The building where the permanent exhibition of the Museum of Town and District History is open for visitors is a typical dwelling house of local residents constructed in the late 19th century. Dwelling rooms were located around a long corridor. A staircase from it leads to a mezzanine floor – an attic storey above the rooms along the western façade.
In 1901, the wooden one-storey house with a mezzanine in Large Embankment belonged to the heirs of peasant Alexey Borisovich Kuznetsov. According to the old residents’ recollections, the doctor of the town hospital Joachim Yakovlevich Nodelman who served in the Kirillov district council during 35 years and died in 1919, lived in the house in the early 20th century. Later there was an office of the logging enterprise, a children’s unit of the district hospital, a kindergarten, and an elementary school (till 2009) in this building.
In February 2010, upon the application of the Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve, the Kirillov District Administration handed over the empty house at 103 Gagarin Street to the museum for the free use. The museum employees headed by S.A. Zaitsev carried out current repair of the building in the shortest possible time and installed electricity supply and security and fire alarm systems. The initial enfilade layout of the house and doorways with two paneled leaves were restored. The later doorways were walled up. The floors were made of wide boards like originally. Wallpaper, curtains, stylized chandeliers give visitors an opportunity to get to the atmosphere of the late 19th century when the building was constructed. The museum department that studies and presents the history of the town of Kirillov and the Kirillov district is situated in this building after its renovation in May 2010. This museum gives a chance to reflect on the past and to see how people lived in Kirillov hundred years ago, what things town dwellers were surrounded with in their everyday life, how the household furnishing changed on festive days.
