купечество

The article considers merchant tenement houses genesis in Saratov. The paper analyses the architecture of objects in question. One deals with three directions replacing each other successively: classicism, eclecticism (historicism), and modern. Apart from the history and the development of tenement houses that are worth paying attention to, interest to such buildings is also explained by resuming of such civil engineering today.

The article describes the reasons that determined the significant role of Russian ethnic culture in the urban socio-cultural environment of Saratov province. Its manifestations in various spheres of city life and, in particular, in the look of these cities are based on written sources. For most county-level cities its influence on the cultural process was dominant. In the main city of the province its features were evident in spiritual and ceremonial life of the general population.