The spire of the high-rise building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is being dismantled in order to build exactly the same new one in its place, from modern metal structures. For about six months, the famous building will stand in front of Muscovites "bareheaded", the spire will return only by the end of 2017.
“The question of reconstruction of this spire is probably fifteen years old. This technique was defended, including among professional architects and restorers, was accepted by all, and now this project is being implemented,”Acting told reporters. Vladimir Potapkin, Director of the Department of Capital Construction and Property of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation abroad.
It turns out there was a good, but very sweet, reason to postpone this question. “We had a couple of falcons, a family,” Potapkin explained. - We talked with bird watchers, they climbed the spire, looked where they live. We, in fact, did not start dismantling until the chicks hatched and flew away. Presumably, they flew to the former hotel "Ukraine". They roam like this in Moscow on skyscrapers. Our couple flew away, the bird watchers assured us that they will definitely return here."
On this occasion, we decided to recall some interesting facts about all Moscow skyscrapers.
All in one day
All of them were laid on the same day - on the day of the eight hundredth anniversary of the capital on September 7, 1947. In Stalin's opinion, this was very symbolic. By the way, it is believed that almost all the "seven sisters" have older "twin brothers" in the United States. So, the Wrigley Building is considered the prototype of the house on Kotelnicheskaya embankment.
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Spiers were not intended
According to initial designs published in 1949, most buildings were not supposed to have spiers. It was planned to erect a statue on the top of the Moscow State University, the Foreign Ministry building had a flat roof, the house on Vosstaniya Square would end in a cylindrical octahedron, and so on. There is a legend that Stalin, driving past the skyscraper on Smolenskaya (it was built earlier than the others), cursed and ordered to add a spire. The directive was complied with, for which the layout of the five upper floors had to be changed.
Photo: Maxim Blinov / RIA Novosti
And by the way, the Foreign Ministry building is the only skyscraper not decorated with a five-pointed star. Experts argue that there is a good reason: too massive a star would seriously increase the load on the building's structure.
Secrets of the basements of Moscow State University
There is a legend that somewhere in the basements of the main building of Moscow State University, a bronze statue of the "leader of the peoples" is immured to this day, which should have been installed instead of the spire, but changed his mind after his death. This, of course, is an invention: work on the foundation was completed even before the beginning of 1951, when Stalin was alive and well, and on September 1, 1953, Moscow State University had already opened the doors for students.
The figure on the tower could be 35-40 meters high. Then the university would look like a giant pedestal, like the unbuilt Palace of the Soviets. Therefore, the "leader of the peoples" was reduced in size, changed his pose to a more prosaic one and installed in the park near the fountains. And after the construction of the high-rise building of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Smolenskaya Square, it became clear that there is only one way to make the buildings absolutely proportional: by completing the ends in the form of spiers. Having received a golden spire with a star 58 meters high instead of a sculpture, the building of Moscow State University won a lot.
MSU building
Photo: Konstantin Kokoshkin / Globallookpress.com
Jasper columns and German trophies
And again about Moscow State University. There is a legend that during the construction of the Faculty of Chemistry of Moscow State University, jasper columns from the Cathedral of Christ the Savior were used, which survived after its demolition. The building also contains fragments from various destroyed architectural monuments, for example, the remnants of the Reichstag. There is a tiny grain of truth in this: the faculty was indeed once equipped with captured German fume hoods. But the columns of jasper hardly stood even in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior itself - in any case, historians have not found evidence of this.
The ghost of a hypostyle past
The station "Kropotkinskaya" is not only one of the largest in the Moscow metro, but also built on the model of the hypostyle underground temples common in the architecture of the peoples of the Ancient East (Egypt, Iran). A classic example is the temple at Karnak (Egypt): a vast indoor space (temple or palace hall) whose ceiling rests on numerous, often placed columns. It would seem, where does Stalin's skyscrapers have to do with it? The fact is that the metro station was supposed to become the underground lobby of the unbuilt and, perhaps, the most monumental of them - the Palace of Soviets. They even dug a foundation pit for it, but before the war the construction was interrupted. As a result, a swimming pool "Moscow" was made there, and later the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was restored.
