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).

Being of peasant origin, B. I. Petroff audited courses in arts, architecture and sculpture at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, having graduated in 1912 as an architect. In 1913, he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg where he was a student of the famed artists Benois, Pomerantseff and Solovieff. In 1917 he was in Khabarovsk when he was drafted to 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. 

Petroff created the second design of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral on Route Paul Henry. The first design, by L. N. Pashkoff, had to be abandoned when the French Concession authorities decided to extend Route Lorton to go past the prospective church building. Petroff's design, approved in December 1932, adapted to this extension, but did so at the expense of the highly desirable symmetrical 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 supervising the construction died in February 1933, and the appointment of Bishop John Maksimovich led to the rotation of the chief architect. In early June 1933, 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).