The administrative and residential building on the site of the Red Gate is one of the seven realized Stalinist skyscrapers . Built in Moscow in 1947 - 1951 according to the project of architects Alexey Dushkin and Boris Mezentsev and designer Vitaly Abramov. The central building was intended to accommodate government offices, and 276 apartments were arranged in the side ones: from two to five-room apartments [1] , and in the five-room apartments next to the kitchens there were small rooms "for the housemaid" [2] . A feature of the high-rise was the placement in it of the ground lobby of the metro station [3] .
| Monument of urban planning and architecture | |||
| High-rise building in the square Red Gate | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 High-rise building of architects Dushkin and Mezentsevan on Lermontovskaya Square in Moscow
| |||
| A country |  Russia | ||
| City | Moscow Sadovaya-Spasskaya street , d.21 | ||
| Nearest metro station |  Red Gate | ||
| Architect | |||
| First mention | 1948 year | ||
| Established | |||
| Building | 1947 - 1951 | ||
| Status | Protected by the state | ||
| condition | satisfactory | ||
According to the 2010s, offices in the central building were occupied by administrative and trade union organizations, corporations, and a bank [4] . For 2015, the granddaughter of the architect Natalia Dushkina lived in the house. Periodically, she conducted tours of the high-rise [5] .
Construction
Creation Idea
Domestic architects began to actively discuss the possibility of creating skyscrapers in Moscow after the 1917 Revolution . In the reconstruction project of the capital of 1935, the Soviet government officially approved the construction of the Palace of Soviets and several 20-story skyscrapers. Preparatory work was carried out slowly, and with the start of World War II they were frozen [6] .
After the war, the Soviet government returned to the idea of building Moscow skyscrapers. On January 13, 1947, the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Joseph Stalin, signed the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On the Construction of High-Rise Buildings in Moscow”. The document indicated approximately the territory for the construction of skyscrapers. According to the Decree, “it was planned to build a 16-storey residential building at the Red Gate on a free site of the Ministry of Railways ”. The construction of the facility was carried out by the Ministry of Railways, Minister Ivan Kovalev was appointed the direct curator [7] .
For the building of the Ministry of Railways, they chose the territory on Lermontovskaya Square , where until 1927 the Red Gate existed - a triumphal arch , erected in honor of the victory of the Russian army in the Battle of Poltava . It was dismantled, justifying the need to expand the roadway [8] . In 1928, the city authorities dismantled the nearby Church of Three Saints, in which Mikhail Lermontov was baptized. The destruction of the church was part of the atheistic doctrine of the Soviet government [9] . In the late 1930s, the house in which Lermontov was born in 1814 was destroyed, while the Red Gate Square was named after the poet in 1941. In 1964, a memorial plaque was erected on a skyscraper, mentioning the building that once existed on this place [10] .
The ceremonial laying of Moscow skyscrapers took place on September 7, 1947 at 13:00 at the same time at all eight construction sites. The choice of date was not accidental: festive events dedicated to the 800th anniversary of Moscow were held in Moscow [11] . It is noteworthy that at that time there were no projects of future buildings [6] . The rush is explained by Stalin’s personal interest, who was trying to demonstrate the greatness of the Land of Soviets by large-scale construction [11] . The words are attributed to him: “They drive to America with us, then they come and gasp - oh, what a huge house! Let them go to Moscow now, see what houses we have, let them gasp. ” Stalin was regularly interested in the progress of construction work and made adjustments to the projects [12] .
Start of work
The chief architect of Moscow, Dmitry Chechulin , wrote in his memoirs that Alexey Dushkin completed the first design of the building at the Red Gate on his own. However, the proposed project was sent for revision. To help Dushkin, a co-author was appointed - a young master Boris Mezentsev, for whom work on the skyscraper was the first performed in the capital [6] . Their joint work was approved, and in 1949 both architects received Stalin Prizes of the second degree [13] .