Elite housing on the site of the cockroach nest
Now the price of a two-room apartment in a skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya embankment can reach 30, 40 and even 50 million rubles (data from the sob.ru website). However, few people remember that the first famous residents of this house suffered from an invasion of cockroaches - a high-rise was built on the site of flour warehouses. This is how, for example, the poet Yevtushenko spoke about his misfortune: "Only Zykina sang, / from the ceilings / the chapel / Prusaks went to sing along." Considering that Zykina lived in a 100-meter three-room apartment, it turns out to be just an environmental disaster.
History of losses of "Ukraine"
The hotel "Ukraine" was built quickly, but difficult and painful. At first it lost its name (according to Stalin's plan, it was supposed to become "Dorogomilovskaya", but Nikita Khrushchev had a different opinion on this matter). Then she lost some of the rooms - the same Khrushchev decided to make 250 apartments in the building. There is a legend that the upper floors of "Ukraine" are made worse than the lower ones: the spire was built by prisoners, and the authorities were afraid to rise to such a height. Another legend can partly explain the collapse of one of the hotel's towers in 2007: salt was added to the concrete in order to complete the building as soon as possible and receive the delegates of the VI World Festival of Youth and Students in 1957.
View of the hotel Ukraine and Borodinsky bridge
Photo: TASS
But the hotel has something to boast about - it contains a unique collection of paintings and sculptures by Soviet masters. And the new owners also bought and restored the one-of-a-kind Moscow diorama "Moscow - the capital of the USSR", which was created specifically for the New York exhibition in 1977. They say that astronaut Neil Armstrong wanted to buy it, but he was refused. In the right corner there is a picture of the now demolished hotel "Russia", erected on the site of the foundation of the failed eighth Stalinist skyscraper. Today this is her only such detailed image.
"Big Brother" on Barrikadnaya
Some historians claim that when the US Embassy opened near Barrikadnaya, the upper two floors of the central building of the skyscraper on Kudrinskaya Square were resettled. And there, with the help of special equipment, the KGB carried out wiretapping and monitoring the activities of the "enemy".
Residential building on Kudrinskaya square
Photo: Maxim Blinov / RIA Novosti
The favorite of parapsychologists
The skyscraper on Red Gate Square is very fond of parapsychologists and, in general, fans of everything supernatural. They tell stories about the ghosts there, and the most famous of them is the story of a laughing ghost. He was a minor official who served in the Ministry of Transport Construction located here during the Soviet era. He tried to win the favor of the wife of a high-ranking nomenklatura worker and once told his beloved anecdote. Political. The lady laughed and told it to her husband, but for some reason he was not happy, but forcibly sent the unlucky boyfriend to the psychiatric hospital, where the roof went off and never returned to his place until his death. And after that, the ghost decided to settle in his native ministry.
High-rise building on Red Gate Square
Photo: Maxim Blinov / RIA Novosti
Parapsychologists argue that the number of ghosts of people, albeit already dead, will only grow in all high-rises. They simply have nowhere to go - the unfinished building of the House of Soviets within the framework of this energy complex has never closed the circuit.
Slums of Zaryadye
Now a huge landscape park is being developed in Zaryadye. But the eighth skyscraper, the People's Commissariat of Heavy Engineering of the USSR, could have stood in this place. Its height together with the spire would have been as much as 275 meters. But the construction stopped with the death of Stalin - the finished stylobate was mothballed, and in 1964-1967 the Rossiya hotel was built on this site.
And by the way, before the start of construction, this area was considered extremely dysfunctional, despite its proximity to the Kremlin - real slums. There lived an even more dubious public in highly questionable shacks, and archaeologists are still unearthing evidence of active life there.
Ksenia Ryazantseva
