The residence of American ambassadors.

Location
Beyond the place depicted by Vasily Polenov there is a neo-classical mansion aka Spaso House. The name was taken from Spasopeskovskaya Square, in the Arbat District  (see the previous post "Where the legend was born"). Not far from the American Embassy grounds, Spaso House sits just off the garden ring road that passed the old American Embassy and is a few short block from Arbat. The great hall is 82 feet long with a domed ceiling that holds the largest Russian crystal house chandelier in Moscow.

Neoclassical Revival building
It was one of the mansions confiscated by the communists during the Russian Revolution of 1917.  Spaso House had been completed only three years earlier in 1914 by wealthy banker, munitions dealer and textile merchant Nikolay Aleksandrovich Vtorov. He commissioned the architects Vladimir Adamovich and Vladimir Mayat, two prominent advocates of the neoclassical style, to build the new mansion.

Where the legend was born.

 V. Dubossarsky, A. Vinogradov

Moscow courtyard

2007

The one who depicted the typical image of the 19th century Moscow as well as the lives of the people in their daily pursuits was Vasly Polenov. His best-known painting "A Moscow Courtyard" (1877, State Tretyakov Gallery) shows some patio not far from Arbat street. The subject was chosen right. In their memoirs many 19th- and 20th-century writers, poets, artists and public figures who lived in pre-revolutionary Moscow returned time and time again to its magical courtyards with their special sounds and smells, which so captured the childish imagination.
"A Moscow Courtyard" shows a multi-dimensional world, which accommodates equally well an old manor estate with a shady neglected garden, a church and abandoned lopsided barns. Children are playing in the yard, and a baby is crying. The mother is carrying a pail of water from the house - possibly to a horse which is hitched to a cart on the other side of the yard. More details such as chickens, a clothesline, and a covered well are in the foreground. And in the background are the spires, cupolas, and a bell towers of churches.

V. Polenov

A Moscow courtyard

1877

Later, the artist would reminisce: “I was looking for a flat, when I saw a notice on the door. I popped in to look, and immediately saw this view from the window. I sat down and painted it there and then.” In the list of Polenov’s works compiled by the artist himself, this painting (no. 123) is entitled “A Spot Near the Arbat”. This charming spot portrayed by Polenov still exists in nowadays Moscow though the neighbourhood has altered very much since then. The grassy ground is known by the name of Spasopeskovskaya ploshchadka (square). It is situated not far from Arbat street. A short Spasopeskovsky pereulok (lane) that takes off Arbat leads to the square.
'Spasopeskovskaya' means "Saviour on the Sands," referring to the sandy soil of the neighborhood, which was first settled in the seventeenth century. The centre of this place is the beautiful Saviour Transfiguration church "on the sands", the Spasa Preobrazhenia na Peskakh, that gave the name to the site. Built around 1711, with railings dating from 1849, this five-domed church was a typical example of mid-17th – early 18thcentury architecture.

 Constructed without the use of internal columns, it included a refectory, chapel of St. Nicholas and tall, hipped bell-tower, and was decorated with ornamental shells, nalichniki window frames and kokoshniki arches. The includes an additional church with bell-tower on the right – that of St. Nicholas the Miracle-Worker in Nikolsky Pereulok, now Plotnikov Pereulok. A further church in the Prechistenka area is discernible in the distance.

Archnadzor rally at Pushkinskaya ploshchad.

On October 1, Archnadzor, a Moscow preservation society, organized a rally opposing the destruction of Moscow architectural landmarks. Around 700 people attended. The participants were Archnadzor activists, public figures, experts.

Konstantin Mikhailov, coordinator at heritage watchdog Arkhnadzor

As recently as May, Arkhnadzor was optimistic about the new Moscow city government’s construction policies, and praised the new administration’s efforts in protecting the capital’s historic sights.
Now, however, the movement is arguing that despite all the promises, historical buildings are no more protected by Mayor Sergei Sobyanin than they were by his predecessor Yury Luzhkov.
“Neither promises to ban new construction in the historic center, nor statements about cancelling previous decisions concerning historical buildings’ demolition has become a real guarantee of keeping the historical city,” Arkhnadzor stated.
 In 2011 Moscow has lost more than 10 historic buildings. In September the authorities demolished the Central Mosque, the Russian capital's oldest one. In August the “Veterenariya” pavilion, that was built in 1939 as part of a Soviet showcase of agricultural achievements, was burnt out.  In July a property developer  destroyed a historic building on Bolshoi Kozikhinsky alley without permission. The demolition of the courtyard of the Glebov-Streshnyev-Shakhovsky Mansion in June was the culmination of a struggle that had been going on for several years. The Helikon Opera House, tenants of the mansion, wanted to create a new stage in the courtyard of the building. The work was halted by Acting Mayor Vladimir Resin in October 2010. Any work – demolition or construction – was illegal there. In May Capital Group destroyed Dom Kolbe on Bolshaya Yakimanka, claiming that “the front side fell down by itself”. So every month Archnadzor lamented at least one considerable loss of Moscow landmarks.

