and kind of laid the «architectural ground» for the formation of Nikolaevskaya Street (now Istiqlaliyat Avenue) - the most ceremonial part of the ring road around the Icheri Sheher old city.

In 1896, at the very beginning of Sadovaya Street, a three-storey revenue house was built by the design of the German architect Paul Friedrich Stern. The design of the building, which is implemented in the style of the French Renaissance, was approved on May 25, 1893.

The building was owned by a large industrialist, merchant of the first guild Mikael Aramyants (04.05.1843 - 19.12.1922), who moved to Baku from Tiflis. The monogram of the first owner of the building - the intertwined Cyrillic «M» and «A» letters - can still be seen on the facade of the building.

Judging by the fact that the architect Paul Stern designed only this building in Baku, and the residents of Tbilisi (Georgia) can be proud of a much larger number of creations of this German architect, it can be assumed that Mikael Aramyants invited Paul Stern from Tbilisi specifically for his project, which was operated first as a revenue house.

At the beginning of the XX century, as it is now, the building occupied the most active position in the urban planning structure of the Baku City. The three-storey monumental volume of the palace with domed tops in the central part of the main facade made up an architectural composition in the style of the French Renaissance. Rich plasticity of facade, unusual form of architectural details, culture of construction, brought to perfection, and makes this building extraordinarily stunning even today.

In the 1904 table calendar, it was written that the house housed the «Salamandra» Insurance Company, established in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1846; «Panyats Brothers» Agency; A.G. Tagiyev's office; L.M.Guniants’ agency business; Tagiyev and Mikaelov's office; «Oil-industry offices of the Baku Petroleum» and «Trade Partnership and the Kerosene and Oil Partnerships»; office of «The Society for the Extraction of Russian Oil and Liquid Fuel «Oleum»; «Dried Fruits» company; «Vulcan» Society; office of the «Kussis and Theofilatos» Trade house and others.

In 1913, the building housed the office of the Baku mayor, Colonel of the Russian Gendarme Corps Pyotr Martynov.

During the period of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic in 1918-1920s, the British consulate, which was headed by the Vice-Consul, the Scotsman John Leslie Urquhart, was located at the first floor of the building.
Today, the building houses the main office of the production association «Azneft» of the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan.