Birth of Hovhannes Kajaznuni (February 1, 1868)

Hovhannes Kajaznuni was an important political figure, particularly in the crucial years of 1917-1920, and became one of the founding fathers of the Republic of Armenia as its first prime minister. He also was an accomplished architect, with important work done in Baku before the Russian Revolution and Armenia after the sovietization.

He was born on February 1, 1868, in Akhaltskha (now Akhaltsikhe in the region of Javakhk, Georgia). His family was originally from Erzerum. Their original surname was Igitkhanian, and his great-grandfather, a priest called Ter Hovhannes, had received permission from the Catholicos of All Armenians to change the surname to Ter-Hovhannisian. At his turn, his great-grandson translated the family name into Armenian, turning Igitkhanian into Kajaznuni; igit means “brave” in Turkish (kaj in Eastern Armenian, kach in Western).

Kajaznuni studied in Tiflis from 1877-1886, first in a private school and then in the royal school. In 1887 he entered the Institute of Civil Engineering in St. Petersburg. Two years later, he married Satenik Mirimanian, despite her father’s opposition. They would have six children (four boys and two girls), and they would lose three of them to the service of the homeland. Ashot would die in the aftermath of his participation in the battle of Gharakilise (1918); Aram would die in the summer of 1920 fighting Tatar rebels in the region of Zangibasar (Masis); Ashot’s twin brother, Ruben, would be taken prisoner and killed by the Turks after the occupation of Kars (1920).

In his last years of studies, Kajaznuni joined the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. He graduated in 1893 with the title of architect. He moved to Baku, where he worked as engineer-architect in the regional architecture department from 1893-1895. After working for two years as an architect in Batum, from 1897-1899 he was a district architect for the municipal administration of Tiflis. He returned to Baku in 1899 and worked for the next seven years in the Oilmen’s Council as chief architect. He designed a hospital, residential buildings, and hotels in the area of Balakhan. He was also the designer and builder of the Cathedral of St. Thaddeus and Bartholomew in downtown Baku from 1907-1911, which would be destroyed by the Soviet Azerbaijani regime in the early 1930s.

Meanwhile, Kajaznuni had actively entered political life in 1906, becoming a member of the committee to end the Armeno-Tatar conflict in Baku. In 1909 he was arrested by the Russian police within the case that had been opened against the A.R.F. and left the empire in 1911 to avoid testifying in the trial. He lived in France, Belgium, and in the city of Van, in Western Armenia, where he wrote various articles in Russian on Shakespeare.

Returning to the Caucasus in 1914, he was elected a member of the Armenian National Council in 1917 and, after the Russian Revolution, he was elected to the Transcaucasian Parliament (Seim) in February 1918.

In the critical days of May 1918, Kajaznuni was a member of the Armenian delegation that participated in the conferences of peace in Trabizond and Batum. He was among the signatories of the Treaty of Batum on June 4, 1918, a few days after Armenia had declared its independence.

After the foundation of the Republic, Kajaznuni was designated first Prime Minister. The cabinet moved to Yerevan from Tiflis on July 19, 1918. In October, under pressure from the Council (Parliament) of Armenia, Kajaznuni resigned, but was charged by the Council with the formation of a new coalition government. The coalition was formed by the A.R.F. and the Armenian Populist Party, and would last until June 1919. Meanwhile, in April 1919 Kajaznuni traveled to the United States as part of a delegation to negotiate political and economic help to Armenia, and left the position of prime minister to Alexander Khadisian.

He returned to Armenia in September 1920 and was named vice-president of the Parliament, becoming president in the last days of the Republic, on November 25. After the sovietization, Kajaznuni was arrested and spent a month and a half in prison, until he was liberated by the February rebellion. In April 1921, after the failure of the rebellion, he left Armenia and lived in Iran, India, Egypt, and Romania. He wrote a report on the party’s situation, The Armenian Revolutionary Federation Has Nothing to Do Any Longer, which was published in 1923 and generated a big controversy. In 1924 he returned to Soviet Armenia.

He taught architectural planning at Yerevan Statue University and was a member of the technical council of the Institute of State Planning. He designed and directed the construction of cotton factories in Yerevan and Sardarabad, oil and soap factories in Yerevan, and housing for workers. He also built various buildings in Leninakan (nowadays Gyumri) after the earthquake of 1926. 

