Apartment building Isakov

The site on which the modern house stands, in the XVIII - early XIX centuries, was part of the vast noble estate of the Bestuzhev-Rumins , located on the corner of Prechistenka and Obukhov (now Chisty ) Lane. In the middle of the XVIII century, when the estate was owned by Captain I.D. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, a one-story wooden main house with wings was located along the Prechistenka line, services were located in the eastern part of the courtyard, and a garden occupied the western part. At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the main house was rebuilt, the wooden buildings of the services were replaced with stone ones, adapted for housing, and the territory of the former garden was built up with residential and household buildings. In the early 1810s, the poet Vasily Zhukovsky lived with his friend S. M. Sokovnin in the estate, which by that time already belonged to the Sokovnins ^[1] . From the Sokovnins, ownership passed to college adviser I.M.Sessarevsky, during which during a fire in 1812 all wooden manor buildings burned down ^{[2] [3]} .

After adjusting the red lines of Moscow streets in the early 1820s, a two-story house near the western border of the estate went beyond the new Prechistenka building line. At the same time, the western part was allocated to independent ownership, which in 1825 passed into the ownership of the wife of the head captain M.N. Vlasyeva. The remaining estate territory in 1845 was divided into two more plots: the eastern part went to S. P. Sessarevskaya, the central adviser was I. S. Turgenev ^[3] .

In 1835, a new business building was built in the possession of Vlasyeva, in 1875 a garden was built; There were no other significant changes in the western part of the former estate during the 19th century - the two-story house continued to stand in its place, violating the boundaries of the new street development lines. In 1903, the tradesman Fyodor Streltsov, who by that time owned this site, sold it for construction to the Moscow Trade and Construction Joint-Stock Company . In the same year, all the buildings on the site were demolished ^{[2] [3] [4]} .

The Moscow Trade and Construction Joint-Stock Company, the founder and director of which was businessman Jacob Reck , at the beginning of the 20th century was one of the largest home-building enterprises of the Russian Empire. The main task set by the Rekkom for the company was to focus on the latest achievements of Western culture and technology: “Moscow should be decorated with stylish houses, which, having the technical conveniences of Western European city buildings, at the same time would not kill the national color of Moscow”; As a guideline for the company’s buildings, Rekk chose the then fashionable forms of Western European Art Nouveau. The society was so successful in fulfilling this task that the Muscovites at the beginning of the 20th century called the new style, later called “modern” in Russia, “rekkovsky” ^{[5] [3]} .

The main place in the construction activity of the Trade and Construction Joint-Stock Company was occupied by the construction of fully finished comfortable mansions in the center of Moscow. By the time the land was purchased on Prechistenka, the company had already built and sold several private houses, including the Yakunchikova and Gutheil mansions in the neighboring Prechistensky Lane , and began to build two mansions on Povarskaya Street , which went down in the history of architecture by the names of the later owners - I. A. Mindovsky and M. G. Ponizovsky. The architect of the last two houses was Lev Kekushev . A prominent architect, a pioneer of Moscow Art Nouveau, the author of the first-ever building in this style - the List mansion , Kekushev gained experience in designing turnkey houses while working as the chief architect of the Northern House-Building Society founded by Savva Mamontov . After the arrest and bankruptcy of Mamontov, Rekk bought the Northern House-Building Company and invited Kekushev to the position of chief architect of the Moscow Trade and Construction Joint-Stock Company ^[6] .

In 1904, Lev Kekushev completed a project for a huge apartment building at that time, and in the same year the Moscow Trade and Construction Joint-Stock Company began construction of the building ^{[4] [7] [8]} . Construction work lasted about two years and by the time the decoration was completed - in 1906 - the St. Petersburg businessman I. P. Isakov, who replaced Y. A. Rekka as the head of the Moscow Trade and Construction Joint-Stock Company ^{[4] [9],} acquired the construction. The practice of buying the finished houses by the leaders of the company was quite common: earlier Rekk owned several ready-for-sale houses, and Isakov, in addition to the apartment building on Prechistenka, acquired one of the mansions of the company on Povarskaya, for which the buyer was not a long time later owned by I. A. Mindovsky ^[10] . It is possible that I.P. Isakov initially decided to leave the apartment building in his property - having moved to Moscow, he acquired a number of other buildings in the city center, the renting of which brought a substantial income. Soon after the construction of the house on Prechistenka was completed, the active construction activity of the Moscow Trade and Construction Joint-Stock Company was curtailed, and in 1914 the company was liquidated ^[11] . Isakov owned a tenement house on Prechistenka until the October Revolution and for some time lived in one of 18 apartments ^{[12] [13]} .

