Moscow Metro – Marksistskaya – Line 8

Posted on 22/04/2023 by Michael

Marksistskaya – Line 8 – By Mikhail (Vokabre) Shcherbakov

Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Marksistskaya – Line 8

Marxsistskaya – Line 8 – 09

Marksistskaya (Марксистская, lit. ’Marxism’) is a station of the Moscow Metro’s Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya Line. It was opened along with the initial segment on 30 December 1979. The station is named after the Marksistskaya (Marxist) Street and its architectural theme is the purity of Marxist ideals.

Marxsistskaya – Line 8 – 08

Architects Nina Alyoshina, V. Volovich and N. Samoylova took a standard deep level column tri-vault station (engineers Ye. Barsky, I. Zhukov and Yu. Muromtsev) and applied on overall red theme that includes red Burovshina marble to the columns and a pink Gazgan to the station walls. The spiral-shaped light fixtures symbolize ‘spiral development’, a concept in dialectical materialism, the Marxist philosophical teaching.

Marxsistskaya – Line 8 – 07

The station serves as a transfer point between the Taganskaya station of the Koltsevaya Line and the Taganskaya station of the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line forming a busy three station transfer point. Transfer to the former is by the direct escalator from the end of Marksistskaya.

Marxsistskaya – Line 8 – 06

The station is located on the eastern edge of the Taganka Square, and its underground vestibule is situated on the influx of the Taganskaya and Marksistskaya streets into the square with surface subway access available to both sides of the latter street and to the open plaza on the apex of their connection.

Marxsistskaya – Line 8 – 05

It was the deepest station in Moscow Metro from 1979 until 1987.

Marxsistskaya – Line 8 – 04

Text above from Wikipedia.

Marxsistskaya – Line 8 – 03

Marxistskaya

Date of opening;

30th December 1979

Construction of the station;

deep, column, three-span

Architects of the underground part;

N. Aleshina and V. Volovich

Transit to stations Taganskaya of the Circle Line and Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line

Marxistskaya is likely the reddest station of The Moscow Metro. The vaults lean against the arcades of elegant columns widening upward. The columns and entablatures are faced with red and pink marble with numerous many coloured inclusions. The walls are faced with light marble, mostly of yellowish, cream-coloured, beige shades turning to white and greyish. This background is decorated with geometric mosaics of narrow arrow-shaped strips of red and pink marble. The lower part of the walls is faced with black gabbro. The central hall of the station is illuminated with original helical chandeliers.

The floor is covered with dark grey granite with large white crystalline inclusions. There are eight-pointed stars of red granite between the columns on the floor and two of red granite of two different shades inscribed one in other along the central hall.

Text from Moscow Metro 1935-2005, p92

Location:

GPS:

55.7411°N

37.6543°E

Depth:

60 metres (200 ft)

Opened:

30 December 1979

Marxsistskaya – Line 8 – 02

Marxsistskaya – Line 8 – 01

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Moscow Metro – Novokuznetskaya – Line 2

Posted on 21/04/2023 by Michael

Novokuznetskaya – Line 2 – by Alex ‘Flostein’ Fedorov

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Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Novokuznetskaya – Line 2

Novokuznetskaya – Line 2 – 01

Novokuznetskaya (Новокузнецкая) is a Moscow Metro station on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line. The station was opened on 20 November 1943.

Novokuznetskaya – Line 2 – 02

Construction of the station began shortly after the launch of the second stage in 1938. Despite World War II the station was opened on time. Later in 1978 the platform was lengthened. This part is in a more modern style than the rest of the station.

Novokuznetskaya – Line 2 – 03

The station honours the Soviet fighting men with its heavy ornamentation. The architects, I. Taranov and N. Bykova, won a USSR State Prize for their design.

