Residential building on Kotelnicheskaya embankment

Project Development

Domestic architects began to actively discuss the possibility of building high-rise buildings in Moscow shortly after the 1917 Revolution . For a short time, numerous ideas have been proposed, in particular - the skyscraper project of the Supreme Economic Council on Lubyanka Square , completed by Vladimir Krinsky in 1923 ^[5] . The possibility of creating skyscrapers in the city was officially approved by the Soviet government as part of the General Plan for the reconstruction of Moscow in 1935 . According to the document, it was planned to build a high-rise Palace of Soviets near the Kremlin, and several more high-rise buildings in the city in the same style that would become the new architectural dominants of the capital ^[1] .

One such building was reserved for the territory near the confluence of the Yauza River with the Moscow River, and in the mid-1930s architects Dmitry Chechulin and Andrei Rostkovsky proposed their project for the competition, which received government approval. A feature of their version was the central building, in which there were 24 floors ^[1] .

The construction of the first building in its original form, located along the Kotelnicheskaya embankment, began in 1938 and was completed two years later ^[6] . But with the outbreak of World War II, the Soviet government stopped working on an expensive project ^[1] . Shortly after the end of World War II, the country's leadership approved the resumption of construction. According to the decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On the Construction of High-Rise Buildings in Moscow”, a 16-story high-rise building should be built to the existing house on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment. The Ministry of the Interior and Minister Sergey Kruglov personally were responsible for the design and construction work. The resolution was signed on January 13, 1947 by the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.) Joseph Stalin ^[6] . Officially, the skyscraper was founded along with others on September 7, 1947, on the day of the celebration of the 800th anniversary of Moscow ^[7] .

The design of the high-rise and second side building was also developed by architects Chechulin and Rostkovsky. Both of them received in 1948 the Stalin Prizes for their work. But only Rostkovsky received a second-degree prize for designing a house on the embankment, and Chechulin was awarded a first-degree award for developing a high-rise building in Zaryadye , which was never built ^[8] .

Construction was carried out at a fast pace, while in the process of work, adjustments were constantly made to the original plan. Comparing the memories of witnesses and analyzing indirect data, modern historians come to the conclusion that Stalin was personally the direct curator of all the works. So, in 1949, Rostkovsky wrote:

Historians believe that in the framework of the Stalinist model of governance, the word “government” was understood to mean directly the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.) ^[9] .

High-rise construction

In the final plan, the building, along with the side buildings and the adjacent territory, is located on the square where four lanes formerly existed: Kurnosov, Sveshnikov, Bolshoi and Malyi Podgorny ^[3] . Although the buildings located here did not represent cultural value, the high-rise building closed the view from the side of the river to the historical buildings of Shvivaya Gorka ^[10] .

During the construction of all the Stalinist skyscrapers, engineers faced numerous problems. Firstly, weak Moscow soils - sandy loam , sand , loam - are not suitable for the construction of tall, heavy buildings. To solve this problem, it was necessary to create massive expensive foundations. Secondly, the domestic experts did not have the relevant experience, so they had to study directly at the construction site. Thirdly, the country lacked the necessary equipment ^[11] .

Naturally, the creation of skyscrapers stimulated the development of the construction industry. Since high-rise buildings were built from monolithic reinforced concrete using ready-made slabs, corresponding plants were created in Lyubertsy and Kuchin ^[12] . Designers P.P. Velikhov, I. B. Gitman, and L. N. Shchipakin developed UKK tower cranes with a maximum load capacity of 15 tons. The machine lifted itself from floor to floor as the building grew ^[13] . Builders began to use new wall materials, for example, “many-hole” bricks and hollow ceramic stones, which were produced by the enterprise in the village of Kudinovo ^[12] .