Kajaznuni was a victim of the Stalinist purges. His past condemned him. He was arrested in 1937 and died on January 15, 1938 from pneumonia in the prison of Yerevan. Otherwise, he had been condemned to be shot on December 5, 1937, but the prison doctor had temporarily postponed the sentence. His archives were confiscated and disappeared. Kajaznuni was rehabilitated in 1955, but his name remained in the shadows until the end of the Soviet period.

According to certain data, the first primer minister of the Republic of Armenia was buried in the cemetery of Kozern, in Yerevan. However, the cemetery was later destroyed and his tomb was lost. Thanks to the efforts of Kajaznuni’s daughter Margarit, a symbolic tombstone was erected in the city cemetery of Tokhmakh Lake.

Death of Toros Toramanian (March 1, 1934)

A portrait of Toramanian by Martiros Sarian.

The scientific study of Armenian architecture has reached important milestones since the early twentieth century. One name is to be remembered as its pioneer: Toros Toramanian.

Toramanian was born on March 18, 1864 in the city of Shabin-Karahisar, in Western Armenia. (One year later, another famous Armenian would be born there: General Antranig.) He attended the local Armenian schools, and at the age of fourteen, he lost his parents. In 1884 he left for Constantinople to pursue higher education. After working for two years as a mason and stone worker, he approved the entrance exam of the School of Fine Arts and studied architecture from 1886 to 1893.

He graduated in 1893, but he had not begun his career yet, when he was forced to leave the city due to the massacres ordained by Sultan Abdul Hamid II. After going to Belgium, he then moved to Sofia and Varna, in Bulgaria, where he built several public and residential buildings. He went to Romania in 1900, and then visited Egypt, Italy, and Greece.

Toramanian settled in Paris in 1902, where he deepened his knowledge on history of architecture at the Sorbonne. There he met Garabed Basmajian, director of the journal Banaser, whom he already knew from Constantinople. They put together the project of a mission to Ani in order to study the monuments of the capital of the Bagratuni Kingdom. They traveled in 1903, and discovered that the task was immense, and their means were very limited. Basmadjian returned to Paris to collect the necessary funds, and Toramanian remained alone in Ani, but he never obtained any financial assistance.

The ruins of a church in Ani.

He wintered in Ani, in extremely difficult conditions. In an article on the church of Zvartnots published in 1905, he wrote: “I decided to stay and work in Ani to save from oblivion the remnants of the glorious past of our great people in order to be able to show them to the whole world.”

Toramanian had meanwhile participated in the excavations of Zvartnots, near Etchmiadzin, in the spring of 1904. He made a detailed study of the remaining pieces of the church, destroyed by an earthquake in the ninth century, and examined one by one all of them. This archaeological approach, quite unusual for the time, allowed him to propose the model of reconstruction of the circular church of Zvartnots that we know today.

The remains of Zvartnots Cathedral near the airport named after it in Armenia.

In 1904 Professor Nicolas Marr, from the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg, made his second campaign of excavations in Ani. Toramanian joined his team, and had the opportunity to study many monuments of the former Armenian capital, as well as of the surroundings, including the monasteries of Horomos, Tekor, and Bagnayr. In 1905-1906 the team of Marr discovered the remnants of the church of Gagikashen in Ani. Moreover, the finding of the statue of its builder, King Gagik I of Ani, holding the model of the church, confirmed Toramanian’s reconstruction of the circular church of Zvartnotz with three floors.

The architect continued his association with Marr at Ani and made various publications in Armenian journals, and became well-known in scholarly circles. In 1913 he was invited to Vienna by the famous Austrian art historian Josef Strzygowski (1862-1941) to give lectures on Armenian art, particularly about Ani. They had projected a joint work on the subject, based on the documents and materials that Toramanian had gathered. Afterwards, Toramanian accompanied Strzygowski on a brief trip in Armenia, and promised to complete the documentation for the joint publication.

The beginning of World War I made it impossible for Toramanian to travel back to Austria to continue work on the publication. In 1918, however, the cover of the two-volume Die Baukunst die Armenier und Europa (The Art of the Armenians and Europe), which would engage specialists of European medieval art in heated debates, only had Strzygowski’s name on it, with Toramanian reduced to the role of an informant. Besides, he had lost most of his archives and unpublished works during the Ottoman invasion of Armenia in 1918, followed by the flee of his family from Alexandropol to Tiflis, including a dictionary of Armenian architecture, a comparative study of Byzantine and Armenian architecture, and a study on the history of Armenian funerary monuments.