Novokuznetskaya – Line 2 – 04

The decorations include seven octagonal ceiling mosaics by Vladimir Frolov on the theme of wartime industry and bas-reliefs running along the base of the ceiling (by artists N.V. Tomsky, A.E. Zelensky, S.M. Rabinovich, and N.M. Shtamm) depicting the soldiers of the Red Army in combat.

Novokuznetskaya – Line 2 – 05

The pink and white marble pylons are also decorated with cast-bronze portraits of Russian war heroes like Mikhail Kutuzov and Alexander Nevsky. Floor lamps, long since replaced with more up-to-date lighting in other Metro stations, still give Novokuznetskaya an atmosphere of brooding shadow.

Novokuznetskaya – Line 2 – 06

There is an urban legend that the station’s ornate benches were made of Carrara marble taken from the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour just before it was demolished (in 1931), but it is not true, and the marble was from Ural, not Italy.

Text above from Wikipedia.

Novokuznetskaya

Date of opening;

1st January 1943

Construction of the station;

deep, pier, three-span

Architects of the underground part;

N. Bykova and I. Taranov

Architects of the ground pavilion;

V. Gelfreih and I. Rozhin

Sculptors;

A. Zelensky, S. Rabinovich, N. Tomsky and N. Shtamm

Transit to Stations Tretiakovskaya of the Circle Line and Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya Line

Novokuznetskaya was opened when the Soviet Army beat completely the leavings of the 6th German Army in Stalingrad. However the present-day look of the station was formed in 1971, when the central hall was made much longer during the construction of the transit to the new Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya Line (now station Tretiakovskaya).

The pylons of the old part of Novokuznetskaya are massive. There are marvellous marble benches in the niches of the pylons on the sides of the hall and platforms. They were proposed by academician I. Zholtovsky who consulted the young authors of the project. There is a story that the benches were made of Carrara marble taken from the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, just before it was demolished. The story is nice but hardly true. In any case, marble is from the Ural not Italy.

There are metal shields above each bench on the side of the central hall rounded with banners and legends ‘Glory to Heroic Defenders of Leningrad’, ‘… Sevastopol , ‘… Odessa’, ‘… Stalingrad’. On the platform sides the shields have the profiles of great Russian military commanders: Alexander Nevsky, Michael Kutuzov, Alexander Suvorov, Minin and Pozharsky, Dmitry Donskoy. The gypsum frieze runs through the whole central hall between the pylons and the vault with figures of soldiers and officers of different forces of the Red Army. There are signalmen, pilots, tank men, infantrymen, marines, and cavalrymen. They all either plan operations or attack and no one retreats. The sculpture groups are separated with Orders of the Great Patriotic War. There is a shield wording ‘Glory to Brave Soldiers of the Great Patriotic War’ above the exit to the city.

Bykova and Taranov used the geometrical picture of the Roman Tomb of the Valeries as a model for decorating the vault of station (adopted by Zholtovsky) but placed six smalt mosaics along its main axis. They were designed by A. Deineka and made by Leningrad craftsman V. Frolov. After his death during the siege of Leningrad, the panels were brought from the city by the Road of Life. The mosaics present absolutely peaceful scenes on the background of the blue sky (only one panel has no sky at all). The first one, starting from the northern end, shows girls harvesting peaches. The second – foundry. The third – workers moving a tractor by an assembly line. It is interesting that the lamps in the panel are similar to those used in the first metro lines and that the ceiling of the workshop is made of glass. The forth panel – builders. The fifth – a pilot takes his place in an airplane. The last panel has the most dynamic scene. Early morning. A girl-skier looks at a blue steam locomotive running by a viaduct and a pink airplane flying in the sky.

All the mosaics are illuminated by the torchieres placed along the main axis of the central hall. Till 2005 the shades and lamps were not bright, so the station seemed dark and the panels were poorly seen. Now it is the past, so one, sitting on a bench, can admire the sky through upward ‘windows’. The idea to establish such lamps was also supported by Zholtovsky. Various stones were used for the decoration of the station, pylons, walls, and floors. The old part of the station was faced white, yellowish, and ivory-coloured marble of the Prokhorovsko-Balandinskoye Deposit (Sverdlovskaya Oblast).

