In Dnipro, in a neighborhood that isn’t exactly the most prestigious, you can see a beautifully restored house. It stands out like a beacon amid the ruins. This is Wilhelm’s House, or “The Spy’s House,” as it’s known locally.
Wilhelm’s House in Dnipro
The history of this house dates back to around 1900. It was built according to a design by the architect Tissen (again, this is an estimate).
Its original purpose was as a rental property—specifically, a hotel—and it was supposed to be cheaper than others in the city because the sewer and water lines hadn’t been extended there yet, so buckets of water had to be carried by hand. According to legend, no one wanted to work there because the owner paid his employees very little due to the low rent. The owner’s name was Nikolai Morozov. He was also a co-owner of a factory that manufactured manhole covers for the sewer system and was involved in laying the water mains, which had not yet reached his own home.
Around the early 1910s, Wilhelm Abermet arrived in Yekaterinoslav. This man traded in agricultural machinery, became wealthy from it, and was appointed vice-consul of the German Empire.
Abermet owned a mansion in the city center at 38 Voskresenskaya Street, but he rented it out to the military—the 53rd Infantry Reserve Brigade. He himself moved into Morozov’s house, where he had a private apartment, a sales office, and a consular office. It is possible that Abermet won this house from Morozov in a card game, since Morozov was an avid gambler and not particularly lucky.
In 1914, when World War I broke out, Wilhelm Abermet suddenly disappeared. This was hardly surprising, given that a wave of anti-German sentiment had swept across the country at the time.
His apartment was broken into, and as the legend goes, a safe containing documents in German and a large sum of cash was found there. After that, rumors spread that Abermet was a spy, and his house came to be called the Spy House. And so this name stuck to this beautiful example of architectural design.
There is another legend. Architect Thyssen designed the neighboring Silberman House. These houses supposedly belonged to brothers, and there is an underground tunnel connecting them. It is said that the tunnel was discovered during renovations, but it was bricked up, and it is impossible to go through it.
The Spy’s House in Dnipropetrovsk
After World War II, Wilhelm’s house was used as a communal apartment. Many of the interior rooms were remodeled, and the work was done rather crudely. There were also ongoing problems with the plumbing. The ground floor underwent an even more extensive renovation—the “Café Molochne” opened there. Since the 1980s, the apartments have been vacated, the building has fallen into disrepair, and it has not been renovated.
The Spy’s House in Dnipro City
Since the early 1990s, a café has continued to operate here, and attempts were made to renovate the building; new interior walls were even erected to convert it into a hotel. However, the hotel never opened. The building has stood abandoned and partially ruined for over 20 years. The surroundings are bleak; homeless people live here, and it’s even scary to go near it. And you certainly can’t call this neighborhood a safe one.
In 2014, Wilhelm’s House will be renovated. And they’ll do it right.
A design plan will be developed. The Soviet-era brick will be replaced with specially produced “Yekaterinoslav” brick. The interior partitions, which were built for apartments and hotel rooms, will be removed. The window frames, the ground floor, and the courtyard will be restored.
They will also install a wrought-iron staircase with a curved turn. It will be custom-made in the Art Nouveau style.
Now, Wilhelm House houses offices and a gallery, and students from the construction university come here on field trips to see for themselves how professionally the restoration was carried out.
How to find Wilhelm’s house in Dnipro
Wilgem’s House in Dnipro is located at 11 Knyaginya Olha Street (near the old train station).