Pyotr Pavlovich Durnovo was Moscow's Governor General during the 1905 Russian Revolution. His dacha became the site of an anarchist occupation in 1917. From 1881 to July 1917 he was the vowel of the Saint Petersburg City Duma (chairman from 1904). In the provincial zemstvo meeting, he was elected a member of the City Council, chairman of the Permanent Financial Commission of the City Council of St. Petersburg. Durnovo lived in a family mansion on 16 Angliyskaya Embankment, owned the Durnovo Dacha on , as well as apartment buildings adjacent to it (No. 13-15).