Fedor Lidval’ studied under L. N. Benois at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1890 to 1896. He became an academician of architecture in 1909. He worked primarily in St. Petersburg, but he moved to Sweden after the Revolution of 1917. Between 1910-1920, he designs expressed a transition from Art Nouveau to Neoclassicism. He used decorative motifs of the Renaissance and, to a lesser extent, of Russian classicism, freely varying them and preserving the graphic quality and lightness of architectural details characteristic of the late Art Nouveau style (for example, the Azov-Don Bank, now the Central Telephone Exchange, 1907–09; the Astoriia Hotel, 1910–14; and the former Nobel house on Karl Marx Street, between 1910 and 1915).