The building, designed by Mikhail Dashkevich in architectural forms that occupy an intermediate position between Art Nouveau and Constructivism, has a symbolic shape of the letter "C" (the name in the Slavic alphabet is "word"). Inhabited in 1930. In May 1933, the arrest of Mikhail Yalovoy (pseudonym Yulian Shpol) and the suicide of Mykola Khvylovy marked the beginning of a wave of repressions against Ukrainian cultural figures and the beginning of the ill-fame of the writer's house, which, according to Ivan Bagryany (arrested in 1932), would soon receive the nickname "Crematorium" ... Until 1938, residents of forty out of sixty-six apartments were repressed. Many of the repressed writers were shot. After the transfer of the capital of the Ukrainian SSR to Kiev, some of the writers moved to the Rolyt house.
Mentioned in many fiction and memoir works.
