Kazan Station

Initially, the station was called Ryazansky. This is due to the name of the society of the Moscow-Ryazan Railway - a company that emerged in 1856 as the Moscow-Saratov Railway. In 1912, Moscow received a railway connection with Kazan. In this regard, the station was renamed to Kazan. However, for about twenty years, both names were used ^[3] .

The first station building, which was then called Ryazan, was wooden and opened in 1862 ^[4] . The first train on the route Moscow - Kolomna left the Ryazan station on July 20, 1862 . The railway was opened with imperfections, it was necessary to jump out of the cars, and I will carry them in my arms. A stone station building was built in 1864 (the architect of the original station building was the architect M. Yu. Levestam ^[5] . It was a small building with a common roof with a landing stage over tracks and platforms. A clock tower ^[4] stood above the entrance. The station was cramped and uncomfortable, and its architecture was modest. Since then, only a one-story Italian-style fan depot building has been preserved.6 The building was rebuilt many times, and when the Moscow-Kazan Railway opened in 1893, and passenger traffic increased significantly, demanded the axis is the construction of a new station building, capable of accommodating a larger number of passengers. However, only in 1910 the board of the joint-stock company of the Moscow-Kazan Railway decided to build a new building. Under the terms of the announced competition, its participants had to make a project "gate to the East" which should symbolize the connection between Europe and Asia, attended by academicians of architecture F. O. Shekhtel (author of the Yaroslavl station), A. V. Schusev and artist E. N. Feleisen. The projects of Shekhtel and Schusev were similar due to the pictorial grouping of various volumes present in both projects, but Schusev in his project used the warmer and more colorful motifs of Moscow baroque ^[3] . As a result, the board chose the Shchusev project ^[6] . On October 29, 1911, Shchusev was officially approved by the chief architect of the construction of the new station. The architect proposed a project in the national romantic style with elements of the Neo-Russian style and art of the East. In the spring of 1912, Shchusev began work on improving the project. The final draft was approved on November 12, 1913.

Construction began in 1913 and overshadowed the scale of all other construction projects at Moscow railway stations. Significant funds were allocated for the construction of the road by the Board, led by Nikolai Karlovich von Meck , and the best architects, engineers and artists of Russia were called on. N.K. participated in the creation of the interiors of the Kazan station Roerich , A.N. Benoit , B.M. Kustodiev , E.E. Lanceray , Z.E. Serebryakova . In 1914-1915, the laying of foundations was completed, a boiler room, luggage compartment, and the main entrance with a tower were built ^[7] . However, during the First World War, construction was repeatedly stopped, and only by the winter of 1916/1917 was it possible to build a roof ^[8] . In 1919, the building was commissioned in a simplified form. In 1926, the first phase of construction and decoration was completed. In 1940, the last stage of construction was completed, but many of Schusev’s plans remained unfulfilled ^[9] .

Even at the very beginning of construction, Shchusev insisted on creating a watch with a fight and ordered bronze zodiac signs for them in St. Petersburg, having independently completed drawings for them. However, the clock was started only in 1923 and worked until the autumn of 1941 , when the bell was dropped from the burst of a high-explosive bomb. The bell was returned back in the 70s. ^[10]

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  The building of the Ryazan station

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  Kazan station until 1913

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  The central part of the Ryazan station. From a postcard

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  Kazan station in the 1920s

In 1935, an exit from the Komsomolskaya metro station was built into the former luggage compartment ^[3] . In the 1950s, an underground suburban communication hall was built, which was connected to the lobby of the metro station ^[11] . It was also planned to build its own exit of the Komsomolskaya-Koltsevaya metro station (also constructed according to the project of A. V. Shchusev), which goes into the building of the Kazan station, but the project was never completed, and from this station you can get to the station through the lobby of the radial station .

In the 1970s, the station was reconstructed, during which the capacity of the station was increased ^[12] . In 1987 - 1997 the building has undergone large-scale reconstruction: the look has been updated, the interior has been expanded and re-planned, roofs have been built over the platforms, the building is equipped with modern technical means. Also, an underground passage was built under all station paths from Komsomolskaya Square to Novoryazanskaya Street, a landing stage over platforms, new buildings on Ryazan passage and Novoryazanskaya Street (including Tsarskaya Tower ), created on the basis of Shchusev's drawings. The reconstruction was completed in 1997, to the 850th anniversary of Moscow ^[13] .

In 2003, the underground passage was closed under the tracks of the Kazan station. In 2010, the gallery of the People's Artist of Russia Dmitry Belyukin was opened in the Tsar’s Tower ^[14] . In 2012, a two-story ground building for suburban communications was erected on the platforms.