New Jerusalem. Istra

An Indian summer in the end of September a year ago gave us a chance to make a Sunday trip to New Jerusalem, a monastery near Istra outside Moscow. It was a gordgeous day though in the end of our tour we were stuck at the parking. But the latter is typical here.
New Jerusalem is also known as the Voskresensky (Resurrection) monastery. The town of Istra was also called Voskresensk before 1930. Apparently the splendid monastery is the greatest local asset.

Unlike other Moscow monasteries, this one had no military use. It was modelled in plan pretty accurately on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in (old) Jerusalem by Nikon, the patriarch whose reforms drove the Old Believers from the Orthodox Church. The original design of the monastery was part of Nikon's deliberate intention to make Russia the third Rome and the centre of global Christian belief, leading to religious reforms, the ensuing schism and the formation of a group known as “old believers”. Tsar Alexei (father of Peter the Great) later used this rift as an excuse to exile the Patriarch, who was getting too powerful.

The Baikal.

Though the blog was named after Moscow (Moskvoved means "Moscow regional historian") and supposed to be devoted to the capital city, I couldn't help focusing on the most famous Russian place of interest, which is without question Siberia. Last summer I decided to put a two-week vacation to good use by venturing there in order to explore Lake Baikal, that is considered to be "the Pearl of Siberia" or "the great, holy sea".

I'm gonna write about the trip in series of posts here. 

Captain Obvious prompts me that Baikal is the world’s deepest lake – over 1600 meters at its deepest – and it contains about 1/5 of the world’s fresh water. But today I'd like to tell you about another Baikal, which is actually 'the Baikal'. The latter was much smaller than Lake Baikal but also great. 

Here's the description:

"The Baikal ... is of over 4,000 tons, close on 300 feet long, and has nearly 60 feet beam. She has three triple expansion engines of 1,250 horse-power, two amidships and one in the bow. This power is required in the ice-breaking. She will break through ice 36 inches thick, and her bow is made with a curve, so that when the ice is thicker she can be backed and then go full steam at the ice, partly climb on it with her impetus, and then crush it with her weight. This means that the Baikal sometimes takes a week to cross the lake." 

(From John Foster Fraser’s "The Real Siberia")

Yes, it's a vessel as you have guessed by now. And to my mind it was the most interesting landmark of the region in the beginning of the 20th century untill it was destroyed by burning during the Civil War.

 The Baikal appeared in Siberia while the section of the Trans-Siberian railway to the south of the lake was under construction. Then the Russian government placed an order in Newcastle, England, for a ferry/ice-breaker, which could hold 24 cars and one locomotive on its middle deck.

Three years later after the Baikal, an ice-breaker Angara was also built in England for carrying cargo  and passengers. Both of these Baikal giants were assembled in Listvyanka, on the southwestern shore of  the lake, where a shipyard was built especially for this purpose.
I think I'll write the entire story about this ferry later. And now just have a look at some pics.

Solovyov house.

There are lots of art nouveau buildings in Moscow. This style was mostly used for construction private houses and commercial apartment building. The domestic architecture of the early XXth century in Moscow was created by famous architects F. Shekhtel, L. Kekushev and W. Walcott.
But my favourite mansion was built by S.U. Solovyov. The building, completed in 1902, was designed by architect Sergey Solovyov as his private home. It was a part of an upper-class new development area on the northern side of Povarskaya Street. The architect, who worked mostly for public charities and colleges, was usually constrained by his clients, and his own home was his only venture into pure decorative art.
This house is full of nice details and symbols.
The decoration uses sculpture and ceramic tiles.  All the sculptures were designed by famous Russian artist Nikolay Andreev. He used animals and birds in decoration of the building. For example, owls were particularly used in northern Europe Art Nouveau (called National Romanticism) because of the large place of owls in northern mythologies and legends.

 

Owls are also connected with night, the time of mystic and miracles. Bats are night animals too.

Dostoevsky's architectural guide to Moscow.

Yesterday I mentioned Dostoevsky. And today while reading a book on architecture I found an interesting quote by him. It seems to be a very short introduction to Russian architecture of the XIX century.
I wasn't going to start my blog only with Dostoevsky. But what can I do? He follows me.
Then meet an architectural guide to Moscow by Fyodr Mikhailovitch. 
"In these buildings you can read as in a book all the currents of all the great and trivial ideas that, appropriately or accidentally, have landed here from Europe and that gradually overcame and captured us.
Here we see the pallid architecture of churches of the last century;

 

here is a pitiful imitation in Roman style from the beginning of our century;

here we see a building that seems to have come from the Renaissance era; and there is an example of the ancient Byzantine style, supposedly discovered by the arcitect Ton during the reign of Nicholas I.