His first real project, executed upon his return from Italy in 1907, was the facades of two adjacent apartment blocks on Saint Petersburg's Kamenny Island (Markov Buildings, 1908–1910), which became instantly popular and were copied by fellow architects and included in textbooks on Russian architecture.
The first, at 65, Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt, employing his novel giant order, is still used as a reference in Russian textbooks on 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 Kiev; 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 Kiev 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.
His first real project, executed upon his return from Italy in 1907, was the facades of two adjacent apartment blocks on Saint Petersburg's Kamenny Island (Markov Buildings, 1908–1910), which became instantly popular and were copied by fellow architects and included in textbooks on Russian architecture. The first, at 65, Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt, employing his novel giant order, is still used as a reference in Russian textbooks on 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 Kiev; 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 Kiev 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.
Vladimir Shchuko