After the establishment of the Soviet regime in Armenia, Toramanian became one of the founding members of the Committee for the Maintenance of Monuments. He created the Department of Architecture of the State Museum of Armenia, which he directed for two years. He passed away on March 1,1934, and his archives provided the material for the two-volume Materials for the History of Armenian Architecture, posthumously published in 1942 and 1948.

October 23, 1908: Birth of Anna Ter Avetikian

This name is probably unfamiliar to the English reader. Anna Ter Avetikian was the first female architect of Armenia and the designer of some recognizable buildings in Yerevan.

She belonged to a family well-known to older inhabitants of the capital of Armenia. The Ter Avetikians had been instrumental in the construction of many historic buildings, such as the small hall of the Philarmonia of Yerevan, the old building of Yerevan State University, and the first hospital of the city, located on Abovian Street. Their efforts had succeeded in the creation of the first drinking water network of Yerevan.

In 1924 Anna Ter Avetikian entered the department of Architecture of the Technical School of Yerevan State University, which became the grounds for the Yerevan Polytechnic Institute in 1933 (now the State Engineering University of Armenia). She graduated in 1930. In 1926, while still a student, she started working in the studios of two renowned architects, Nikoghayos Buniatian and Alexander Tamanian (the author of the master plan of Yerevan and of many of its most characteristic buildings). Later she went to work in design organizations.

The designs of Ter-Avetikian were used for the construction of about forty buildings in Yerevan (schools, residential buildings, and administrative buildings). These included the building of film makers at the corner of Mashtots Avenue and Koriun, where the legendary coffee shop “Ponchikanots” (the ponchik is a kind of donut) and the Mayakovsky School are located.

An inscription on a building designed by Anna Ter-Avetikian where Armenian filmakers lived during the Soviet period in central Yerevan.

She married architect Konstantin Hovhannisian (1911-1984), who also worked in the studios of Buniatian and Tamanian in the 1930s, and together they designed the buildings of the Yerevan Police, the Yerevan Fire Station (on Sakharov Square), and the “Sasuntsi Davit” cinema (demolished in the 1980s). Her husband was the head of the excavations of Arin-Berd (1950-1972) and dug out the remnants of the citadel of Erebuni.

Anna Ter Avetikian was a laureate of the Soviet overviews of female architects in 1938 and 1956, and received a diploma from the international exhibition of Paris, “Women in Art and Popular Creation” in 1938. Her design of the building of film makers earned her the first prize in the all-Soviet competition of female architects of 1948. In 1967 she received a congratulatory note from the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian Republic and in 1968 she became an emeritus architect of Armenia.

She also won recognition and honors from the independent Republic of Armenia: the golden medal “Alexander Tamanian” (2002) and the golden medal “Yerevan” of the Yerevan City Hall. In 2012, at the age of 104, she gave an interview to the news agency Mediamax, in which she said:

“I can’t single out any one of the buildings. Is it possible to say which one of your children is your dearest?

“All my buildings are built with national style. That was not only conditioned by traditions, but by seismic and weather conditions, as well as the characteristics of national psychology.

“All cities change, and that’s natural. There are periods of flourishing and decline. However, people build the city and its environment is created thanks to them. The old city has to be maintained; keeping the link of time educates people and ties them to their history and roots.”

Anna Ter Avetikian passed away at the age of 105. Her passing was announced on January 16, 2013, by the news agency A1+.

Birth of Alexander Tamanian - March 16, 1878

Alexander Tamanian was the founder of Armenian modern architecture. His vision for Yerevan was going to turn the village-like capital of Armenia in the 1920s into a modern city. 

Tamanian was born in Krasnodar (Northern Caucasus). He graduated from the Arts Academy of St. Petersburg in 1904. His first work was the reconstruction of the Armenian church of St. Catherine in St. Petersburg in 1904-1906. Following the excavations of Nikolai Marr in Ani, he projected the museum of Ani in 1908, which was not realized. 

He would develop a very successful career as architect in Russia. His blueprints for different building in various cities of Russia from 1907-1913 (the house of Scherbatov in Moscow, in 1911-1913, won the golden medal of the City Duma) applied the forms of classicism and Russian architecture of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was elected full member of the Russian Art Academy in 1914 and became president of the Council of the Russian Art Academy, with status of vice-president of the Academy, in 1917.

The independence of Armenia in 1918 opened a new page in his life. He moved to Yerevan in 1919 to serve his country. He designed the coat-of-arms of the Republic, together with painter Hakob Kojoyan, which was restored as Armenia’s national coat of arms in 1992. Following the sovietization of Armenia, he left for Iran in 1921 and accepted the invitation of the Soviet Armenian government to return in 1923. 

