Moscow Metro – Frunzenskaya – Line 1

Posted on 10/04/2023 by Michael

Frunzenskaya

Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Frunzenskaya – Line 1

Frunzenskaya 04

Frunzenskaya (Фру́нзенская) is a Metro station on the Sokolnicheskaya Line in Moscow, Russia. The station was opened on 1 May 1957 as the first stage of the extension of the Frunzenskiy radius. As the radius follows the bend of the Moskva river, the whole segment had to be built very deep (42 metres/138 ft for Frunzenskaya).

Frunzenskaya 01

The station closed on 2 January 2016 for renovation, which was expected to last 14 months. The renovations were completed ahead of schedule with the station reopening on December 29, 2016. The renovations included the installation of four new escalators to replace the three that had been in place. Metro authorities projected that the new escalators would reduce energy consumption by 40% and increase the capacity by one-third.

Frunzenskaya 03

The station is also symbolic as being one of the last in Moscow to be fully built in Stalinist style which dominated the Metro Architecture since the mid-1940s, afterwards the station designs show evidence of more vivid decorations that were meant to be installed yet designs were simplified (examples include the station VDNKh and Alexeyevskaya). Frunzenskaya still stands out and architects Robert Pogrebnoi and Yuriy Zenkivich applied a pylon design with cream marbled vaults and tops of pylons, decorated with metallic shields containing a five-sided star. The bottom of Pylons are a form of a thicker red marble base. Suspended from the ceiling are massive eight-horned chandeliers. The floor is covered with black and red granite on floors and the walls are faced with white ceramic tiles.

Frunzenskaya 02

In the far end of the station, in front of a red-marbled semicircle is a bust to Mikhail Frunze (work of sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich), a famous military commander in the Russian Civil War for whom the station is named.

Frunzenskaya 05

The station’s massive vestibule (architects Nadia Bykova, Ivan Taranov, I.G. Cherepanov, I.G.Gokhar-Kharmandaryan, N.I.Demchinskiy and T.A.Ilina) is situated on the Komsomolskiy Avenue and Kholzunov side-street was partially demolished and built into the Moscow’s Palace of Youth building in 1984. Presently receives a daily passenger traffic of 47,410. Also behind the station is a junction for a branch to the Koltsevaya Line used for transfers.

Frunzenskaya 06

Text from Wikipedia.

Location:

GPS:

55.7267°N

37.5786°E

Opened:

1 May 1957

Depth:

42 metres (138 ft)

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Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Elektrozavodskaya – Line 3

Posted on 10/04/2023 by Michael

Elektrozavodskaya station

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Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Elektrozavodskaya – Line 3

Work on the Moscow metro’s third stage was delayed – but not stopped – by the war. Elektrozavodskaya station, named after a nearby light bulb factory, was opened in 1944.

Elektrozavodskaya – 12 – light bulb factory

Elektrozavodskaya (Электрозаводская) is a Moscow Metro station on the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line. It is one of the most spectacular and better-known stations of the system. Built as part of the third stage of the Moscow Metro and opened on 15 May 1944 during World War II, the station is one of the iconic symbols of the system, famous for its architectural decoration which is work of architects Vladimir Shchuko (who died whilst working on the station’s project in 1939) and Vladimir Gelfreich, along with participation of his student Igor Rozhin.

Elektrozavodskaya – 03 – Hammer and sickle

The station serves the Basmanny district and is located on the Bolshaya Semyonovskaya Street, next to the Yauza River. The railway station Elektrazavodskaya of the Kazan direction is also located nearby. In May 2007, the station was closed for a year during which the escalators were completely replaced, along with the floor panels. Most of the details and finishes including Motovilov’s bas-reliefs were refurbished. The station was reopened on 28 November 2008.

