View of the Church of the Miraculous Icon of the Virgin of Vladimir and the Maryinskaya Women's Gymnasium from Pochtovaya Sq.

Unknown photographer. 1900s. The Collection of TSUM.

The three-storeyed building in the foreground of the left half of the photo is the Maryinskaya Women's Gymnasium (now The House of Educational Labourers). The house was given to the gymnasium in 1861. Till the beginning of the XX century it remained two-storeyed. The third floor was built upon in 1907. By that time the number of pupils reached 600. Behind the gymnasium in the photo a two-storeyed house of the XVIII century is situated. It was pulled down in the Soviet time. Now its place is occupied by an unsightly brick house with a food store. The most attractive building among the round about the gymnasium houses was the Church of the Miraculous Icon of the Virgin of Vladimir. The stone temple appeared there in the XVII century already but it was in the names of the Righteous loakim and Anna. The documents of the beginning of the XVIII century fix there two churches which stood near each other. They were the stone church of the Righteous loakim and Anna and wooden one of the Miraculous Icon of the Virgin of Vladimir. The latter burnt out in the fire of 1725, while the former was damaged. After being repaired in 1747-1750s the stone temple was again sanctified in the name of the Miraculous Icon of the Virgin of Vladimir. The side-altar of loakim and Anna was made there also. The Church of the Miraculous Icon of the Virgin of Vladimir suffered seriously in the fire of 1763, so it was restored completely only in 1768. None the less in the beginning of 1790s it was decided to change the old temple with a new one. The construction started in 1793 and only in the next century (1806) the majestic Church of the Miraculous Icon of the Virgin of Vladimir with the side-altars of St. George and Paraskeva Pyatnitsa was sanctified. In the times of George, Prince of Oldenburg (1811) a stone fence was made around the church. Some decades later a new side-altar of Alexander Nevsky was made on the account of a merchant A. P. Utkin (1861) in the memory of the abolition peasants from the serfdom. In the middle and the last half of the XIX century a known Tver historian V. F. Vladislavlev was a priest of the Church of the Miraculous Icon of the Virgin of Vladimir. In 1930s the church was blown up and now a hotel «Scligcr» stands in that place.