The speed of work was ensured, including the use of labor of prisoners, which was no exception (a similar example was during the construction of a high-rise building at Moscow State University ). According to the data published by the Memorial organization, GULAG prisoners took part in the construction of the house on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment in 1948-1954. Until 1953, the prison camp was located directly on the construction site, and the last year the prisoners were taken from the camp located in Zamorinsky Lane . It is also possible that prisoners worked at the construction site in the 1930s ^[14] .

The Gulag Museum of History contains a door platband, on the inside of which there is an inscription: "Astakhov Ivan Emelyanovich Year of birth, 1896 convicted by decree of 10 years, finished a high-rise building. That's how we lived in the country" ^[14] . According to the recollections of a resident of the house, S. N. Perovskaya, when she moved in 1954, on the windows of the 5th and 8th floors, where there were large cornices, “there were bars to prevent prisoners from escaping” ^[15] . The fact of the work of the prisoners gave rise to many legends of the house, for example, that the scratched inscriptions “built convicts” ^[16] were preserved on the glass of the upper floors of the building, the same is said about the technical floors and basements: “they built ZECs” and “10 squad” that the prisoners posed for for bas-reliefs ^[17] and that there was an escape from the upper floors on plywood wings ^[15] .

“Camp Department No. 4” at 1/15 Kotelnicheskaya Naberezhnaya was established by order of June 22, 1948. The camp contained men and women. They lived in barracks and tents. According to the statement made by the head of the camp at the beginning of 1949, the planned capacity is 2,200 people, and the actual average value is 1,602 people. To ensure security, the camp and the construction site were enclosed by a fence up to 3 meters high , over which five lines of barbed wire were stretched. Before the fence there was a one and a half meter warning zone, where it was forbidden for anyone to be. In parallel with the 4th Division, from the same year, a prison camp at the Likhoborsky Construction Plant was operating, where building materials for a high-rise building were produced. Until the summer of 1951, prisoners of war also worked at the construction site, who were called the "special contingent" ^[14] .

Settlement

The first residents began to move into new buildings in 1953. Although the building and architects were criticized in Khrushchev’s time, the state allocated apartments to famous figures of art and science, which emphasized the elite status of high-rise buildings. At different times, actresses Faina Ranevskaya , Klara Luchko , Nonna Mordyukova , actors Mikhail Zharov and Alexander Shirvindt , singer Lyudmila Zykina , ballerina Galina Ulanova , poets Alexander Twardovsky , Andrey Voznesensky , Evgeny Evtushenko , Robert Rozhdestvensky , writers Vasily Aksyustov and writers Vasily Aksyustov and Constantin lived in the house and composer Nikita Bogoslovsky ^[3] .

Although Chechulin was disgraced after the death of Stalin, he also received the keys to the apartment in the house he designed. However, the apartment was on the ground floor, that is, it was not the most prestigious ^[18] .

A significant number of apartments, especially in building A, were received by officials of the NKVD-MVD , the agency in charge of the construction of the building. In buildings B and C settled nuclear physicists who worked under the command of the former Commissar of the Interior Lawrence Beria ^[3] .

In the late 1990s, the author-singer of songs in the genre Russian chanson Willie Tokarev settled in the house. According to him, “ The house has everything you need: a post office, a bank, an atelier, shops, massage parlors, a restaurant, a unique playground, which is not found anywhere else in Moscow. Along the entire length of the courtyard are rows of covered garages built in wartime. Now on their roof is a football field. Nearby are a tennis court and a basketball court . ” Tokarev also notes the special microclimate of the house: “the Moscow River flows from one side of the high-rise, and the Yauza from the other. In the summer, the greenhouse effect is manifested: the water evaporates and thereby prevents the penetration of dust into the windows of the house. That is why my windows are always clean ” ^[19] .

Building Assessment

The rating of the skyscraper varied depending on the historical period. In Stalin's time, in 1953, the book was published by the architect Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky “Construction of high-rise buildings in Moscow”, which describes each skyscraper in detail, and the characteristics of the house on Kotelnicheskaya embankment turned out to be very emotional. According to the author, the building is “one of the brightest illustrations of the concern of the party and government for the working people, a manifestation of the Stalinist concern for the person” ^[20] .

