The idea of creating an alms-house for disabled soldiers who got injures during the Russo-Japanese War belonged to Empress Alexandra Fiodorovna. A nice plot of the Babolovsky Park on the meadow at the Crimea Column was allotted for construction of the Alms-House for disabled soldiers in 1905. The building was quick constructed to the design of the the architect S.A. Danini and in 1906 the alms-house has already been consecrated and opened. In a year the decoration of the interior of the domestic church was completed, it was consecrated in the name of the Tsarina Alexandra the Great Martyr. The Empress herself took part in the development of the project of the building for 150 people. According to the Empress’s idea, the workshops were equipped for disabled soldiers. They were taught timbering by masters of the famous factory of F.F. Melzer, sewing by Follenveider, one of the best tailor of Saint Petersburg. Appartments for masters were placed in the alms-house, but their salaries were paid by the owners of factories. Masters for teaching knitting, basketry, shoemaking, bookbinding, laundering were engaging by the alms-house administration. The sewing and knitting trainees got Zinger sewing-machines. Near the main building there was a small house for two families of the disabled as well as a woman sewing workshop, a day nursery and small school which was directed by a priest of the alms-house (there were about a hundred children of the disabled and employees of the alms-house).
In 1914-1915 in connection with World War I the alms-house was enlarged according to S.A. Danini’s project and in addition a hospital for wounded men was equipped for money and under the the patronage of Alexandra Fiodorovna. 170 beds for wounded men, operating-rooms, dressing rooms and the X-ray room were placed here. Small one-storied houses with double-pitch roofs according to the military engineer K. Griboyedov’s project were built in the heart of the park behind the Babolovsky cutting. The English company “Esteltors” took part in building, the company used the newest building technology, they used concrete blocks for building. The houses were intended for living families of the disable who worked as the park wardens. By the early 1917 ten houses were constructed, one of them for living masters of Melzer and “Henry”. Only three such houses in the Babolovsky Park were survived. The aslm-house for disabled soldiers was closed in 1920, however, the establishment which was placed here is also medico-humanitarian: the clinic if the first-rate research children orthopaedic institute named after G.I. Turner. Alexandra Fedorovna, Empress
Danini Silvio Amvrosievich
Follenveider
Griboyedov, Konstantin Dmitriyevich
Meltser, F.F.