The three-story building No. 10/2 at the intersection of Honcharivska Boulevard and Velyka Honcharivska Street was built as a printing house in 1898. Immediately after its construction, it was occupied by printing houses ‒ at first, there was a typolithography (a printing house with a lithographic workshop). In the second half of the 19th century, the Printing House of S.P. Yakovlev already worked here. It was one of the largest printing enterprises in the city at the time and had more than 15 high-speed printing machines. The building had two floors and a semi-basement. One of the most famous ever printed books at the Printing House of S.P. Yakovlev in the 19th century became the book by G. I. Kulzhinsky Saint Meletii Leontovych, Archbishop of Kharkiv and Okhtyr (1784–1840) [2], which was published in 1881. It is dedicated to the biography of Mykhailo Leontovych, a Ukrainian religious figure and teacher, whose relics are in the Holy Annunciation Cathedral in Kharkiv.
It is known that in 1903 the company Printing House of S.P. Yakovlev had its bookbinding workshops. [4]. The printing house in Kharkiv was one of three company branches located in Ukrainian cities (Dnipro, Kharkiv, and Kyiv).
Printing House of S.P. Yakovlev in Kyiv was located on one of the ancient streets of Kyiv ‒ Zolotovoritska 11. There was a profitable building built in the Modern style. It belonged to Vaclav Vondrak, a Czech philologist-Slavist, doctor of philosophy, and author of fundamental studies in the field of comparative grammar of Slavic languages. The first two floors of the apartment building were occupied by the Printing House of S.P. Yakovlev. In the same building was the medical department of the Higher Women's Courses, headed by Professor Serhiy Tomashevskyi. Now the Prague Hotel is located here.
The Dnipro branch of the Printing House of S.P. Yakovlev opened in May 1885. It became the fourth Dnipro printing house in terms of the time of establishment and the first mechanized printing house in the city. According to the project of the city architect Ferdinand Augustovich Hagen, a two-story printing house building was built at the corner of the current Fabr Street and Kateryninsky Avenue. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Printing House of S.P. Yakovlev was one of the leading enterprises of the printing industry in the city, and in 1910, due to the economic crisis, it was forced to close. In Soviet times, the Dnipropetrovsk City Printing House was established here. In 1989 it was reorganized into the Dnipro publishing and printing enterprise, and in the second half of the 1990s it became the Poligrafist LLC. However, a few years later, Polygraphist ceased operations and sold its buildings, in which a shopping center was opened after reconstruction.
In 1905, there were strikes among workers in the Kharkiv branch. The employees of the largest printing houses in Kharkiv went on strike, and in particular, the Printing House of S.P. Yakovlev, whose employees stopped working, united with the Gutenberg and Shtenberg printers and together put forward their demands to the administrations [3]. Among those demands were an eight-hour work day, a 40% increase in wages, the abolition of overtime, polite treatment of workers, and others. [3]. The strikers managed to achieve only minor concessions.
The printing house continued its work even during the October Revolution; in 1919, the Printing House of S.P. Yakovlev published a collection of the Soviet worker-peasant government orders of Ukraine and supported the Bolsheviks [5]. During the civil war, the Printing House suffered significant damage: the equipment was destroyed, and the premises themselves were partially destroyed. Restoration and modernization of the Printing House took place in the period from 1924 to 1934. At this time, the third floor was completed and a freight elevator was installed, which enabled expanded production capabilities, and attic space was also added. In the post-war years, technical and storage facilities were added to the printing house; located along the boundary of the site, they formed a closed yard space. In Soviet times, the building was used by the 4th printing office of the Ministry of Communications (in particular, railway tickets were printed there). In 1980, the building acquired a security number and was recognized as an architectural attraction of local importance.
Since 2000, the building housed the firm Kharkivska Drukarnya No. 2, whose activities were terminated in 2010. From 2010 to 2020, the Printing House was in a state of disrepair, the premises of the building were rented out. In 2021, a new owner appears in the Printing House, who decides to revitalize the historic building.
The Kharkiv company Alter Development started working on the building in 2021. They decided to restore and revitalize the printing house into a cultural center. The Urbanyna Architectural Bureau was invited to carry out preparatory studies.
At the same time, at the beginning of 2022, the cultural and public center hosted its first cultural event ‒ the presentation of the album of the Ukrainian electronic composer HSPD, which was released on the Someone Records label back then. About 300 people attended the party; it was the start of the cultural and social Center work.
Full-scale invasion, hostilities in Kharkiv, and the danger of occupation lead to the project freezing. Work on the cultural and community center resumed in 2023. Currently, the place is being prepared for restoration. A study of the condition of the building and the surrounding area has already been carried out, and the development of the concept is underway.
