architecture. The building, with giant Ionic columns spanning four floors and topped with a fifth, hidden into an elaborate cornice, was based on the Italian Renaissance. Shchuko decorated a flat wall outside the main portico with loggias interspaced with carved relief, a pattern that became common in 1930s stalinist architecture. The second, at no. 63, puzzled contemporary critics as being monumental yet neither historic nor modern, "a style appropriate for contemporary urban architecture". Critics especially praised his stern treatments of windows recessed in a flat wall, another future staple of stalinist architecture. "The ramifications of Shchuko's neoclassicism appeared in many other, less obvious, forms during the retrospective phase of Soviet architecture—indeed, until the late 1950s." However, unlike his contemporary Ivan Fomin, Shchuko built little in Saint Petersburg. His other notable pre-revolutionary projects, the empire style Russian Pavilions, were built in Rome and Turin for the 1911 International Exhibition of Art and were soon dismantled. In 1913 Shchuko began construction of the neoclassical Municipal Building in Kyiv; it was partially completed during World War I and rebuilt to Shchuko's revised draft in the 1920s. The building later housed the Communist Party headquarters in Ukraine, the Gestapo, and currently the Security Service of Ukraine. Apart from the Kyiv project, Shchuko had completed a single architectural job during the war, rebuilding the Memorial Hall at the Academy of Arts (1914–1915); another Saint Petersburg project, a bank building on Nevsky Prospect, was left unfinished. Stage design Shchuko's first theatrical production was made for the 1907–1908 season of the Old-Time Theatre in Saint Petersburg, followed by another season in 1911–1912 (Calderon's Purgatory of St. Patrick). Shchuko's early theatrical production departed from the modernized revivalism of Mir iskusstva as the artist settled for exact recreation of the early 19th century romanticism. Later, in 1919-1920s, Shchuko was criticized for "Schillerisation of Shakespeare" through introducing irrelevant romanticism into medieval settings. World War I and the subsequent Russian Civil War put a hold on nearly all construction projects for a decade, yet the theatre prospered. The architect turned to theatre again, joined the board of Nikolai Evreinov's Prival Komediantov cabaret in 1916. In 1918 Shchuko and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky collaborated with the Theatre of Artistic Drama as stage designers; the company collapsed after producing Tirso de Molina's El Burlador. In February 1919 Shchuko, Dobuzhinsky and Benois moved to the newly opened Bolshoy Drama Theatre. Shchuko landed a full-time job as