Boris Petroff

Architect, artist

Born in Moscow on 17 July 1885; died in Australia on 27 July 1971. Wife Augusta (1912–1983), daughter Victoria (1929–2016).

Born in a peasant family, Boris Petroff audited courses in arts, architecture and sculpture at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In 1912, he graduated as an Architect. In 1913, he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg where his teachers were the famous artists Benois, Pomerantseff and Solovieff. He was in Khabarovsk in 1917, when he was drafted to fight in the First World War. 

Having worked his way to China, in the 1920s Petroff lived in Harbin, where he designed residential and industrial buildings. In 1921, his project for an Orthodox church in the workers' settlement of Harbin, executed in the neo-Russian style, received a third prize in the architectural contest. His other works were publicized in the Russian-language magazine Architecture and Life (1921–1922). Petroff's oil paintings participated in various exhibitions. 

In autumn 1931, Petroff arrived in Shanghai and opened an architecture department at V. A. Zasipkin's art studio. 

Alongside his colleague L. N. Pashkoff, Petroff created a design of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral on Route Paul Henry. Pashkoff’s design was eventually rejected when the French Concession authorities decided to extend Route Lorton past the prospective church building. Petroff's design, approved in December 1932, took the extension into account by sacrificing the symmetry of the cross-shaped plan of the building. The construction was put off to collect more funds for the purchase of the extra strip of land along Route Lorton.

Meanwhile, Bishop Simon who was supervising the construction died in February 1933. The appointment of Bishop John Maksimovich led to the rotation of the chief architect working on the church. In early June 1933, the artist J. L. Lehonos submitted his project of the new cathedral and took the lead of the project, with B. I. Petroff becoming the consulting architect. 

In 1936–1939 Petroff worked in Wladimir Yourieff's architecture firm in Tsingtao. In 1950, Petroff moved to Australia to his daughter. He designed the iconostasis for the Sts Peter and Paul Cathedral in Strathfield, Sydney (1953).