The Building of Rayman Girls`Gymnasium in Minsk

Rayman Girls` Gymnasium was set up in 1910. This private educational establishment was considered to be one of the most prestigious schools that were functioning in Minsk at that time. Only girls fr om very prosperous families could afford acquiring education at Rayman Girls` Gymnasium. An eight –year educational program was focusing on humanities such as Russian language and literature, theology and foreign languages. Less attention was paid to studying mathematics and physics. Before the October Revolution more than five hundred schoolgirls were enrolled in the gymnasium, and about three dozen teachers worked there.

Originally the gymnasium was situated in Zalkind House in Revolutsionnaya Street. The building in Kirova Street where the office of the 4th police station had been located at that time was chosen to house the educational institution. The new location of the gymnasium was known as Aleksieyevskaya House in Kirova Street, 5.

The patron of the gymnasium was Yelizavetha Dmitryevna Rayman. Her native town was Vyatka where she had been born in a noble family in the year of 1870. After graduation from the private gymnasium she worked as a form-mistress and a teacher. In 1900 Yelizavetha married Ivan Ivanovich Rayman who was Major General of Terek Cossack troops. After her husband`s death in 1903 the widow with her infant daughter moved to Minsk wh ere she got the position of headmistress at a private gymnasium. In the 1930s Yelizavetha Rayman left the city and moved to Leningrad. There are some records kept in the National Historical Archives of Belarus representing the way Rayman private female gymnasium functioned. The documents are dated 1910-1920s. There one can see class registers, summary records of the meetings of the teachers` board, achievement sheets of the students. The curricula of Aleksieyevskaya-Rayman private gymnasium are most marked.

The building of Rayman Girls` gymnasium is classified as architectural monument of the period of eclecticism. A three-storey building in brick built at the intersection of Magazinnaya Street (Kirova Street at present) and Mykhaylivsky Lane originally had been planned to be a dwelling house. As the gymnasium opened up there, an additional storey was built on and reconfiguring of the building was carried out. The construction has a trapezoidal shape with two entrances: one at the main façade and the other at the rear one.

The central risalite is stressed with beveled triangle attic. Many decorative elements have been made of brick. The elements of stucco work such as pilasters, capitals, window-frames, cornices were coated with white plaster.

The entrance from Kirova Street is crowned with a triangle pediment which ends archwise. The façade between the third and fourth floors is divided by blind arcading. Initially it was frescoed.

At present the premises of the ancient building house the Committee of Education of Minsk City Executive Committee and Court of the EEC.