House of the Press

Semyon Shoikhet graduated from the Tashkent Polytechnic Institute in 1956 with the degree of "engineer-architect" and spent his early career developing master plans for seven Moldavian cities before moving to Chișinău. The House of the Press on Pushkin Street was his first collaboration with Abram Vaysbein, completed in 1967, and the partnership went on to produce the National Bank and, with Victor Dubok, the Telephone Exchange. All three belong to the same cluster of utilitarian buildings inserted into the city's administrative district during the same period, sharing a typological family resemblance in their horizontal window banding and brise-soleil elements. The building's elongated block draws on the constructivist tradition in its industrial massing, visible in its entirety from the open square in front of the National Palace opposite. Ground floor spaces serve a range of commercial functions, with four upper floors of newspaper and magazine publisher offices above, and a printing press in a separate structure immediately behind. The original design included a rooftop sundeck and, according to the architects' drawings, a clock above the brise-soleil at the main entrance. Neither made it into the final building. The ground floor is now largely obscured by commercial signage.