History of the Bristol-Zhiguly Hotel

The Bristol-Zhiguly Hotel is situated in the business and historic centre of the city in one of its main streets – Kuibyshev street, formerly Dvoryanskaya (Nobility) street. The hotel was built in the Art Nouveau style of the 19th century which looks very attractive to people nowadays.

And now let us look back in history.

In 1870 Elisaveta Subbotina began to build this town house, and the construction lasted for nine years. At last, in 1879 Samara citizens could see a brick house with a plastered front. It was three-storeyed, like most of the hotels at that time. If you look at its plan, you’ll see that it is T-shaped, with its horizontal part – the beautiful front - overlooking Dvoryanskaya (now Kuibyshev) street and the vertical part being in the courtyard.

A bit later the owner began to let the right wing of the ground floor to the store of Franz A. Neiman and the left wing of the ground floor and the first and second floors were let as a hotel.

On January 1, 1897the Ivanov Brothers Trade House took on lease the whole building and later on, started the «Grand Central Hotel»there. They chose that very building because of its favourable location which was the best advertisement for hotels at that time.

From 1897 to 1907 the hotel had 60 comfortable rooms priced from 75 kopecks to 6 rubles per day. The hotel rooms were equipped with hot water baths and there was electricity in the building. Moreover, one could book a room, a table at the restaurant or reserve a parlour for a banquet by phone 1-92. The guests didn’t have to bother about getting to the hotel from the railway station or from the river port and back because they could enjoy the transfer service by omnibus, which was a long horse-drawn vehicle to carry passengers.

The hotel service was first-class. Every employee could speak French, English, German, Spanish and Polish.

To be sure, there has always been competition in the hotel business, and the owners of the Grand Central Hotel also suffered from “forbidden tricks” of their competitors who used to bribe horse-cab drivers and to concoct stories about the hotel trying to steal wealthy clients and destroy the hotel reputation. Nevertheless, despite this unfair play the hotel has always had a lot of guests.

The hotel restaurant was considered the best in Samara. It had a Moscow chef who used to cook exclusive dishes and unusual hors d’oeuvre. Two restaurant rooms (general and banquet) were decorated with tropical plants. By 1900 , the restaurant had parlours and billiards. Charity nights and concerts were often held in the banquet room, which was also used by the city German community for their special nights, which profited the hotel and upheld its image.

As mentioned before, the town house of Elena Subbotina was taken on lease by the Ivanov Brothers Trade House, but in 1907 they moved their «Grand Central Hotel» into a new building.

However, the hotel history didn’t finish that year but continued on a new, higher level. In 1908-1909 the building was fully repaired and reconstructed. In spite of the fact that the front was only redecorated, the building even changed its style. From the classicism style it was rebuilt in the decadence (or late art nouveau) style according to the project of the architect and civil engineer Mikhail Kvyatkovsky. The building remained three-storeyed, only the left part of the wing with an arched entrance on the ground floor and its narrow central part became four-storeyed.

On November 16, 1908 the rebuilt and restored town house became «Grand-Hotel » with a posh restaurant. This date can be considered the second birthday of the Bristol-Zhiguly hotel. The ground floor of the right wing continued to house Franz Neiman’s arms and optical store with a sign which looked like a huge gold blue-glassed pince-nez.

Automobiles and commissionaires were sent to all the ships and trains to meet the guests.

The hotel hall, restaurant and other rooms were decorated with tropical plants.

In 1909 a popular Russian singer Fyodor Shalyapin stayed at the hotel. Apart from his planned concerts, he once gave an improvised concert from the balcony of his suite of rooms to the audience standing under his windows. People deliberately came to the hotel to have a glimpse of their favourite singer.

So, the hotel and its restaurant worked until the revolution of 1917.

From 1917 to 1930 the hotel was closed and the building was occupied by some office.

In 1930s the former Grand-Hotel began to function as a hotel again with a new name «Bristol».

During the Great Patriotic War (1941 - 1945) the hotel was given the name Zhiguly after the beautiful mountains of Samara region. At that time Samara (which had a name Kuibyshev in Soviet times) had the status of «the provisional capital». Diplomatic missions used to come there by special trains to stay at the «Zhiguly» hotel.

In 1942 a famous Soviet writer Alexey Tolstoy, who had been evacuated to Kuibyshev, used to have lunch at the hotel restaurant, although he stayed at another hotel.

Since 2002 the name of the hotel has been «Bristol-Zhiguly».

Every day the hotel receives a lot of guests from various cities and countries not only because of its convenient location and high level of service, but also because of the hotel history and numerous legends and mysterious stories about this building. For example, some guests claim that they saw a woman in a vintage lacey dress walking along the hotel corridors. It is supposed to be Elisaveta Subbotina who used to own the hotel.

Nowadays the oldest Samara hotel Bristol-Zhiguly is developing successfully and the prospects look very promising. Besides, the Bristol-Zhiguly name is one of the success guarantees.