THE WOLKOFF'S HOME MUSEUM

History of the Wolkoff Family
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In the 19th century Finland was still a part of Russia but it was autonomous. Around the 1850s a lot of Russian immigrants came to Finland and especially to Lappeenranta. So did also three sons of a Russian serf, Aleksandr Wolkoff: Andrej, Ivan and Vsevolod. Ivan and Vsevolod stayed in town. First they worked as gardeners and butchers. In 1871 Ivan Wolkoff and his family became Finnish citizens and they bought a house in Kauppakatu where they established their shop and home. After Ivan's death, his son, Nikolai, continued his work with his wife, Maria, and children Johannes and Anna (in the picture below).

The house
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The house was built by Mr. Claudelin, a merchant, and all the new owners were also merchants. At first, trading took place in the court and in storage rooms, but in 1890 a door to the street was opened and proper shop fittings were bought.
The present house consists of two parts: the older part is situated on the Kauppakatu side and the extension was built in 1905 on the Ainonkatu side. In addition to the main building, around the courtyard were also large storage rooms and some buildings for domestic animals.

The house itself consists of six rooms and a kitchen. Each room has at least one icon in the corner and the icons are very old, brought from Russia, and very valuable. In the drawing room the guests were received in the old days. There is valuable old furniture, which Maria Ivanovna brought from St. Petersburg as she got married to Ivan Wolkoff.

The house has also two studies, one for the men and the other one for the ladies. The furniture of the ladies' study was provided by Anna Wolkoff-Nissinen as she moved back home to live with his brother and his family after her husband died. She worked in Lappeenranta as a teacher of Russian and German languages and she became a legend. There are still people in Lappeenranta, who were her students in the 1960s and they remember her with awe mingled with fear. She was very strickt and if you didn't learn something, she brought you to her home and you stayed there until you had learned it. The picture is from her study.
The kitchen is small, it was made only for cooking, all meals and breakfast were eaten in the dining room beside the kitchen.
There are also three bedrooms in the house, one was for Anna, one for Johannes and his wife and one for their children.

The history of the museum
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Wolkoff's house is unique. It represents the Russian and Orthodox traditions and also the life in Lappeenranta between the 19th and 20th centuries. The project of turning the house into a museum started in the 1980s, when the members of the family were still living in the house. The house and its valuable items were sold to a local society in 1986, and that is when the museum started to form. The house was legally protected in 1990 and the town bought it in 1991. The opening of the museum was delayed by the fire in 1992 but after repairing the house it has finally been opened and you can visit the museum on guided tours.

Here is a picture of a samovar, in which tea was brewed in the old days. It is still used in some parts of Russia, for example.