Posted on 11/21/2014 7:08:32 PM PST by Loyalist
If the end result of a war is an exchange of territory, the outcome of a revolution is ultimately the exchange of real estate. The house at 716 Gerrard Street East is an apt illustration of the downward mobility of the politically displaced.
Listed last week on MLS, the modest two-story Riverdale semidetached was the final residence of the Tsar Nicholas II’s last surviving sibling, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandranova. The highest ranking member of the Russian imperial family to emigrate to North America, Olga convalesced in the care of Russian friends who ran the beauty shop on the main floor.
She was bedridden for a year and ate nothing but ice cream, according to Nick Barisheff, who was 15 when the 78-year-old duchess succumbed to cancer in his family’s apartment. She died in the upstairs front bedroom Nov. 24, 1960, 44 years ago this coming Monday.
It was a step down for the Grand Duchess, whose palace of birth, Peterhof, is also known as the “Russian Versailles.”
At age 19, on the occasion of her wedding in 1901, Tsar Nicholas granted his youngest sister a 200-room starter home — a $453-million St. Petersburg, parapeted, neo-Palladian with a 47-window front façade.
It had its own church, coach houses, a two-storey gardener’s shed, a greenhouse and an art studio for Olga, who painted. For sport, the couple hunted wolves. The childless couple was waited on by a staff of 70.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalpost.com ...
I thought it might’ve meant half of a double wide.
“I thought it might’ve meant half of a double wide.”
Lol yeah, I guess they’re called “single wides”?
Q: What do revolutions and tornados have in common?
A: Some Rooskis and rednecks are losing ... zzzzzzz.
wow thanks for this bit of history
Heartbreaking. Some of the displaced and impoverished old Russian nobility or near-nobility lived in San Francisco when I was there in the 70’s. They added a lot to the community, as I understand it started the San Francisco ballet school. And ran little restaurants out on Geary near the Russian cathedral. Lovely and very cheap food cooked by little old ladies with their heads held high and a certain starch in their spines. Unbowed…One of them had a bakery that made the best Christmas log cakes loaded with rum, which she pronounced RRRRoooom.
So the semi had a flat?
“You can go from boom to bust
from dreams to a bowl of dust.”
I understand there was a price the Russian peasants had to pay for such beauty to be created, perhaps too high a price, but it shows the Romanovs could create beauty. What did the Bolsheviks and even our home grown “progressives” ever create that is anywhere comparable? Soviet bloc housing? The Mother Cabrini Projects? Collectivism breeds ugliness as it is death to the human spirit.
He might be another geologist... you know, “give or take a million years”... ARF!
Supposedly Olga was happy there, very happy. She had never had a happy life as a Romanov, she was essentially her mother’s ‘companion’ and ended up being happily anonymous.
OMG....When I saw those palaces that are BLOCKS LONG and EVERYTHING is Gold, I KNEW why they had a Revolution!!
Didn’t a crown prince of Austria live out his days in a shack in Missouri?
I don’t think you can compare the two. That semi in Toronto is listed for $539,000!!!!
Don’t judge Kenya or Kenyans by the one. Most are Christian unlike Obama’s dad and they are turning into quite a vibrant free market economy while the USA under Obama is heading in the opposite direction
Not really. The tsarist secret police and gulags were abominable. The soviets made them worse
Brits use the housing term “semi-detached” to describe what we call a duplex. Perhaps the Canadians use the same term.
We call it a duplex too.
Ok, thanks.
That’s an old storefront converted to an apartment. Not sure where the “semi” thing comes from, there’s no side alley. It’s not detached at all, and probably only an alley in the rear just big enough for a delivery truck that is shared with opposite side. If it was built as residential there would be a small walled yard and possibly a single garage facing what was called a coal alley.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.