The first hotel in the city of Stavropol, which became a kind of second "headquarters" of the Caucasian line, began to be built in 1837. The initiative to build another stone (quite modern for those times) building belonged to the local mayor Ivan Grigorievich Ganilovsky. In the new house, which was supposed to be finished by the arrival of Emperor Nicholas I himself, Ivan Ganilovsky opened a hotel, which was officially called a "restaurant".
The very elegant house was constantly being completed in the following years. Ganilovsky recklessly sculpted new extensions to the house. The so-called Savelievskaya gallery appeared, which got its name from the captain Saveliev, who lived in the "restaurant" on a permanent basis.
Soon the Greek refugee and skillful businessman Pyotr Afanasevich Naitaki became the tenant of the building, who turned the hotel into a corner of the Caucasian officers. According to legend, Pyotr Afanasyevich's surname Naitaki appeared when he arrived from Greece to Taganrog, escaping from the oppression of the Ottomans. The customs official made a mistake and wrote down in the column the name of the Greek's former place of residence - "on Ithaca", like the famous Odysseus. The odyssey of the "newborn" Naitaki himself was more prosaic than the work of the great Homer. After Taganrog, he moved to Pyatigorsk, and then to Stavropol.
At that moment, the headquarters of the commander of the entire Caucasian line was located in the city itself. In view of all of the above, the hotel had many names among the people. It was called "Moscow", and "Naytakovskaya", and "Restoration", and, finally, the "Officers' Club".
Hot fun and brutal war
As the author pointed out above, the headquarters of the commander of the troops of the Caucasian line was located in Stavropol. There was also the headquarters of the Linear Cossack army. And in 1816, at the direction of Yermolov, in the interests of ensuring the Caucasian corps, the Providentmeister Commission and the Commissariat Commission were located on the territory of the Stavropol Fortress. Thus, all the officers transferred to the Caucasus ended up in Stavropol one way or another. Someone was immediately sent to distant fortifications or battalions operating on the Caucasian line, while someone had to wait for a direction for a couple of weeks.
But not only newly arrived officers rushed to Stavropol. The city was then the center of life in the midst of an endless and bloody war. Trade with the mountain dwellers was in full swing. Having received a short leave or assignment to other units, the officers rushed to Stavropol. And in Stavropol itself, everyone invariably gathered at the Naitaki hotel.
It was here that friends, relatives and acquaintances who had not seen each other for months or even years, preparing for another long separation, arranged carousing and friendly gatherings. Wine flowed like a river, the officers, who could die at any moment in the deaf garrisons lost in the mountains, did not spare money. And all this "economy" was stubbornly watched by a dark-skinned Greek with black sideburns - Pyotr Afanasyevich Naitaki. Naitaki was always looking for ways to entertain battle-weary officers.
So, noticing that officers adore billiards, Pyotr Afanasyevich instantly arranged a billiard room in the best traditions. Leather sofas stretched along the walls of the billiard room, on which the headquarters and chief officers sat, conducting an enthusiastic conversation. Here the genius of Russian literature Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov "rolled balls", being an officer of the Tenginsky regiment. There was also a place for tables for playing cards, on which sometimes heaps of gold and piles of banknotes in the form of bets towered. Gambling and merry parties went on all night.
The rooms themselves at that time and the battles surrounding Stavropol were considered the pinnacle of comfort - high ceilings and fine furniture. And the wide windows breathed freshness and sun. The main thing is that the officers did not have to expect that a grenade or a burning brand would fly into the room through an open window.
There was also a good dining room at the restaurant level in the hotel. There were two living rooms, on the tables of which one could always find fresh numbers of "Northern Bee" and "Russian Invalid". For the officers who sit for months in the Caucasian fortifications, reading any literature to the bone on long dreary winter evenings, the fresh periodicals were just a gift.
To the madness of the brave … more champagne
The Caucasian officers, like ordinary soldiers, for the most part were forced to be desperately brave in all areas - both in battle and in verbal battles. This was quite logical: they would not send further to the Caucasus, if the well-known saying about Siberia was somewhat altered. So, according to some controversial memoirs of contemporaries, during the arrival of Emperor Nicholas I to Stavropol in 1837, the Decembrist, prince and private of the Nizhny Novgorod dragoon regiment, Alexander Odoevsky, who was exiled to the Caucasus, lived in the hotel with his friend, an officer of the Tenginsky regiment, Mikhail Lermontov.
At that moment, when the emperor's procession went out into the street on which the hotel was located (later in honor of this event, the street would be called Nikolaevsky Prospekt), Lermontov and Odoevsky ran out onto the balcony with their friends, pouring wine over the weight of the war. Odoevsky noticed that the procession looked too gloomy. And, suddenly for everyone, the prince shouted from the balcony in Latin: "Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant." This is the famous cry of the gladiators: "Hail, Caesar, those who go to death greet you." After this phrase, Odoevsky emptied his glass of champagne in one gulp. Lermontov followed suit.
But the friends preferred to immediately take the brisk prince from the balcony, fearing that even greater punishment might fall on their friend's head. Odoevsky simply dismissed it, leaving casually: "Well, gentlemen, the Russian police have not yet been trained in Latin!"
At times, the servicemen crossed the line of what was permitted, and the local police department sent angry reports upstairs. Thus, the department reported that "the officers sent to the Caucasus to participate in cases against the highlanders are making various disorders." Indeed, sometimes drunken officers, after an unsuccessful game of cards, challenged each other to a duel. The police demanded to close the hotel or at least close the card tables and the dining room, which at that time was considered an inn. The authorities, having weighed all the pros and cons, responded to the police department with a categorical refusal.
Sunset of the officers' club
In its heyday, there was not a single civilian to be found in the Naitaki Hotel. In the eyes rippled from the military uniform of the Tenginsky and Navaginsky regiments, stately grenadiers and officers of line units in dark blue Circassians. Lermontov and the Decembrist Nikolai Lorer stayed here, the nobleman and private Sergei Krivtsov and Baron Andrei Rosen, who also participated in the Decembrist uprising, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, who will die in the area of modern Adler, and Mikhail Nazimov, who, as some contemporaries claimed, at least sometimes famously led fighting in the rank of second lieutenant, but he himself, guided by his principles, never bared his weapon.
The decline of the "Officers' Club" began with the death of Ivan Ganilovsky. The descendants of the mayor, who bequeathed part of his real estate to Stavropol, turned out to be far from the zeal of his ancestor. Very quickly, the son, and then the grandson of Ganilovsky, got into debt and were forced to sell the real estate inheritance. The Naitaki hotel was also sold. It went to an Armenian merchant, who started rebuilding the building, retaining only the general details of the former hotel.
Now in the architectural monument of the 19th century there are private shops and cafes, which, God knows, do not adorn the facade of the former hotel. As a reminder of the dashing history of the once "Officers' Club", there is a sign on the building that reads:
“This building housed the Naitaki Restaurant, named after the famous Greek entrepreneur Peter Naitaki. M. Yu. Lermontov, the Decembrists, stayed here. An architectural monument of the 19th century. Built by I. Ganilovsky.
