HOSPITAL ON KOZLOVKA (PARKOVA DOROGA, 3-5, 7)
In 1899, on the initiative of Baroness A.A. Rosen, the Society of Hospitals for Chronically Sick Children in Kyiv was formed. The newly created charitable organization was managed by the wife of the head of the Kyiv personal district (“personal department” dealt with estates belonging to the Romanovs), Sofya Andriivna Likhareva.
The purpose of the Society, which emerged from the name and was reflected in the Statute, was “medical care for chronically ill children and their maintenance, accepting mainly children of poor parents.” A person wishing to join the organization had to receive recommendations from at least three active members. The membership fee was 5 rubles annually or 100 rubles once.
At first, the community equipped its hospital with 12 beds in rented premises on Andriiivskyi Uzvoz, but the number of patients grew, and it was necessary to think about its own building. The construction commission quickly agreed on a long-term lease of a plot of land belonging to the military department in Kozlivka, and in October 1903, the foundation of a hospital building took place here. Construction costs amounted to 74,000 rubles, of which 50,000 were contributed by Lev Israelovich Brodsky. Together with another famous industrialist and philanthropist, Semen Semenovich Mogilevtsev, he headed the construction committee of the hospital.
The hospital was built in a picturesque area, under the precipice of Mariinsky Park. Perhaps the locality of Kozlivka got its name from Isaia Trokhymovich-Kozlovsky, a companion of Peter Mohyla, the first rector of the Kyiv-Mohyla College, abbot of the Desert-Mykolaiv Monastery. In the middle of the 19th century, along with Kozlovka, the area was also called Proval and was mentioned most often in the context of the construction of the Mykyl barracks on the isthmus.
From the documents of 1881, Kozlovska Street is known as the main road that passes near the estate of the daughter of the retired provincial secretary Dementiy Kozlovsky. Prior to the laying of Petrivska Alley (1909-1912), the street was limited by stairs descending from Mykylska (Arsenalnaya) Square and Mariinsky Park.
The project of the new hospital in the form of a modernized renaissance was developed by Kyiv architect Mykhailo Hryhorovych Artinov. But Mykhailo Hryhorovych did not have to manage the construction. Carelessly, he got into an unpleasant story that hit his reputation hard. Mykhailo Hryhorovych was tricked into a diamond scam. When the investigation began, potential customers wished to no longer place orders with Artynov. Lev Brodsky removed the architect from the implementation of the project and entrusted the matter to Adolf Borisovych Minkus.
In the two-story building consecrated on October 31 (November 13), 1904, the first floor had five wards with six to eight beds and two wards with two beds, an operating, sterilization, hydropathic department with baths, showers and therapeutic mud, a dining room, a cafeteria. On the second floor, there was a laboratory, a pharmacy and rooms for doctors. In the basement there was an apartment for servants and a laundry room. The Ministry of Internal Affairs granted the request of the Society and assigned the new hospital the name of Sofia Likharyova, and the operating department – the name of Lev Brodsky.
The following year, a second hospital opened on a nearby site. It, like the first one, was free and intended for 12 children with long periods of stay under medical supervision. In 1910, another two-story building with a basement was built in an eclectic style next to the main building. Thanks to this, the number of beds increased to eighty.
Experienced specialists worked in the hospital: the chief doctor was professor Karl Henrikhovich Tritschel, professors Mykola Markianovych Volkovich, Lev Oleksandrovich Malinovskyi, Ivan Oleksiiovych Sikorskyi and others consulted.
The annual cost of treating one child was 400 rubles. Of course, any donations are accepted. But only the one who contributed four hundred was honored to have his name on the plaque on the hospital bed. Oleksandr Nikolovych Tereshchenko paid for the treatment of the patients of the entire ward in this way.
To obtain the necessary funds, the Society received certain privileges in the city advertising sphere. Already in 1901, he was allowed to set up special advertising windows in the busiest place of Kyiv – near the post office on Khreshchatyk. Renting these shop windows brought the Society several thousand rubles annually. In addition, from 1906 it leased billboards from the city government, receiving a substantial profit from sub-lessees. In a word, not only the rich, but also many ordinary Kyivans brought their labor money to the coffers of this charity fund. Moreover, its financial reporting was conducted openly, with publication in newspapers.
In the last years of its existence, the medical institution was under the watchful eye of Sofia Oleksandrivna Likharyova. In 1909, due to her husband’s transfer to St. Petersburg, she left Kyiv and returned after her husband’s death in the spring of 1913. She settled in the hospital, fully devoting herself to caring for the sick. Likhareva set herself two tasks: to open an eye department and to set up a sanatorium in Crimea. She fulfilled the first, but did not have time for the second – in April 1917, she died of tuberculosis.
But the fruits of the charitable activities of Sofia Oleksandrivna Likharieva, Lev Israelovich Brodsky, Semen Semenovich Mogilevtsev, Oleksandr Mykolovich Tereshchenko, Karl Henrikhovich Tritshel and many other benefactors have served the people of Kyiv for many years.
In the 1930s, the Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics and the Institute of Blood Transfusion worked here, then until 1982, the Pechersk district hospital, popularly known as “Kozlovka”. It was replaced for a short time by the medical and sanitary department of “Kyivmiskbud”. Now the buildings and the surrounding area are in complete disrepair.
