bg Sofia

Nikola Shavkulov House

- Georgi Stoykov Rakovski Street 93 -
The residential and commercial building was built in 1925 for the Bulgarian merchant and banker Nikola Ivanov Shavkulov. He commissioned the design to the architectural bureau of and . The building was not damaged during the of Sofia during the and was nationalized in 1947. The elevator in the spiral staircase has two doors, made by the Swiss company Schindler.
Nikola Shavkulov with his wife Ekaterina and their two children, Vasilka and Ivan in Sofia, in 1903
Nikola Shavkulov was born in 1855 in the large Macedonian Bulgarian town of . He is the youngest son in the large trading family of Ivan and Temyana Shavkulov. In the 1860s, a fire destroyed the farm of the Shavkulov family in Pletvar and the family fell into poverty. From the age of ten until twelve, he worked as a servant in the inn of Mirche Hadjiyovkov, husband of his sister Maria, in Prilep. In 1879, Nikola settled in where he founded the fur trade company "Bratya Shavkulov" and was trading in leather that was sent from Africa.

Nikola Shavkulov married Ekaterina Hadjimisheva in 1897, and together they had four children, Vasilka, Ivan, Boris, and Radko, who were all born in Thessaloniki.

In 1913, during the Balkan Wars, when Thessaloniki became part of Greece, he and his brother Dimitar settled in Sofia, where they continued to trade in leather. In 1921, they closed the company, and in 1922, Nikola Shavkulov founded his own company named Nikola Shavkulov Joint Stock Company, which continues to engage in the trade of leather and other commercial activities.

He died in Sofia in 1930 at the age of 75 and was buried in the Central Sofia Cemetery. In his will, Nikola obliges his heirs to set aside BGN 20,000 a year from the company's revenues for five years in favor of the orphanage, run by the Macedonian Women's Charitable Society.
An old photo showing the building
The building is built in the styles of Art Nouveau and Eclectic. The dome of the building stands out with its beautiful decorative vase on top of it. The roof , that runs along the entire building contains a strip of , which can be seen just below the cornice. Another eye catching feature are the two that can be seen on the second floor, which are adorned with . Underneath the segmental part of the underpass, you'll see an iron sign which states Домъ Шавкуловъ (Shavkulov House).
The wrought iron sign stating Shavkulov Home