A new archaeological site may appear in the capital.
It is sometimes helpful to look out the window. Especially if the window is in the center, and under it is the construction site. On March 12, visitors to one of the fitness centers on Taganskaya Square noticed (and immediately photographed) that excavators working on the construction of a multifunctional complex at the end of Zemlyanoy Val had got to the bottom of something old. More precisely - to the vaults, built of large-sized bricks interspersed with white stone blocks. "History!" - the eyewitnesses guessed, and within a few minutes the photo became the property of the local history community.
With the aroma of cognac
“The cellars that were opened during the construction are all that remains of the monumental structure of the 19th century, which occupied a vast area along the Zemlyanoy Val up to Drovyanoy Lane,” Natalya Leonova, a local historian, told MK. - Most likely, this house was built on pre-fire basements, that is, the vaults that are now being broken belong to the 18th - the very beginning of the 19th century. This can be seen both in the masonry and in the materials - among the large-sized bricks there are white-stone blocks, very reminiscent of the base of the walls of the White City. Exactly the same blocks can be observed on Pokrovsky Boulevard, where a fragment of the foundation of these walls was recently museumified.
It is also possible that the wine of the famous Moscow wine trade company Despres was stored in these cellars, Leonova continues. The company, famous for the supply of cognacs and fortified wines, rented part of today's house No. 1 on Solzhenitsyn Street, and the excavated cellars are located just at the back of this building. There were very similar wine cellars in the main building of the company on Petrovka. The wines of Despres got into history thanks to numerous memories - starting with Vladimir Gilyarovsky himself. Enter the construction site and go deeper into the cellars - perhaps, and catch the spirit of the old "fin-champagne".
The “neighbor” of this gigantic building by the standards of the 19th century was another house associated with the food business of Moscow: overlooking Taganskaya Square, it belonged to the famous tea merchant Perlov. This entire building line was demolished in the early 1960s, when a transport overpass was being built on Zemlyanoy Val. As a result, Solzhenitsyn Street - the former Bolshaya Alekseevskaya, and then Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya - looks at the square with a blind firewall, and not with a front facade, as it should have been according to all the canons of architecture.
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Unearth or bury
The current legislation implies that any find of an archaeological site at a construction site requires a suspension of construction and an appeal to the heritage protection authorities. As MK was told in the Department of Cultural Heritage of the Moscow Government, this is exactly what the developer did in the fall of 2017, when excavators stumbled upon the arches. Now both builders and archaeologists are waiting for the warm season to conduct a survey, the DKN said. However, the city experts are not yet enthusiastic about cellars.
“Taking into account the depth of the structure and the composition of the building material, it can be assumed that the remains of an ordinary building structure of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries were found,” said the chief archaeologist of Moscow Leonid Kondrashev. - According to the historical plan (1852), there were two estates on the site that belonged to the merchants Sergei Efimovich Kulakov and Sergei Vasilyevich Obidin. It is possible that one of them built a building on their property with large basements for storing goods. Already in Soviet times, this building was rebuilt more than once (this can be seen from the masonry on cement mortar), and then it was demolished, therefore there is no reason to declare the historical value of the opened vaults.
However, city defenders hope for the best - that the more ancient origin of the vaults will be confirmed. In this case, the municipal deputies of the Tagansky district are in solidarity with them: the residents of the surrounding streets would like to get at this place not just another shopping or office center, but an attraction, a point of attraction.
- If the developer - on his own initiative or at the direction of the city authorities - invests in changing the project and museumifies the vaults within the new house, it would be great for the entire district, - Ilya Sviridov, head of the Tagansky municipality, told MK. - For example, in our district - which, undoubtedly, belongs to the old, historical Moscow - still does not have its own museum of the history of the district. In such an archaeological site, such a museum could be located with great success.
However, all that local government can do in this situation is to persuade, persuade, admonish. The current legislation does not provide for the direct influence of district deputies on the developer - the municipality has no right either to stop construction, or to issue an order for excavation, or to insist on changing the project.
One way or another, Moscow knows examples of both museumized underground sights and those unique artifacts that it was decided to “bury” until better times. Among the first are a fragment of the bridge on Manezhnaya Square (now there is the Museum of Moscow Archeology), the foundations of the Chudov and Ascension monasteries in the Kremlin (exposed after the recent demolition of the 14th building of the Kremlin and closed with glass hatches), the foundation of the White City wall (Pokrovsky Boulevard). Much more monuments have been conserved until better times: Kuznetsky Most on the street of the same name, the foundation of the Sukharev Tower, old quarters in the Kremlin and on Birzhevaya Square (the latter was filled up quite recently, in 2017). Today, the question whether to break the vaults or include in a new building as a "museum" element depends only on the good will of the developer.