Dmitry Chechulin in his autobiography Life and Architecture compared Stalin's skyscrapers with the best examples of classical Russian architecture:

With the coming to power of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev , the government ’s attitude to expensive atypical buildings changes dramatically. In 1954-1957, a number of public events were held aimed at "identifying errors" in the design and construction of the post-war decade. The main slogan of the campaign was "the fight against beautification", which was, in the opinion of the party leadership, one of the reasons for the high costs of creating Stalin's skyscrapers. On November 4, 1955, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR issued the Resolution “ On the Elimination of Excesses in Design and Construction ”. Among the people allegedly guilty of expensive and improper construction, Dmitry Chechulin is also mentioned in the document ^[21] .

In 1984, architectural historian Andrei Ikonnikov noted the failure of the stylistic design of the building. In his opinion, it is impossible to recognize as successful the facing of the lower five floors with granite, which should produce the feeling of a powerful basement, and “monstrously huge obelisks”. However, Ikonnikov notes that “the silhouette of the building fit into the prevailing architectural landscape of the center of Moscow” ^[22] .

Upgrades

In the XXI century, the house on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment retained the status of prestigious real estate. The cost of apartments in a skyscraper has reached a record level. New residents began to carry out restructuring of premises without coordination with control organizations, which caused several accidents ^[23] . In January 2017, in one of the apartments on the eighth floor there was a leak of hot water from a pipe installed without approval from the operating organization. As a result of the leak, Ulanova’s apartment museum, which opened in 2004, was damaged: the library, furniture and graphic collection owned by the ballerina were damaged ^[24] . In October of that year, residents held a rally to draw the attention of the authorities to illegal work. According to them, one of the tenants on the eleventh floor built a personal elevator, which caused cracks in the apartments below ^[25] .

In 2015, the Moscow City Hall announced a tender for the overhaul of a high-rise building on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment, for which it was planned to allocate 3.36 billion rubles from the city budget ^[26] . After determining the contractor, it was assumed that all work would be completed by December 31, 2017. The work included restoration of facades and interior paintings, replacement of electrical wiring, installation of new elevator equipment, modernization of the waste disposal system. In January 2018, it became known that repair work will last six months longer than planned ^[27] .

In mid-2016, it became known that the general contractor for facade repair work at Ateks FSUE , owned by the Federal Security Service , entered into a contract with Stroyfasad, which belongs to the holding of the arrested St. Petersburg billionaire Dmitry Mikhalchenko ^[28] . It also turned out that during the restoration the legislation in the field of monument protection was violated: the Soviet entrance doors from the courtyard were replaced with new ones ^[29] .

The Star Case

On August 20, 2014, during the conflict in eastern Ukraine , the Ukrainian flag was spotted on the spire of a skyscraper, which sagged there for about three hours. Then, half of the star crowning the spire of the skyscraper was painted blue, which is why it acquired the colors of the Ukrainian flag ^[30] . In this case, characterized as vandalism , a criminal case was instituted, later re-qualified as hooliganism. On suspicion of involvement, the police detained four Russian citizens ^[31] .

On August 26, it was reported that the Ukrainian ruffer Pavel Ushivets, known as Mustang Wanted , sold photo materials from a skyscraper on the waterfront to LifeNews for $ 5,000, and promised to send the money to the Donbass battalion ^[32] . On September 11, the Tagansky court of Moscow announced the absentee arrest and international search of Ushivets in the case of vandalism and hooliganism ^[33] . The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov , having received a request for extradition of Pavel Ushivets to the Russian branch of Interpol , refused on his Facebook page . He also wrote that Pavel allegedly performed a secret mission in Moscow, for which he was awarded with nominal weapons. In support of the photograph was posted Ushivtseva with a gun in his hands ^[34] .

