| By Alexander Liapin
Kiev Post
■■■ It's oogly-boogly great fun to enjoy the neat Bankovska Street attraction - the architectural pride of Kyiv, the Monster House.
From 1903 to 1920, an eccentric man lived at 10 Bankovska, Vladislav Horodetsky, an architect, artist and writer, was the sort of man to take risks. At any given moment, he would do a trick or make an unexpected move. Just like him, the house that he built in a very aristocratic part of Kiev is steeped in mystery.
The Monster House's appearance, decorated elaborately with various gargoyles and spooky creatures, is responsible for many rumors and myths. People say, the architect created his brainchild as a shrine to his long-lost daughter who had drowned in Meringa lake. The lake used to be where the monument to Ivan Franko is today. Others say it was
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| his lover who drowned in the lake and Horodetsky built the house for her.
Some went even further, telling tall-tales of how Horodetsky had left to hunt in Africa and was ripped apart by tigers, eagles, hyenas, crocodiles and every other real and imagined animal. People said he was left for dead. Fortunately, the tales were simply gossip and the artist returned to Kiev where he immortalized his supposed heroic deed in concrete. But the real story is Horodetsky just built a wonderfully strange house for the sake of it.
Horodetsky got the material to build the dark gray mass of mythic creatures big and small from cement producer Richter. Richter thought it would be a dandy advertisement for the new product and Horodetsky agreed. Sculptor Salia decorated the house with the fantastic monsters, which .Horodetsky sketched and Salia sculpted. Salia later finished the interior of the building.
When the house first went under construction, many predicted it would slide down the hill and trample the Ivan Franko theater. They even wagered bets on it, saying there was no feasible way for such a peculiar house to stay standing. But, obviously, they, were wrong.
In addition to the Monster House, his creations include Richard's House on Andryivsky Uzviz, the Mykolayivsky Church on Chervonoarmiyska Street and the National Art Museum.
Horodetsky did not stay standing as long as his house, however. He died in the United States in 1930, 11 years after he fled Kyiv when the Bolsheviks came to power.
The eccentric architect has been immortalized, though. He remains one of Ukraine's greatest architects.
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The Monster House as it stood in the beginning of the 20th century.