There were at least three circumstances that complicated the construction of high-rise buildings in Moscow. Firstly, due to weak Moscow soils ( sandy loam , loam , sand ), reliable and costly foundations were required for skyscrapers. Secondly, domestic experts, except for a few architects, did not have the relevant experience. Thirdly, in the USSR there was no necessary technical base. Realizing the importance of the task, specialists of all levels quickly found solutions and gained knowledge. Professors Nikolai Gersevanov , Nikolai Tsytovich and Dmitry Polshin formulated the theory of the “box foundation”, which in most cases allowed the building to be erected without gigantic reinforced concrete massifs and sedimentary joints [14] .
Until the 1940s, Soviet builders erected low-rise buildings mainly of brick . This allowed to reduce production costs. For example, almost all the work was within the power of man, so it was possible to save on the development and production of expensive equipment. Even in Moscow in 1946, construction collectives had only 26 cranes , 55 excavators and 40 dump trucks . Taking into account existing resources, the chairman of the Moscow executive committee, Georgy Popov, in 1946 proposed limiting himself to the construction of two- and five-story buildings in the future [15] .
For the implementation of a large-scale project, new materials and powerful equipment were required. The skyscrapers were supposed to be built from monolithic reinforced concrete using ready-made slabs, for which purpose special plants were laid in Lyubertsy and Kuchin . Designers P.P. Velikhov, I. B. Gitman, and L. N. Shchipakin developed new UBC tower cranes with a maximum load capacity of 15 tons. A key feature of the mechanism was the ability to lift oneself from floor to floor as the building grew [16] . The use of the metal frame of the building also involved the development of new wall materials: multi-hole bricks and hollow ceramic stones. For the production of these materials, an enterprise was created in the village of Kudinovo [17] .
Subway Lobby
A distinctive feature of the high-rise building on Red Gate Square was the placement on the ground floor of the ground lobby of the Krasnye Vorota metro station. At the time of construction, the architects assumed that in the future exits from the stations would appear in all Moscow skyscrapers [3] .
The difficulty in implementing this project was the nature of local soils. At a depth of 16 meters below the base of the foundation, a swiveling lobby should have been built. At this level were water-saturated quicksanding soils. The usual practice in solving such problems was to first perform all underground work, and then engage in the construction of the building. It would take an additional 1.5 years, but the Soviet leadership was rushing the workers, therefore, the creation of escalator moves and the foundation of the skyscraper was carried out in parallel [6] .
Due to the fact that the foundation had to be erected in close proximity to the 24-meter pit dug above the site of the future lobby, the specialists needed to carry out additional work to strengthen the territory of the construction site. A group of engineers from Metrostroy led by Jacob Dorman proposed and successfully implemented the idea of freezing floating soils around a foundation pit. The craftsmen laid 230 wells with a depth of 27 m, into which freezing columns were lowered. The columns combined in two circuits let in a brine of calcium chloride at a temperature of −20 ° C. During the spring of 1950, special stations provided round-the-clock freezing of the soil [6] .
Artificial freezing caused a heap of soil. Engineers knew about this feature, so they erected a building with a slope from the vertical axis. Designer Victor Abramov calculated how much the skyscraper structure will put pressure on different soils. He suggested that due to freezing, the foundation level in one part will increase by 50 mm , which will subsequently lead to a 16 cm deviation of the building from the vertical axis. To avoid such consequences, the engineer proposed to install the columns of the central building frame with a given slope. In October 1950, when frozen soils began to thaw, the building began to lean under its own weight and eventually took the correct vertical position. In 1953, a government commission inspected the structure and commissioned the administrative part of the building [6] .
High Features
The 138-meter building consists of a central 24-story building and two side buildings with a variable number of storeys from 11 to 15. Although it is the lowest of the Stalinist skyscrapers, visually it seems to be equal to the others due to its location on a hill. The outer walls of the skyscraper are faced with natural limestone , and the first floors with red granite [5] . The interiors of the building are more modest than in other Stalinist skyscrapers. For example, stainless steel was used in the decoration of the front lobby, and expensive materials or paintings were missing [2] .