Kazan Station is a complex composition in which symmetry is deliberately broken and in which diverse masses of architectural volumes are connected to each other. The architect, wanting to coordinate the building with the two already built and at the same time give it personality, presented elongated buildings with various functions in the form of volumes with different heights, widths and rhythms with peaked roofs, a clock tower and a high corner tier tower above the base in the form of an arched passage. As a result, the station seems to be a historically developed complex for many years, and not decided by one architect on a single project ^[15] .

With this development of the composition, it was important to achieve visual unity. This function is performed by a multi-tier tower, shifted almost to the corner and being the dominant of the entire structure, which organically links the station facades. The tower of the Kazan station is stylized as the Syuyumbike tower of the Kazan Kremlin ^[16] . Shchusev took this tower as a basis, but changed the proportions of the tiers, in particular, the lower one was made more voluminous. The tower is crowned with a spire with the dragon Zilant , which was depicted on the ancient coat of arms of Kazan ^[3] . In 1966, a dragon weather vane mounted 70 meters above the ground was repaired and gilded; its height is 2.7 m, weight 250 kg ^[17] . The station tower has much in common with the Borovitskaya tower of the Moscow Kremlin ^[18] .

A clock with zodiac signs on the dial, the work of the watchmaker V. Pushkarev, is installed on the facade of the building. The clock tower quotes the image of the clock tower of the Cathedral of St. Brand in Venice. The left tower of the station copies the famous Kutafya tower of the Moscow Kremlin. On the main facade (on the sides of the subway entrance) there is a rare example of early post-revolutionary heraldry - a sickle and a hammer with a wheat ear. .

In the interior, the most expressive hall of the restaurant, which was given the appearance of the refectory of the time of the Moscow Baroque. The hall is huge, its arch is richly decorated. In the design there are snow-white with gilding details, picturesque inserts, stucco molding built into the walls of the mirror. A special role here is played by painting (artist E. E. Lansere), due to which the space of the hall is visually expanded ^[16] . The impressions of contemporaries were conveyed by I. Ilf and E. Petrov in the novel “Twelve Chairs”:

None of the eight remaining stations in Moscow have such vast and high facilities as at Ryazansky. The entire Yaroslavl station, with its pseudo-Russian scallops and heraldic hens, can easily fit in the large buffet restaurant of the Ryazan station.

The new buildings, constructed during the reconstruction of 1987-1997 (south of the restaurant hall), differ from those designed by Shchusev, but organically fit into the ensemble of the entire structure. The station was given a U-shaped layout, a wavy canopy roof and a new waiting room from the east appeared over the tracks ^[3] . In 2010, a three-story suburban station was built on the platforms.

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  Suburban Subway Hall

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  Former restaurant hall, fragment

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  Hall at the base of the tower

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  Octagonal Hall

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  Cash room

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  Hall of officials and delegations

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  Platforms

According to the data for 2019, the passenger traffic of the station is 48 million passengers per year, including more than 14 million passengers in long-distance traffic ^[19] .

• Station staff in 2019 - 477 employees, most of whom are involved in incoming inspection ^[20] .
• The first railway police officers in Soviet Russia appeared on February 18, 1919 at the Kazan station, now this date is celebrated as the day the transport police were founded in Russia ^[21] .
• The passenger flow of the Kazan station is about 1.4 thousand people / hour. ^[22] .
• In 2014, plans appeared to reopen the underground passage, which was mothballed in 2003 for safety reasons, at the Kazan station from Krasnoprudnaya Street to Novoryazanskaya ^[23] .
• The head of the Kazan station from September 2013 to February 2016 - Sergey Donetsk. Sentenced to 2 years in a maximum security penal colony and a fine of 2.5 million rubles for receiving bribes from tenants of the station territory worth more than 3 million rubles ^{[23] [24]} .
• Until 2015, a kiosk “ Wait for me ” worked at the Kazan station, where it was also possible to leave a request for a person search ^[25] .
• As of 2019, the head of the station is Oleg Chernikov ^[21] .

• A trip to life
• Test of fidelity
• Vacation at your own expense
• Beyond the last line
• Belka and Strelka. Star dogs
• Moscow. Three stations
• Convoy

• Railway museums

• Afanasyev K.N.A.V. Shchusev. - M .: Stroyizdat, 1978.- 192 p. - (Masters of Architecture).
• Vaskin A.A., Nazarenko Yu.M. Suitcase. Railway station. Moscow. What we don’t know about nine Moscow train stations. - M: Sputnik Company, 2010. - 214 p.
• Rogachev A.V. The train goes to the East // Apartment, cottage, office. - 2000. - No. 202 .
• Vaskin A. Schusev: Architect of All Russia. - M .: Young Guard, 2015 .-- 462 p. (Life of wonderful people: Small series).

• Kazan station (neopr.) . Archived January 31, 2013.
• Kazan station on maps.google.com
• Train schedule of Kazan station
• Schedule of electric trains of the Kazan station
• The scheme of routes of trains from the Kazan station
• Schedule of trains and trains of the Kazan station
• Kazan station - history and features.