The author of the building himself rented housing in Isakov’s apartment building: Kekushev settled in apartment No. 9 in 1907 after a breakup with his wife, who remained with the children in the architect’s own mansion on Ostozhenka. Later, in 1909-1910, when the Ostozhensk mansion was first put up for auction for debts and then sold, Kekushev lived in Isakov’s apartment building already with his family ^[14] .

After the October Revolution, the building was nationalized . In the 1920s, a housing partnership was organized in a formerly profitable house, most of the huge apartments were turned into communal apartments, and two apartments were given as a dormitory of the Institute of the Red Professor ^[15] ; By the mid-1920s, 365 people lived in the house. In one of the rooms in the prewar years, the writer Eduard Asadov lived ^[16] . Among the people who lived in the house during the Soviet years was the geologist N. N. Tikhonovich ^[17] .

Unlike other respectable buildings in the center of Moscow, many of which occupied various institutions during the Soviet era, Isakov’s apartment building throughout history has not changed its original residential function ^[18] . Currently, the residential building is one of the “elite” real estate with very expensive apartments ^{[19] [20]} . The building has the status of an object of cultural heritage of federal significance ^[21] .

Style Features and Grades

The description and photographs of the constructed building were published in the architectural press of the early 20th century, including the Moscow Architecture Guide, published in 1913 by the Moscow Architectural Society for members of the V Congress of Russian Architects ^{[10] [22] [23]} , which indicates the attitude of the professional community of that time to this work by Kekushev as an exemplary work of a new style, which later became known as “modern” in Russia ^[24] .

Modern art historians and architectural scholars classify I.P. Isakov's apartment building as one of the best Moscow buildings made in the Art Nouveau style. An outstanding work of style, this building is called by art critic Dmitry Sarabyanov ^[25] . Architectural researcher Mikhail Barkhin cites the building as an example of the “integrity” of the expression of features and techniques inherent in modernity ^[26] . Researcher of the Moscow version of the style and biographer Kekushev Maria Nashchokina considers Isakov’s apartment building one of the most interesting buildings of Moscow Art Nouveau and considers it one of the best works of the architect ^{[27] [28]} . According to Nashchokina, the individual decorative techniques of the “Kekushevsky” Art Nouveau are embodied with maximum completeness in this work of the architect ^[29] .

As in other works by Kekushev of the Art Nouveau period, the influence of the West European Art Nouveau is noticeable in this building, primarily the handwriting of the founder of the Franco-Belgian version of Victor Orth's style. So, in particular, the linear graphic style of Orth is close to the drawing of the balcony and stair railings of Isakov’s apartment building ^{[30] [31]} . According to the observation of Uliam Broomfield , the facade decoration of the building also bears the imprint of individual non-baroque motifs, an example of which is an anthropomorphic sculpture placed in the attic ^[32] . In the exterior decoration there are also some elements of order architecture - decorating the canton of the Ionian ^{[e 1]} cornice, window imposts interpreted as a small order, and other decorative details. According to MV Nashchokina, large-scale reliefs of firewall walls made of bricks anticipate the formal techniques of European Art Deco ^[33] .

Volumetric and spatial composition and exterior decoration

The asymmetry of the building plan is determined by the historically established trapezoidal configuration of the site, the area of ​​which was used to the maximum by the architect for the development. The five-story front building is set along the Prechistenka red line and occupies the entire width of the site; a courtyard building perpendicularly departs from it into the depth of the quarter, to which the rear six-story part of the house adjoins, oriented parallel to the street. The H-shaped connection of the three buildings of the house forms two small courtyards, opened towards the neighboring estates and serving for lighting and travel ^[4] . A passage arch leads from the street to the western courtyard, and passage in the courtyard building to the eastern courtyard ^{[34] [sn 2]} .

The space-planning structure of the building is quite typical for apartment buildings of the late XIX - early XX century. It was during this period in architecture that a widespread method of assembling a multi-storey residential building from independent standard volume units — horizontal sections “strung” on a rod — the vertical volume of a staircase ^{[35] [25] [25]} was developed. However, such a construction of the building, which determines the fragmentation of the facade composition, contradicted the idea of ​​the integrity of the architectural image of the building, which was fundamentally important for the Art Nouveau style ^[36] . Kekushev tried to overcome this contradiction due to the rich decorative decoration of the main facade, which, according to art historians E. A. Borisova and T. P. Kazhdan , masked the “prosaic functional structure of an ordinary apartment building, divided into standard cells”, and allowed “to give an external personality separate floors, balconies, bay windows and windows ” ^[35] . Architectural researcher A. V. Ikonnikov notes that Kekushev did this “talented and skillful, but the contradictory nature of the composition is obvious” ^[36] .

The expressive undulating plasticity of the street facade is determined by synchronous bends of the wall in horizontal and vertical projections. The degree of sculptural processing of the facade grows to its upper part and turns at the level of the upper floor into a continuous relief ornament, interpreted as a frieze . According to D. V. Sarabyanov, “the building is likened to a living organism, which exists by its own laws - it grows, breathes, organically combines with the environment” ^[25] . The facade of the house is compared with the organism by art historians E. A. Borisova and G. Yu. Sternin, according to whom “organicity is understood here more as the organic nature of wildlife than architecture itself” ^[37] . The vertical ledges of the facade are “circled” along the contour with a strongly erected metal cornice , turned into a kind of visor, which plays a significant role both in the composition of the building and in the silhouette of the entire street. The cornice, supported by thin metal brackets, is decorated with stylized ionics, among which are five lion masks: the image of a lion is a kind of architectural signature of Leo Kekushev, present in one form or another in many of his buildings ^{[28] [38]} . The central part of the building is highlighted by a small deepening of the facade, four paired balconies surrounded by forged gratings, the pattern of which is similar to the staircases of the residential part of the Metropol Hotel, and ends with a dynamically curved attic ^[39] . In the center of the attic there is an oval dormer window , on the sides of which are two reclining female figures, high reliefs , allegorically depicting Enlightenment and Building ^[4] . The attic, highlighted by a cornice-peak, is a specific technique of the architect: in this way he solved, for example, the composition of the facades of the Nikolsky shopping arcade (1899-1900), almost simultaneously designed mansions of I. A. Mindovsky (1903-1904) and V. D. Nosov (1903), a later apartment building of Bykov on 2nd Brest Street (1909-1910) ^[40] . As in Mindovsky’s mansion, the attic of Isakov’s apartment building was originally crowned with a round sculpture ^[41] .

Another characteristic feature of Kekushev's creative style is the detailed study of window frames and bindings, turning them into important volumetric and ornamental accents of the facade composition. In Isakov’s apartment building, this technique was implemented by the architect with maximum completeness - the shape of the window openings, the stucco decoration of the frames and the pattern of wooden bindings are extremely complex and unique for each floor. Window frames do not develop outside the front wall, but in its depth, which is also characteristic of the architect’s buildings. The horizontal, vertical and curved elements of the window frames have different widths and heights, are equipped with many protruding details that cast a shadow as full architectural details, and some of the vertical imposts are treated by Kekushev as a small order . Especially complex were the window covers of the bay windows, showing intricately curved lines of Art Nouveau and perceived as huge colorless stained glass windows ^{[42] [33]} . Such a manifold pattern of window frames is unique both for the work of Kekushev and for the Moscow buildings of the Art Nouveau period as a whole ^{[43] [44]} .

Noteworthy is the plastic solution for firewall walls, rare for that time, laid in brick with rods and flat niches, due to the initial environment of the house - the building stood out in the low-rise buildings of Prechistenka in the early 20th century and should have looked worthy of both the main facade and from the sides ^{[sn 3]} . The courtyard walls of the apartment building were left unplastered and completely devoid of decorations ^{[46] [33] [25]} .

A number of art historians note a noticeable resemblance to several other later Moscow Art Nouveau buildings with Isakov's apartment building. These include, first of all, the tenement houses built by Gustav Gelrich according to the designs of I. I. and N. I. Boldyrev (1908, 13 Yauzsky Boulevard ; together with N. P. Evlanov ), Princess Bebutova (1909, Rozhdestvensky Boulevard , 9) and P. A. Skopnik (1906-1908, Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya street , 24/27, p. 1) ^{[47] [32] [48]} . Gelrich, whose first stage of work in Moscow was connected with the Moscow Trade and Construction Company, was probably familiar with both Kekushev himself, who served as the chief architect of the Society, and his work, among which the most notable was Isakov’s apartment building on Prechistenka . Maria Nashchokina also admits Lev Kekushev's personal participation in the design of the named buildings, which Gelrich is considered to be the sole author of ^[49] . Another prominent master of Moscow Art Nouveau, Nikolai Zherikhov , placed men's masks over the windows of the mezzanine of the apartment building of M. A. Maltsev on Novaya Basmannaya Street, which are similar to those that adorn the windows of the fifth floor of the apartment building of I. P. Isakov. The decoration of this building by Jerichov contains other sculptural elements previously used in his works by Kekushev ^{[50] [51]} .

Layout and Interiors

In the center of the building is the vertical volume of the main staircase, which divides each floor into the front (facing the street) and the back; the stairwells opposite the entrance are displaced half a floor up, which allows the use of the main staircase to organize the entrance to apartments located at different levels. A similar binding to the staircase of the floor structure of buildings is found in a number of other Moscow buildings at the beginning of the 20th century ^{[9] [18] [52]} .

The apartment building with a total area of ​​about 6.6 thousand m ^{2 [53]} , intended for rental to wealthy citizens, initially included only four apartments on each floor - two in the front of the building and two in the back; the low ground floor of the rear building was reserved for sheds and other needs of residents. Four-six-room apartments consisted of isolated or adjacent-isolated rooms. The layout of each residential section was different, however, it provided for a set of rooms traditional for that time ^[54] : ceremonial rooms (office, living room, dining room), separated from the living half (bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen) by a corridor or a passage hall, were grouped around the entrance. The kitchens of all apartments had access to the black stairs, two of which are located on the back of the front of the house and the third in the back building ^{[9] [18]} .

The construction conceived by the Moscow Trade and Building Society was to attract tenants not only with a spectacular appearance, but also with the richness of the interior decoration. The most prestigious and expensively finished apartments were on the second floor of the front building: they had fireplaces decorated with multicolor majolica with a unique pattern for each apartment, made by the porcelain and earthenware factory of M. S. Kuznetsov , elegant stucco ceilings and French balconies . The interiors of other apartments were decorated more simply ^[55] .

As a result of numerous redevelopments and unskilled repairs, the interior decoration of most of the premises of the apartment building has now been lost. Fireplaces, ceiling paintings and stucco work have been preserved in a number of apartments. The elements of the entrance hall decoration - original oak wall panels, floor tiles and wrought iron staircases, in the drawing of which Kekushev used the traditional modernist motif of a dynamically twisted spiral curl ^{[55] [46]} , also reached our time.

Alterations and Losses

In addition to most of the lost interiors of the apartment building, the changes affected its external appearance. On the right side of the street, a five-story building was added to the front building, which hid the drawing of the eastern side wall and changed the volumetric perception of the apartment building. In the early 2010s, a tall chimney was dismantled, sharpening the silhouette of the left side wall ^[56] . Part of the territory adjacent to the left of the apartment building, which was vacated after the demolition of neighboring buildings in Soviet times, was surrounded by a metal fence, the ornamental design of which resembles forged balcony lattices of the front facade. To date, a travel arch has been laid, which originally connected the yards of a tenement house ^[34] .

Of the original design details, the round sculpture on the roof, some details of the cornice, part of the relief decoration on the sides of the bay windows and a number of other decorative elements of the main facade were not preserved ^[28] . During restoration and repair work of the turn of the 20th — 21st centuries, large stucco moldings with wreaths in the center were installed between the lower shelves of the windows of the second floor and recreated to replace similar sculptural details lost in Soviet times. According to M.V. Nashchokina, the new decor elements "are made rougher and without understanding the stucco style" of the beginning of the 20th century, which reduced the artistic qualities of the building. Contrary to the original appearance of the building and too bright coloring of the main facade produced during this period. The greatest damage to the appearance of the house was caused in the 2000s as a result of the almost universal spontaneous replacement by residents of front apartments of the original volumetric designed oak window frames ^{[sn 4]} with flat, proportionally simplified plastic double-glazed windows, which only approximately copy the original Kekushev pattern ^{[57] [18 ] ]} .

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