Moscow River Trip

Artist and media mover & shaker Ivan Zemtsov set out to celebrate Alenka’s 40thh birthday by setting up the Alyonka

Mail Art Project, in which participants would compose original artwork featuring Alenka’s iconic visage. The first “Alyonka” show was presented to public in Yoshkar-Ola Museum of Fine Arts in October 2006. Some of the works are shown above.

When the Red October chocolate factory ceased operations at its central Moscow location in 2007, several proposals were put forth with the intention of converting the main buildings into high-priced apartments and lofts. The 2008-09 world financial crisis put the kibosh on those plans, perhaps thankfully, and the premises now houses a museum celebrating Red October’s wealth of history as well as hosting art shows and media events.

As for the Red October chocolate factory, it’s moved to a spanking new 48,000 square meter (516,685 sq ft) facility in Moscow’s hinterlands. The new factory maintains the company’s long and lustrous reputation by manufacturing 30 different types of chocolate and confectionery while employing 19,000 workers… and undoubtedly perfuming the suburban air for a whole new generation of Russians to appreciate.

The Cathedral of Christ the Savior

"...have you ever stood and stared at it? Its beauty, its genius?..."

Built in 1860, it was lately destroyed by comrade Stalin. To show everyone the "new",

"free" Russia, Bolsheviks built a swimming pool right on the ruins of the church! Fortunately, the new Russian government allowed its restoration, and the cathedral was reopened in 2000. It's the tallest Eastern Orthodox church in the world!

The enormous gleaming golden dome and gigantic structure of the newly built Cathedral of Christ the Savior is visible from all over central Moscow and is the largest church in Russia. The original Cathedral was built by the architect Konstantin Ton between 1839 and 1881 to commemorate Russia's victory over the French in the

Napoleonic Wars. The church was demolished in 1933 in order to free the land for the construction of a House of Soviets - a massive skyscraper intended to house various government authorities and promote the Soviet regime. The building was to be topped with a 100-meter-tall aluminum statue of the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. However, due to numerous technical difficulties the building was never actually constructed and the site was instead devoted to the creation of an outdoor swimming pool, which occupied the area till the early 90s, when government officials began to seriously consider a project to rebuild

the church as it had been in Ton's day.

The recreation of the Church of Christ the Savior was considered a symbol of Russia's spiritual revival after the long years of atheistic

Communist rule. In the early 1990s a public fund was set up to raise money for the costly project. The reconstruction raised considerable patriotic feeling amongst many Russians, although some Muscovites opposed the project on aesthetic grounds, claiming that the hastily built replica of the original church lacked elegance and balanced proportions. Many also saw the massive construction project as an entirely egomotivated attempt by Moscow Major Yuri Luzhkov to leave his mark on

the city, as many powerful rulers had done before him.

Clad in marble and granite, with huge bronze doors covered in relief depictions of the saints, the cathedral is one of Moscow's most impressive ecclesiastical buildings.

Moscow State Variety Theatre opened in June 1954. The new theater building was on

Mayakovsky Square, which once was a restaurant "Alcazar", and then worked as a theater of satire. Creator of the theater stage was a group of leading artists of the Moscow stage, led by the People's Artist of the RSFSR N. Smirnov-Sokolsky. In February 1961 N. SmirnovSokolsky cut scarlet ribbon for the second time - Variety Theatre moved to Bersenevskaya embankment to the former club of the Government House, where he works to this day.

The Rossiya Hotel

The Rossiya Hotel (Russian: Россия ) was a large hotel built in Moscow from 1964 until 1967 at the order of the Soviet government. Construction used the existing foundations of a cancelled skyscraper project, the Zaryadye Administrative Building, which would have been the eighth of what is now referred to as the Seven Sisters. The architect was Dmitry Chechulin.

Large portions of a historic district of Moscow, known as Zaryadye, were demolished in the 1940s for the original project. It was registered in theGuinness Book of Records as the largest hotel in the world until it was surpassed by the Excalibur in Las

Vegas, Nevada in 1990. It remained the largest hotel in Europe until its 2006 closure. The 21-storey Rossiya had 3,200 rooms, 245 half suites, a post office, a health club, a nightclub, a movie theater and a barber shop , a police station with jail cells behind unmarked black doors in proximity to the barber shop, as well as the 2500-seat State

Central Concert Hall. The building was capable of accommodating over 4,000 guests. Most of the rooms were 11 square metres (120 sq ft), far smaller than most hotel rooms in the

West. The hotel was adjacent to Red Square, its 21-storey tower looming over the Kremlin walls and the cupolas of Saint Basil's Cathedral.