The trial of the five defendants in this case ended on September 10, 2015. A Moscow Tagansky court sentenced Ruffer Vladimir Podrezov in aiding an unidentified person - presumably Ushivets - in vandalism and sentenced him to 2 years and 3 months in prison, the rest of the base jumpers who jumped from a high-rise after painting a star were acquitted because the conspiracy was not proven ^{[ 35]} . On December 17, the Moscow City Court commuted the sentence to Vadim Podrezov, replacing him with a restriction of freedom for 2 years and 10 months, and also confirmed the acquittal of the other defendants ^[36] .

Shuvalov's apartment

In July 2016, the head of the Anti-Corruption Fund, Alexei Navalny, accused Igor Shuvalov , first deputy chairman of the government , of owning ten apartments with a total area of ​​more than 700 m² on the 14th floor of the building; the market price of housing is estimated at more than 600 million rubles ^[37] . According to the investigation, apartments were purchased in 2014 by lawyer Sergei Kotlyarenko, who has known Shuvalov since his time at the Federal Property Management Agency and the presidential administration ^[38] . Navalny suggested that in the future the property would be transferred to the ownership of one of the companies of Shuvalov, as was already done with the three other apartments he bought in Moscow ^[39] . A week later, Navalny talked about the owner’s possible plans to connect the lobby to the apartments ^[40] and announced the connection between the overhaul of the building and the purchase of apartments for Shuvalov. Repair of residential buildings for which a record amount has been allocated, according to the legislation, is carried out exclusively at the expense of the regional overhaul fund ^{[28] [41]} .

Lisin's office

In April 2019, Russian media published information that billionaire Vladimir Lisin was allegedly selling one of the largest and most expensive apartments in Moscow in a high-rise building on Kotelnicheskaya. According to them, a five-story apartment of 873 square meters is put up for sale for 900 million rubles. On the Sotheby's site, such an apartment with 15 rooms, 12 baths for $ 14,000,000 ^[42] was indeed exhibited. However, the official representative of the businessman said that Lisin does not have a five-story apartment, and his work office in the building on Kotelnicheskaya is not for sale ^[43] . According to the Rosreestr , Lisin really has a non-residential premises in this building with an area of ​​931 square meters, it occupies 8 floors and a mezzanine ^[44] .

The skyscraper, l-shaped in plan, consists of three buildings: the central one, in which there are 32 floors, and two side ones with a height of 8-10 floors. A feature of the central building is the layout in the form of a three-beam star, one beam of which is directed towards the courtyard ^[45] . The coat of arms, crowning the spire of the building, is located at an altitude of 176 m ^[3] .

The design is typical of the Stalinist Empire . On the territory adjacent to the house was created a square with flowerbeds and fountains. The lower five floors are faced with pink granite , the rest of the building with ceramic blocks. The high-rise is decorated with sculptural groups. For some unknown reason, the sculptor depicted a Komsomol member in a torn dress, where a magnificent chest is visible ^{[3] [20]} .

Marble , precious wood, non-ferrous metals were used in the decoration of living quarters and vestibules ^[20] . In the central building, 10 elevators were installed, finished similarly ^[46] . The high-rise hall is decorated with bas-reliefs and ceiling paintings, which depict happy Soviet citizens ^[3] .

A unique level of service for the Soviet era was created in a residential building. Directly in the building there were a bureau of orders and consumer services for residents, as well as four shops. In the central building there was a storage room for strollers and bicycles. Under the courtyard is an underground parking for 212 cars ^[47] .

Since the mid-1950s, a cinema operated in the building, originally bearing the name "Banner". In 1966, it was renamed " Illusion ", then it was adapted for showing films from the State Film Fund . NKVD employees, the party elite and many Soviet artists lived in the skyscraper. The cinema’s repertoire included festival foreign films that actually escaped censorship ^[3] .

