Not the first year... No, not the first decade, photographs from excavations on the streets of Russian cities, where the camera lens got mysterious houses with "buried" first floors. If you can somehow explain the presence of walled-in windows at ground level, then what about the doors walled up at ground level? Oh, and what only the citizens did not come up with on this score.
Over two decades of Internet adventures, houses with "buried" ground floors have acquired a fair amount of myths and outright conspiracy theories. The most “active” citizens even talk about the fact that the floors “drowned” in the ground with doors and windows are traces of a flood that took place either in the 18th or in the 19th century. Like, clay and silt caused so much that the ancestors could not clear the streets. So, as a result, the windows on the once first floors had to be walled up. And historians allegedly now have to hush up and hide all traces of that grandiose event of biblical proportions! Is it really necessary to say that such stories have nothing to do with reality? If someone likes to believe in all sorts of conspiracy theories - to health.
In fact, most houses with "recessed" floors were built either at the end of the 19th or at the beginning of the 20th century during the Russian Empire. And these same “first” floors are not the first at all. From the very beginning, they were basement or basement. Today, the number of such houses is minimal, but they are still found in various cities of the former Russian Empire. The most famous of these houses are located in Omsk, Kazan, Moscow. So why were “underground” windows and doors needed?
Everything is extremely simple. Once there were underground galleries near these houses. It is worth recalling that in the 19th and early 20th centuries there were “some problems” with electricity. Therefore, the premises were illuminated either by daylight or by kerosene lamps. The latter were unsafe and required additional costs. They were not very fond of using such in warehouses for obvious reasons. Therefore, the so-called "luxspheres" were invented - light prisms that can direct daylight in the right direction. These prisms were inserted into metal gratings and then installed above the underground galleries as hatches or windows. Thus, the basement was light for most of the day without the use of electricity or kerosene.
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Periodically excavated doors leading to nowhere once connected the basement of the house with the outer underground galleries. During the empire, such galleries could contain warehouses, workshops, kitchens, and even living quarters. This is extremely convenient, and most importantly, it allowed saving precious land for development. As for the underground windows, they were made for natural light in the basement. The windows were enclosed in narrow shafts, which were then covered with gratings with the same luxfers. In some cases, the prism grates could be opened by unloading from the street directly into the underground gallery.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about 6 extraordinary buildings, applying for the UK Architecture Prize.
Source: https://novate.ru/blogs/260422/62830/