Fire

On February 25, 1977, a huge fire in the building killed 42 and injured 50.[1]

Demolition

The Rossiya Hotel officially closed its doors on January 1, 2006. Demolition of the building began in March 2006 for an entertainment complex loosely based on the design of the old Zaryadye district. The project is being overseen by British architect Sir Norman Foster and includes plans for a new, two thousand room hotels with apartments and a parking garage. In October 2006 the Supreme Arbitration Court has cancelled the results of a tender to reconstruct the Rossiya hotel near the Kremlin.

Novospassky Monastery

Novospassky Monastery (New monastery of the Saviour, Russian: Новоспасский монастырь) is one of the fortified monasteries surrounding Moscowfrom south-east.

It was the first monastery to be founded in Moscow in the early 14th century. The Saviour Church was its original katholikon. Upon its removal to the left bank of the Moskva

River in 1491, the abbey was renamed the New Saviour, to distinguish it from the older one in the Kremlin.

The monastery was patronized by Andrei Kobyla's descendants, including

the Sheremetyev and Romanov boyars, and served as their burial vault. Among the last Romanovs buried in the monastery were Xenia Shestova (the mother of the first Romanov Tsar), Princess Tarakanoff (a pretender who claimed to have been the only daughter

of Empress Elisabeth) and Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia. In 1571 and 1591, the wooden citadel withstood repeated attacks of Crimean Tatars.

Upon the Romanovs' ascension to the Moscovy throne, Michael of Russia completely rebuilt their family shrine in the 1640s. Apart from the huge 18th-century bell-tower (one of the tallest in Moscow) and the Sheremetev sepulchre in the church of the Sign, all other buildings date from that period. They include:

The large five-domed katholikon (1645-49) with frescoes by the finest Muscovite painters of the 17th century;

The Pokrovsky (Intercession) church at the refectory;

The House of Loaf-Giving, a hospital, monks' living quarters, and the palace of Patriarch Filaret.

During the Soviet years, the monastery was converted into a prison, then into

a police drunk tank. In the 1970s it was assigned to an art restorationinstitute, and finally returned to the Russian Orthodox church in 1991.

Kotelnicheskaya Embankment (Russian: Котельническая набережная) is a street on the northern bank of Moskva River in central Tagansky District of Moscow, Russia. It spans from the mouth of Yauza River (west) to the point one block west from Bolshoy Krashokholmsky Bridge (east), where it changes name to Goncharnaya Embankment. Bolshoy Krasnokholmsky Bridge (Russian: Большой Краснохолмский мост) is a steel arch bridge that spans Moskva River in downtownMoscow, Russia, carrying Garden

Ring between Tagansky District and Zamoskvorechye Districts. It was completed in 1938 by V.M.Vakhurkin (structural engineering), G.P.Golts and D.M.Sobolev (architectural design). Its main span is the widest arch span in Moscow (168 meters).

History

Site of Krasnokholmsky Bridges, 1853, fromKhotev's Atlas. Note the channel separating Red Hills (triangular island) and the angle of bridge across Moskva River Wooden causeway bridges on this site were common since 18th century; 1853 plan shows a wooden bridge on site slightly to the south of current site and at a different angle. Originally, Vodootvodny Canal has a second bypass canal, cutting off the south-eastern tip of The Island. It was located rougnly 100 meters south from the centerline of present-day Garden Ring, spanned by one or two wooden bridges. All bridges, past and present, were built to the north of this bypass canal.

The first permanent Krasnoholmsky Bridge across Moskva River was built in 1872, by the Struwe brothers; Amand Struwe was lead engineer and financial promoter. The bridge consisted of two rectangular lattice trusses (a mixed truss and girder type), each

65.5 meters long, with a single main pillar in the middle. Usable deck had 15.0 meters wide roadway with timber paving plus two 2.14 meter wide foot walkways. Tram tracks were laid later; a 1910 plan denotes tham as horse-tram service, 1916 plan - as electrical

tram.[3] Struwe, like his predecessors, built his bridge at nearly right angle to river flow - with an unnecessary kink in the path of Garden Ring.

