People's Houses

People's Houses (Russian: Народный дом) were originally leisure and cultural centres built with the intention of making art and cultural appreciation available to the working classes. The first establishment of this type appeared in Tomsk, Russia in 1882. Soon people's Houses became popular in England (1887, "People's Palace"), Scotland, Turkey and other European states.

The term "people's house" (e.g., folkets hus, casa del pueblo, maison du peuple, etc.) was used in continental Europe for working-class community centres, and these were often associated with labor unions and parties.

In the late 19th century, People's Palaces started being built in grim urban districts. The concept was to raise morale and morality through inspiring buildings which offered cultural nourishment. Costly, taking years to build and lavishly decorated, they were designed to provide a focal point for civic pride, venues for meetings and public events.

Notably these were built according to neo-Gothic style, as promoted by Augustus Pugin and John Ruskin: Pugin believed the harmonious style of the architecture could influence morality, while Ruskin in his book The Stones of Venice examined the architecture of the Italian Renaissance mercantile republics, believing it expressed the spirit of freedom. Architects adopted these ideas in their building of People's Palaces in the north of England and in Scotland, both to assert the cultural credentials of those regions and to provide an improving influence over the citizens of burgeoning industrial towns.

In 1899 Joseph Rowntree and Arthur Sherwell proposed that People's Houses should be built as part of a programme by the Temperance Party to provide "recreations of the simplest and least exacting kind, such as would specially appeal to those to whom the stress of their daily lives leaves little inclination for anything more than physical relaxation and cheerful intercourse": that is, a viable alternative to the public house.

The first People's House (Russian: Народный дом) was built in Tomsk in 1882, and several more were erected in the capital of Russia, St. Petersburg during that decade. By the beginning of the 20th century the capital supported about 20 People's Houses: these provided entertainment, educational clubs for middle-class intelligentsia, petty officials, students, soldiers and workers etc. Typically, a People's House included a library, reading room, theatre, tea rooms, a bookshop, a lecture hall with stage where activities such as Sunday school, evening classes for adults and choral singing might be held. Some included a museum with various types of visual aids used in lectures in the course of systematic training, and which were also used for travelling and permanent exhibitions.

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