Elizabeth Street 10b, Riga

Mikhail Eisenstein

1903

Façade of symmetrical building with horizontal lines and many geometric patterns.

Elizabeth Street 10b is a stunning example of the Jugendstil style for which the buildings designed by Mikhail Eisenstein are known. The façade of this apartment building is built of brown stone, white stone, bright blue titles, and plaster and is profusely decorated. On the cornices at top are large female heads, a peacock, and a gargoyle-like face with its mouth open in what looks like a roar.

Credits

Peter Seyfferth / imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

Engage with this Source

Creator Bio

Mikhail Eisenstein

1867–1920

Born in St. Petersburg into a family of German Jewish immigrants to the Russian Empire, Mikhail Eisenstein (Mihails Eizenštein) graduated from the St. Petersburg Civil Engineering Institute in 1893 and worked at the Riga city planning department. He opened a private architecture practice in 1897, converting to Russian Orthodox Christianity in that same year and becoming a devoted Christian. He began experimenting with art nouveau; his unique Jugendstil style, which has survived on Riga’s Alberta, Strēlnieku, and Elizabetes (Elizabeth) Streets, is characterized by elongated female forms, brightly glazed earthenware siding, and curvilinear motifs. During the Russian Civil War, Eisenstein joined the “White” forces opposing the Bolshevik regime and the Revolution; he soon left for Berlin, where he died in 1920. He was the father of the famed Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948).

You may also like

Painting of sheep head and human head in profile facing each other, overlaid with overlapping smaller animals, human figures, houses, tools, and trees.
Tooltip info icon

I and the Village

I and the Village combines Marc Chagall’s memories of his childhood in Vitebsk with folklorist and abstract imagery to create what scholar H. W. Janson called a “cubist fairy tale.” The dreamlike…
View Source

Family Sayings

After the war the world seemed vast, unknowable and boundless. However, my mother went back to living in the world as best she could, happily, for she had a happy nature. Her spirit could never grow…
View Source