In the personal fund of the architect-restorer of the pre-war Leningrad N. P. Nikitin there is an unpublished photograph of students of the Architectural Department of the Higher Art School of the Academy of Arts, who graduated in 1917. Based on the documents of the six Petersburg»s archives the author could recognize each of the students and also to trace the episodes of their life and professional path. The article represents the experience of a collective biography of architects who found themselves between generations of pre-revolutionary and already Soviet architects and who failed to fully feel their own relevance.