Thereafter, and until his death on February 11, 1936 in Yerevan, he developed a very active professional life. In 1923 he was designated deputy chairman of the State Planning Committee. He became chairman of the Committee for Conservation of Monuments in 1924. 

In the same year, he created the master plan of the city of Yerevan, which signaled the beginning of Soviet city construction in Armenia. It was conceived for a city of 150,000 inhabitants (Yerevan had 25,000 at the time of the first Republic) and became the basis for the subsequent blueprints of the city. In 1934 he started the project for “Great Yerevan” (500,000 inhabitants), which remained unfinished. 

He also designed the plans for various cities between 1925 and 1933, including Gumri, Vagharshapat, Stepanakert, Gavar, and Hrazdan among others. He designed and built in Yerevan the morgue of the Medical Institute (1926-1933), the astronomical observatory (1930-1933), the National Library (1932-1938), and others, and his talent as a great architect was recognized particularly with his master plan of Yerevan, and the buildings of the Government House (1932-1941, State Prize of the USSR in 1942) and the Opera and Ballet Theater and Concert Hall (1926-1953). 

These two buildings predetermined and conditioned the architectonical solutions for

the most important urban points of Yerevan: the ensemble of the Republic Square (State Prize of Armenia in 1970), the area adjacent to the Opera Theater (the blueprint won the Great Golden Medal of the World Exhibition of 1937 in Paris), and the construction of the Northern Avenue, recently executed. Tamanian’s creations reinterpreted the principles of classical Armenian architecture with new quality, and opened new ways to develop their traditions in what has been called the “Tamanian School.” In 1936, Poet Yeghishe Charents wrote his poem “Vision of Death,” the third one with this title, in memory of the recently deceased architect. He started with the following lines:

“He saw a solar city...

As a sundial, drawn upon the blue side of pure marble,

here is the map of the city.

Avenues, streets, extending in circles,

and in the center, a granite altar reaching to the sky.”

Birth of Artur Tarkhanian - February 23, 1932

Some of the most representative buildings of the city of Yerevan are related to the name of architect Artur Tarkhanian.

He was born in Yerevan in 1932. He graduated from the Polytechnic Institute (now Yerevan State Engineering University) in 1957. Upon graduation, he started his career at the Haypetnakhagitz (Armenian State Project) Institute. He taught at Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction since 1968. He was conferred the titles of Emeritus Architect of Armenia in 1972 and of People’s Architect in 1987, and became an honorary member of the Moscow branch of the International Academy of Architecture in 1992.

Tarkhanian was distinguished with several all-Soviet prizes, among them the Creativity Medal for Young Architects (1962 and 1968), achievements of Soviet architecture in the period 1973-1977, Best Construction of the Year (1982), Best Creation of the Year (1985). He also received the Anania Shirakatsi Medal of the Republic of Armenia (1998). 

Tarkhanian’s name is linked, together with his coauthors, to some of the best known buildings and monuments, such as:

- The branches of the Social Sciences institutes of the National Academy of Sciences (1955-1972);
- The monument to the victims of the Armenian Genocide on the Tzitzernakaberd hill (1967);
- The “Ayrarat” cinema hall, formerly known as “Rossiya” (1970-1974, winner of the prize of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union in 1979);
- The Youth Palace (1970-1985, winner of the Prize of the all-Soviet Communist Youth Union in 1981);
- The Sports and Music Complex (1984, winner of the State Prize of the USSR in 1987);
- The Zvartnots Airport (1981, winner of the State Prize of Armenia in 1985);
- The monument to painter Martiros Saryan (1986);
 - The monument to singer Charles Aznavour in Gumri (2001); etc.

The prize-winning Youth Palace has been regarded as one of the representative works of Soviet modernism. Unfortunately, this collective work of Tarkhanyan and his colleagues Hrach Poghosyan and Spartak Khachikian was sold by the government and demolished by its new owner in 2006—the same year of Tarkhanian’s death—despite expert opinion that the building only needed to be renovated. The 18-floor Youth Palace, containing a hotel, a revolving cafe on the top floor (like the Marriott Hotel in Manhattan), two halls with a capacity of 1,000 and 300 seats, and its many artworks, which had been a popular place in the 1970s and 1980s, went down into history. Until today, the site remains empty.

Artur Tarkhanian (middle) reviewing architectural plans with colleagues.