Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein (, ; – 2 July 1920) was a civil engineer and architect working in Riga, the present-day capital of Latvia, when the city was part of the Russian Empire. He was active as an architect in the city at a time of great economic expansion and consequent enlargement, which coincided with the flourishing of Art Nouveau architecture. During the years 1901–1906, Eisenstein designed many of the best-known Art Nouveau buildings of Riga. His son, Sergei Eisenstein, became a well-known Soviet film director. Biography The archival documents from his personal file as a student at Saint-Petersburg University of Civil Engineering (1887-1893), published by professor and head of the Department of the History of Western Art of Saint Petersburg State University Roman Sokolov, Ph.D., show that Mikhail Eisenstein was born as Moisey Eisenstein into a merchant Jewish family in Bila Tserkva (Kiev Governorate, in present-day Ukraine). Some suggest that his maternal side were of Swedish roots. Eizenstein converted to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1897 and became a devout Christian. According to his son, he was a "staunch representative and admirer of the Russian bureaucratic class". He studied in Saint Petersburg and graduated as a civil engineer in 1893. Soon thereafter he moved to Riga, the present-day capital of Latvia, which was then part of the Russian Empire. He would continue living in Riga until 1917. He was employed at the traffic road department of the regional authorities in the Governorate of Livonia in 1895 and in 1900 appointed head of the department. His work at the department contributed to a rationalization of the maintenance and management of infrastructure in the region. He was awarded several medals and awards for his work as a civil servant, including the Order of Saint Anna (II and III classes) and the Order of Saint Stanislaus (II and III classes). At the same time, he practiced as an independent architect. In 1897 he married Yulia Ivanovna Konetskaya, who came from a prosperous non-Jewish family in Saint Petersburg. The couple settled in a large apartment in central Riga and took active part in the social life of the city's upper strata. According to the recollections of his son, the family had an international outlook and Eisenstein spoke both German and French in addition to Russian. He was interested in history and literature, and his library contained the works of Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tolstoy, Emile