In the central building, from the side of the courtyard, a meeting room was arranged (on the ground floor) and an exhibition hall (on the basement) [18] . A tunnel was created along the perimeter of the basement with an entrance from Komsomolskaya Square. It was intended for trucks serving the building services [1] . Initially, the building was built for the needs of the Ministry of Railways. However, by 1951, when the work was completed, there was a new union department - the Ministry of Transport , which received offices in the central high-rise building [2] .
All apartments in the kitchens had refrigerators, built-in furniture, sinks with a grinder for the destruction of large waste. Also in the kitchens was provided access to the chute. In addition to the traditional ventilation system, the house had centralized air conditioning . To do this, the air from the street was filtered, passed through a humidification system, after which its temperature reached +15 ° C. Then, depending on the season, the air was heated to the desired level. All high-rise buildings were equipped with a centralized dust removal system, which was a system of brushes and hoses located in each apartment, a system of pipelines running along the building, and vacuum stations installed in the basement floors. The collected dust was filtered and dumped into the sewer, and the cleaned air from the system fell into the street. To ensure the heating of the skyscraper in the basement, boilers were installed [19] .
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Famous residents
- Actor Boris Chirkov lived from 1952 to 1982 [20]
- Surgeon Sergey Yudin [20]
- Art critic Alexei Fedorov-Davydov [20]
- Cameraman Anatoly Golovnya [20]
- USSR Transport Minister Evgeny Kozhevnikov lived from 1954 to 1975 [20]
- The Minister of Transport Construction of the USSR Ivan Sosnov lived from 1954 to 1985 [20]
See also
- Stalin's Empire
- Stalin's architecture
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 Oltarzhevsky, 1953 , p. 78.
- ↑ 1 2 3 Natalya Davydova. Skyscraper without deviation . Izvestia (July 4, 2008). Date of treatment May 20, 2018.
- ↑ 1 2 Oltarzhevsky, 1953 , p. 69.
- ↑ Stalin's skyscraper on the Red Gate Square . Where to go in Moscow (2017). Date of treatment May 20, 2018.
- ↑ 1 2 Julia Yeltsova. I live in a skyscraper on the Red Gate . Where to go in Moscow (December 3, 2015). Date of treatment May 20, 2018.
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 Mugs, 2014 .
- ↑ Svetlakov Leo. Secrets of Stalin's skyscrapers . Samizdat Magazine (September 14, 2016). Date of treatment May 20, 2018.
- ↑ Mezentseva Julia. Red Gate Square . Discover Moscow (2017). Date of treatment May 20, 2018.
- ↑ Moscow. Church of the Three Great Saints at the Red Gate . Sobory.Ru (2017). Date of treatment May 20, 2018.
- ↑ Mikhailov Konstantin. Two boards instead of the house . Kommersant (October 13, 2014). Date of treatment May 20, 2018.
- ↑ 1 2 Dobrenkaya, 2013 , p. 170.
- ↑ Gorlov, 2017 , p. 165.
- ↑ Khmelnitsky, 2007 , p. 292.
- ↑ Gatsunaev, 2015 , p. 19-20.
- ↑ Gatsunaev, 2015 , p. 18-19.
- ↑ Shashkova, 2013 , p. 151-152.
- ↑ Gatsunaev, 2015 , p. 20.
- ↑ Oltarzhevsky, 1953 , p. 69.72.
- ↑ Oltarzhevsky, 1953 , p. 187-193.
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 Administrative building near the "Red Gate" . Northern Line (September 7, 2015). Date of treatment May 20, 2018.
Literature
- Gatsunaev K. N. Heroic-patriotic motifs in Moscow architecture 1940-1950 // Bulletin of MGSU. - 2015. - No. 8 . - S. 18-29 . - ISSN 1997-0935 .
- Gorlov V.N. Stalin's skyscrapers as a monument of post-war Soviet urban planning // Bulletin of Moscow State Regional University. - 2017. - No. 5 . - S. 163-168 . - ISSN 2072-8360 .
- 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 .
- 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 .