Why did they make a huge 20-meter arch in a residential building in a Moscow house on Zemlyanoy Val

  • Mar 03, 2021
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Why did they make a huge 20-meter arch in a residential building in a Moscow house on Zemlyanoy Val
Why did they make a huge 20-meter arch in a residential building in a Moscow house on Zemlyanoy Val

In the Soviet Union, they built not only typical residential buildings and standard buildings, but also beautiful buildings with unusual and often incomprehensible elements for us. One of these buildings is the house on the Zemlyanoy Val in Moscow.

1. Family row

The height of the arch in the house is approximately 7 floors / Photo: yandex.ua
The height of the arch in the house is approximately 7 floors / Photo: yandex.ua

House No. 48 A and B on Zemlyanoy Val has a rather interesting architecture. First of all, everyone pays attention to the huge arch, the approximate height of which is seven floors. Today, when we look at the building, we see a single structure. But at the very beginning of its existence, it was exactly half less.

The building was designed by a couple of architects / Photo: pinterest.co.uk

Construction of the house began in the thirties of the last century. Several architects worked on the development: Nikolai Bezrukov and Alexander Khryakov with his wife Zoya Brod. By the way, A. Khryakov eventually became a famous specialist in this field of activity. In 1949 he received the Stalin Prize as a participant in the project of the Main Building of Moscow State University, built on Vorobyovy Gory. Ten years later, the architect became a laureate of the Lenin Prize for Luzhniki.

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The construction of the house dates back to 1936 / Photo: mirkvartir.ru

Spouses-architects often worked on joint projects. One of them is the Great Reading Room, which is located in the Library. Lenin. There are other buildings in Moscow designed by Zoya Brod and Alexander Khryakov. As for the described house with a high arch, it appeared on the Zemlyanoy Val in 1934, but in some sources the building dates back to 1936. it is likely that the second option is correct, since Khryakov moved from Leningrad to the capital only in 1933.

2. Why was such a large arch needed?

It was planned to build a second complex in a similar style / Photo: cartoonblues.com

The first project was much larger. Initially, it was planned that the house would reach the embankment itself, and over time it was planned to build a second complex in a similar style, but along the Yauza. Unfortunately, the plans remained just plans, since the Great Patriotic War began. Before its start, the builders managed to build only the first building, and then only half of it.

The building was significantly different from analogues of that time / Photo: cao.today

The building itself compares favorably with most similar structures of that time. Its lower floors were decorated with imposing columns, and a little higher space was decorated with friezes. The windows in the form of squares, as well as balconies with semi-columns, erected on the upper floors, have an unusual appearance.

The house has a twenty-meter arch - the highest in the capital / Photo: m.ok.ru

But its main feature, a visiting card, is an unusual and highest arch in the capital. It reached a height of about twenty meters. There was even a version that the city authorities planned to install a sculpture of Joseph in the courtyard in the future. Vissarionovich Stalin is quite impressive in size, therefore they made such an arch so that it could be there without any problems to transport. Naturally, these are just speculations and assumptions.

The reason for the appearance of the arch was the architectural trends of that time / Photo: mperspektiva.ru

The real reasons for the appearance of such a design are much simpler. Most likely, the architects acted in accordance with the trends of the architectural fashion of the time. And then the trend was the visual creation of the effect of spaciousness. Massive stalinkas, which were located too close to one another, seemed to compress space. The illusion of a tunnel was created. The portal, as it were, expanded it. The arch itself is also decorated, although this is not particularly striking. On its vault, there are elements resembling square-shaped caissons, and small windows were made on the sides.

3. Almost identical

The apartments in this beautiful and unusual house are very spacious / Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

If you go inside the house and get into the apartment, you can personally see how luxurious the housing is. What is only the height of the ceiling. It is 3.2 m. There were absolutely no two-room apartments in the house. But there were three, four and five rooms. As for the areas, they were relatively small. For example, three-room housing within 72-80 square meters. Everything depended on the general layout.

The construction of the second part of the building was resumed only in the post-war years / Photo: domofoto.ru

When the war broke out in 1941, all work on the construction of the house was stopped indefinitely. They took it up only in the fifties of the last century. The construction of the second part of the building was carried out according to an existing project. The decor was also exactly the same as in the pre-war construction. In this regard, the structure looks like an integral building. But there were differences. They consisted in the fact that two-room and one-room apartments were already being built in the second half of the house, while housing for five rooms was completely excluded.

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The famous scientist Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov lived in this house / Photo: m.sputnik-ossetia.ru

One more point - both parts of the building are one house, but with different numbering. The pre-war part exists under the number 48A, and the post-war part - 48B. By the way, the most famous scientist lived in the second part, one of those who created the first hydrogen bomb in the USSR, A. Sakharov.

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Living in a house on Zemlyanoy Val is prestigious - even apartments without repair are very expensive / Photo: chulga.livejournal.com

After so many decades, the house on Zemlyanoy Val remains as dignified and beautiful as in the first years of its existence. It is quite prestigious to live in it. Even apartments with a small area that require renovation, these days here have a huge price - over $ 20 million.

Continuing the topic, read about
3 reliable home construction methods that have been tested for millennia.
A source:
https://novate.ru/blogs/220720/55403/