This house was built in 1898 by order of the bakery master Gauswald for his wife Evgenia Karlovna. The project was created by famous architects Chagin and Shene. Vladimir Ivanovich Chagin was educated at the Academy of Fine Arts and by the time work on the Gauswald dacha began, he had already participated in several major projects, and after the October Revolution he was engaged in the reconstruction and restoration of many architectural monuments. It was he who was one of the first to build Art Nouveau buildings in St. Petersburg, most of which he created together with Vasily Ivanovich Shene.Stone Island was already in those years a privileged area of St. Petersburg, where many famous and wealthy people lived: merchant Eliseev, a major industrialist Putilov, outstanding scientists.The Gauswald Cottage is the first Art Nouveau building in Russia, most of which is built of wood. At the same time, the asymmetry characteristic of this architectural style, broken roof lines and some other details are observed. The central two-storey part of the building is wooden, a one-storey building with a semicircular portal adjoins it. The basement is lined with a rubble slab used in the construction of most cottages on Kamenny Island. On the ground floor there were living master rooms, and on the second floor there were an office and apartments for guests. Some experts are of the opinion that a lot of things were taken from classical English cottage architecture when creating the Gauswald cottage, while others claim that the "Bavarian" style can be traced in the features of the building.In the first years after the October Revolution, Kamenny Island, by that time renamed the island of Workers, began to be empty, and street children settled in its elite houses, which over time became more and more. Then, by the decision of the authorities, a children's colony was located in the Gauswald dacha. Street children lived here until 1923 and stole everything they could get to: colored stained glass with elegant lead inserts were sorted out by the colony's pets for sinkers for fishing rods and other necessities.In the mid-1920s, a dispensary of the Leningrad Metal Factory was located in the Gauswald dacha, and the island of Workers itself became a place of concentration of dachas of major officials. Throughout the Soviet era, the appearance of the Gauswald dacha attracted the attention of the creators of many famous films. In this house, Jan Fried filmed his "Don Cesar de Bazan" and "The Bat", and in Igor Maslennikov's "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson", the Gauswald dacha turned into the mansion of Irene Adler.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, hard days came for dacha. This building was purchased by a private firm, which for twenty years did not use it in any way, and the house fell into complete disrepair. After the study, it turned out that more than 80% of wooden buildings were almost destroyed by mold. After reviewing the conclusion of experts, the authorities decided to demolish all the affected wooden structures. However, this never happened. A few years later, there was a new accident check, as a result of which it was finally decided to disassemble all the wooden parts, and subsequently install a building designed by architect Rafael Dayanov in their place.In the summer of 2019, the facade of the building was restored and its historical appearance was restored.