Initially, there were 540 apartments in the house, of which 344 were in the high volume, including 7 one-room and 13 four-room ones. By analogy with the tenement houses of the tsarist era , in the Stalinist skyscraper there were exits from the apartments to the “black” staircase ^[3] . As in other high-rise buildings, advanced engineering networks were implemented in the house. The house was equipped with both normal ventilation and a centralized air conditioning system . Air from the street entered the apartments all year round, passed special filters, was heated or cooled to the desired temperature. A centralized dust extraction system was mounted on the walls: the dust was collected using hoses and got into the filtering stations, from where it was dumped into the sewer, and the cleaned air fell into the street. And for heating in the basement, boilers were installed ^[48] .

All apartments in the kitchens were equipped with electric refrigerators, built-in furniture, sinks with a grinder to destroy large waste. Directly in the kitchens, trash hatches were installed ^[49] . It was this constructive solution that soon after putting the house into operation became a source of major inconvenience: the house was hit by cockroaches, because of this, tenants gradually began to brew metal hatches. The electrical wiring of the building was created taking into account the current loads at that time, so in two-bedroom apartments there are only three outlets, and not a single one in the kitchen. By modern standards, there is an insufficient amount of soundproofing materials in the floors. Modern residents note high audibility from apartments from above ^[10] .

• In the 2006 Moscow Kva-Kva novel by Vasily Aksyonov, the main character of the novel, 19-year-old Moscow State University student Glyka Novotkannaya, lives with her family in a house on Kotelnicheskaya Naberezhnaya. Here, according to the author’s plan, there is a secret refuge where Stalin dies ^[50] .
• High-rise is mentioned in the novel by Lyudmila Ulitskaya "Medea and her children." The character of the novel tries to commit suicide after “a young girl, the daughter of a famous aircraft designer, jumped out of the seventh floor” ^[51] .
• There are lines about the building in Garik Sukachev ’s song “Night Flight” ^[52] :

And when fear recedes, for a second, in a short moment, I’m like a flap on the wings above the boulevard and high-rise.

And, flying over Yauza , whistling loudly that there is urine, I will rush in an arc, joking - in the black night, by the way ...

• In the film Pokrovsky Gate , the character of Oleg Menshikov came to the building on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment to meet the parents of his girlfriend ^[18] .
• The building also appeared in the films “ Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears ”, “Love” (1991), “ Brother-2 ”, “ Dandies ” and in the series “ The Brigade ” ^[10] .
• In the film “ Moscow Secrets. Seven Sisters ”action takes place around an apartment in a house on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment.

• Gatsunaev K. N. Heroic-patriotic motifs in Moscow architecture 1940-1950 // Bulletin of MGSU. - 2015. - No. 8 . - S. 18–29 . - ISSN 1997-0935 .
• Dobrenkaya M. V. “Stalin's skyscrapers” in photographs: construction and existence in the light of ideology // Bulletin of the Russian State Humanitarian University. - 2013. - No. 9 . - S. 169–177 . - ISSN 2073-6355 .
• Ikonnikov A.V. Moscow Architecture. XX century. - M .: Moscow Worker, 1984.- 222 p.
• Kruzhkov N.N. High-rise buildings of Stalinist Moscow. Legacy of the era . - M .: Centerpolygraph, 2014 .-- 365 p. - ISBN 978-5-227-04542-3 .
• Oltarzhevsky V.K. Construction of high-rise buildings in Moscow. - M .: State. from the literature on construction and architecture, 1953. - 215 p.
• Khmelnitsky D.S. Architecture of Stalin. Psychology and style. - M .: Progress-Tradition, 2007 .-- 560 p. - ISBN 5-89826-271-7 .
• Shashkova N.O. About Moscow high-rise construction in the 40-50s of the XX century: ideas, goals, results and significance // Values ​​and meanings. - 2013. - No. 3 . - S. 142–157 . - ISSN 2071-6427 .

• Residential building on Kotelnicheskaya embankment on the site SovArkh.ru
• Photos of the tour of the skyscraper and courtyard
• High-rise reconstruction , historical and modern photographs
• Reach for the stars. High rise

High-rise records