There are inserts of very original marble from the Agvenarskoye Deposit (Armenia) in the niches of the pylons below the light backs of the benches shapes as half-unfolded rolls. This pink to delicate lilac and light violet stone is speckled with a dense network of thin but bright pink, violet, and brown veins. The walls of the new part of Novokuzhetskaya are entirely faced with this stone. The floor of the station is made of the same light and warm marble of the Prokhorovsko-Balandinskoye Deposit with geometrical inserts of dark grey Karkodinsky marble (Ural) and black Khorviransky marble (Armenia). The poles and pedestals of the torchieres are decorated with fancy dark limestone from the Uzbek Almalyk Deposit and red limestone from the Georgian Shrosha Deposit.

Ground pavilion

The pavilion of Novokuznetskaya is the first in Moscow rotunda with a massive flat Romanesque dome and colonnade around. The vault of the dome is adorned with Frolov’s seventh mosaic – ‘Parade of Athletes’.

Text from Moscow Metro 1935-2005, p74/5

Location:

GPS:

55.7415°N

37.6295°E

Depth:

37.5 metres (123 ft)

Opened:

20 November 1943

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Moscow Metro – Kurskaya – Line 5

Posted on 19/04/2023 by Michael

Kurskaya – by A Savin

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Moscow Metro – Kurskaya – Line 5

Kurskaya (Ку́рская) is a Moscow Metro station in the Basmanny District, Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow. It is on the Koltsevaya line, between Komsomolskaya and Taganskaya stations, and opened on 1 January 1950.

The station was designed by architects G. Zakharkov and Z. Chernysheva under the supervision of Ivan Zholtovsky who were awarded the Stalin Prize in 1950 for the design. Kurskaya is a rare deep column station built in the 1950s style of Stalinist Architecture.

Kurskaya – Line 5 – 09

The design features four rows of columns which support the vaults, though the columns are ‘doubled’ hence their wide appearance. In the centre of the station is a large open space with a large vault topping it that rests on four pylons forming an arbour, from which a staircase leads off as a transfer to Kurskaya–Radialnaya of the Arbatsko–Pokrovskaya line. Another interesting detail of the station is the lack of sculptures and artwork, instead, however, this compensated by small details such as Torchiere (now removed) in the arbour which light the granite stairwell and hidden lamps in the niches of the vault, which is covered by a bronze frieze symbolising the dawn and blossoming of Mother Russia. Additional lighting is provided by eight elegant conical chandeliers with fluorescent tubes. The floor is laid with red and grey granite and the walls and columns with white koyelga marble.

Kurskaya – Line 5 – 02

The station’s large vestibule is located right next to the north, and adjacent to Kursky railway station, hence the name of the station, and serves both the ring and radial stations, this contains a large circular underground lobby in the centre of which is a bronze sculpture of wheat (inclining Kursk as the centre of the Chernozem region), this is also linked to the 1938 vestibule of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya station, allowing for a transfer there. The interior of the surface structure, adorned with citations from the Anthem of the Soviet Union once contained a large statue of Joseph Stalin (by sculptor Nikolai Tomsky), this was removed in 1961. On 3 July 2008, the vestibule was closed for a year to replace escalators, upgrade and renovation. The station’s second entrance to Zemlyanoy Val opened in December 1995, is a shared underground vestibule, which also doubles as a transfer to Chkalovskaya of the Lyublinskaya line.

Kurskaya – Line 5 – 14

Possibly the most interesting detail of the station is a large metallic plaque on the station wall, adorned with artwork has an inscription: Kurskaya, large ring, 1945–1949. This implies the original plan to have the Koltsevaya line follow the Garden Ring, and then a smaller ring line to follow the Boulevard Ring (the small ring).