Bolshoy Krasnokholmsky Bridge (1938)

Bolshoy Krasnokholmsky Bridge you can view after reconstruction (2007).

The new bridge was designed to eliminate this kink, so the bridge-to-river angle is 55 degrees. Initially, planners considered a cable-stayed scheme, but a combination of cable scheme and a sharp angle seemed too risky, so they reverted to conventional arch design.

Main span consists of seven sickle-shaped steel arches, each 168 meters long and 10.68 meters high. They are made of SDS steel (Специальная Дворца Советов, Palace of

Soviets Special). Total steel consumption for the main span (with deck) is 6000 metric tons, or 890 kilograms per square meter of deck.

Shoreside pylons, finished in granite slabs, are based on four

concrete caisson foundations (each 35.6 by 15.0 meters) reaching the solid limestone slab which is 11.5-13.0 meters deep at this point. Total length of bridge, with concrete approach

ramps, is 725.5 meters, width 40.0 meters (8 traffic lanes, which originally included two tram tracks).

In 2005–2007, the bridge went through a major overhaul. Deck and approach ramps (excluding their side walls) were torn apart and replaced. Visually, bridge retained all original structural details.

The Seven Sisters

The Seven Sisters are a group of seven skyscrapers in Moscow designed in

the Stalinist style. Muscovites call them Vysotki or Stalinskie Vysotki(Russian: Сталинские высотки), meaning "(Stalin's) high-rises" (or "Stalinist skyscrapers"). They were built from 1947 to 1953,[1] in an elaborate combination of Russian Baroque and Gothic styles, and the technology used in building American skyscrapers.[2] [not in citation given]

The seven are: Hotel Ukraina, Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Apartments, the Kudrinskaya

Square Building, the Hotel Leningradskaya, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the main building of the Moscow State University, and the Red Gates Administrative Building. There were two more skyscrapers in the same style that were never built: the Zaryadye Administrative building and the Palace of the Soviets.

History

Miniature sheet of the First Congress of Soviet Architects showing the Palace of Soviets, 1937.

The first Soviet skyscraper project, Palace of the Soviets, was interrupted by the German invasion of 1941, at which point the steel frame was scrapped in order to fortify the Moscow defense ring, and the site was abandoned. Between 1947 and

1956, Boris Iofan presented six new drafts for this site, and also for Vorobyovy Gory on a smaller scale - they were all rejected. In 1946, Stalin personally switched to another idea - construction of vysotki, a chain of reasonably-sized skyscrapers not tarnished by the memories of the Comintern. As Nikita Khrushchev recalled Stalin's words, "We won the war

... foreigners will come to Moscow, walk around, and there's no skyscrapers. If they compare Moscow to capitalist cities, it's a moral blow to us".[4][5] Sites were selected in between January, 1947 (the official decree on vysotki) and September 12, 1947 (formal opening ceremony).

Nothing is known about selection of construction sites or design evaluation; this process (1947–1948) was kept secret, a sign of Stalin's personal tight management. Old professionals like Shchusev, Zholtovsky etc., were not involved. Instead, the job was given to the next generation of mature architects. In 1947, the oldest of them, Vladimir Gelfreikh, was 62. The youngest, Mikhail Posokhin, was 37. Individual commissions were ranked according to each architect's status, and clearly segmented into two groups - four first class and four second class towers. Job number one, aVorobyovy Gory tower that would become Moscow State University, was awarded to Lev Rudnev, a new leader of his profession. Rudnev received his commission only in September 1948, and employed hundreds of professional designers. He released his draft in early 1949. Dmitry

Chechulin received two commissions.

In April 1949, the winner of the Stalin Prize for 1948 was announced. All eight design teams received first and second class awards, according to their project status, regardless of their architectural value. At this stage, these were conceptual drafts; often one would be cancelled and others would be altered.

All the buildings employed over-engineered steel frames with concrete ceilings and masonry infill, based on concrete slab foundations (in the case of the University building -

7 meters thick). Exterior ceramic tiles, panels up to 15 square meters, were secured with stainless steel anchors. The height of these buildings was not limited by political will, but by lack of technology and experience - the structures were far heavier than American skyscrapers.

The effect of this project on real urban needs can be seen from these numbers: