Faleev House

The stone house of the city estate in Gagarinsky Lane was built at the beginning of the 19th century, after the Moscow fire of 1812 , in 1845 it was expanded. The architect Nikolai Grigoryevich Faleev bought the estate in 1895. The new owner used the existing house as the basis for the construction of a new building. The walls and partitions made of wood during the reconstruction were preserved, the new walls were made of bricks. At the same time, the facade of the building that has reached the present time was completed. Faleev mainly worked in the direction of eclecticism , a mixture of different architectural styles was also used to build his own mansion, which combines a Renaissance, empire and a number of details in the Baroque style. At the same time, a fence with a lattice, standing up to now, was erected near the house ^[2] .

The decor of the facades includes small figures of winged lions in the corners, passing above the windows using a meander , small baroque shells above the central and side windows. Of greatest interest is the stucco decoration above the entrance, which shows the crossed triangle, shoulder blade, ax, pickaxe, compasses and rope. Despite the common belief that it means that the owner of the house belongs to the Masons , this sign was in fact the official emblem of civil engineers in Russia. Similar tools could be found on several more facades of Moscow architects' houses, but so far only the decor of the Faleev mansion has survived. The facade also shows the house number (11), to the right of the emblem of engineers in the form of a socket with two vertical crossbars ^[2] .

With the advent of Soviet power, the house was confiscated in favor of the state and transferred to the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs . The building was known as the “10th house of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs” and was used to house foreign diplomats and guests. Among the latter was an American journalist John Reed , who died here.

According to some accounts, in the 1960s the embassy of the Congo occupied the mansion ^{[3] [4]} . In 1966, it was leased to the family of the American journalist Edmund Stevens ^[5] . Thanks to his Russian wife Nina, a real salon appeared in which the metropolitan elite gathered. In 1992, immediately after the death of her husband, Nina Stevens received permission to privatize the house ^[6] .

By the beginning of the XXI century, the facade of the mansion was dilapidated, part of the stucco decoration was lost. During the restoration of 2010-2011, work was done to strengthen the decor and restore the missing parts. Until now, the original layout of the building and many elements of the interior decoration have been reached: stucco molding, tiled and stove stoves, a fireplace with cast iron, typeset oak parquet, mosaic marble floor. The house is at the disposal of the diplomatic department ^[2] , since 2010 the embassy of the Republic of Abkhazia has been located here.