Elektrozavodskaya – 16 – wheat harvesting

Named after the electric light bulb factory nearby, the preliminary layout included Schuko’s idea of making the ceiling covered with six rows of circular incandescent inset lamps (of which there were 318 in total). However the outbreak of World War II halted all works until 1943 when construction resumed. Gelfreich and Rozhin finished the design by adding an additional theme to the station of the struggle of the home front during the war, which is highlighted by the 12 marble bas-reliefs on the pylons done by Georgiy Motovilov. The rest of the station’s interior features most of the 1930s plans including powder-ballada marble on the rectangular pylons (the outside faces have sconces and decorative gilded grilles depicting the hammer and sickle), red salietti marble on the station walls, a dark olive duvalu marble on the socle and a chessboard layout on the main platform floor of granite and labradorite.

Elektrozavodskaya – 21 – aircraft woman

The station’s hexagonal shaped vestibule, features a domed structure on a low drum, on the corner niches of which are six medallions with bas-reliefs of main pioneers in electricity and electrical engineering: William Gilbert, Benjamin Franklin, Mikhail Lomonosov, Michael Faraday, Pavel Yablochkov, and Alexander Popov along with their pioneering apparatus. The interior of the vestibule is further punctuated by the same bright red salietti marble. Outside the vestibule in the archway there is a sculpture to the metro-builders by Matvey Manizer.

Elektrozavodskaya – 19 – road building

The station’s legacy was that it serves as a bridge between the pre-war Art Deco-influenced Stalinist architecture as seen on the second stage stations and their post-war counterparts on the Koltsevaya Line. Both Genrikh and Rozhin were awarded the Stalin Prize in 1946 for their work.

Elektrozavodskaya – 103 – view towards escalators

Text above from Wikipedia.

Elektrozavodskaya

Date of opening;

15th May 1944

Construction of the station;

deep, pier, three-span

Architects of the underground part;

V. Gelfreih, I. Rozhin in collaboration with P. Koplansky and L. Shagurina

The whole vault of the central hall is covered with 300 round coffers. An ordinary incandescent lamp is in each coffer – Moscow Electric-bulb Plant is located nearby. The pylons are decorated with white and greyish-yellowish marble of the Prokhoro-Balandinskoye Deposit. There are marble high relieves on the pylons just below the base of the vault on the side of the central hall. The topics of the relieves are traditional of the Moscow Metro, such as ‘Foundry’, ‘Forge shop’, ‘Harvesting’, ‘Vehicle assembling’, ‘Tank assembling’, ‘Gun manufacturing’. However some sketches are rare or even unique. The left high relief of the first pylon pair (starting from the western wall) presents girls manufacturing lamps. Workers manufacturing insulators for transmission lines are on the opposite pylon. The right high relief of the first pylon (starting from the exit) presents girls and a pilot installing a propeller to an airplane. Opposite is a female brigade headed by a foreman, building road and laying asphalt. So the authors wanted to immortalize the labour feat of female workers on the home front.

The chessboard of the floor is made of grey marble and black gabbro banded with pink-yellow marble from the Crimean Biyuk-Yankoy Deposit. The edging contains a meander made of black gabbro.

The walls are decorated with bright red marble with numerous intricate white inclusions from the Georgian Salieti Deposit.

Text from Moscow Metro 1935-2005, p89

Elektrozavodskaya, Moscow, 1961

Location:

GPS:

55.7817°N

37.7037°E

Opened:

15 May 1944

Depth:

31.5 metres (103 ft)

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Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Dobryninskaya – Line 5

Posted on 09/04/2023 by Michael

Moscow Metro – Dobryninskaya – by A. Savin

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Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Dobryninskaya – Line 5

Dobryninskaya – woman tending grape vines

Dobryninskaya (Добры́нинская) is a station on the Koltsevaya Line of the Moscow Metro. Opened on 1 January 1950 it was part of the first segment of the fourth stage of the system. It was originally named Serpukhovskaya (Серпуховская), after the Serpukhovskaya Square.

Dobryninskaya – falconer

The station has a pylon trivault built in the flamboyant architecture style of the late 1940s – early 1950s. Architect Leonid Popov (and co-authors M. Zelenin and M. Ilin) based their design on themes inspired by the city of Serpukhov, with the overall design referring to ancient Russian architecture and in particular the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, which is repeated in the design of the portals and the beige marble composition. Other innovations by Popov include the station walls on the platform halls where (above dark red marble) run white cylindrical marble plinths designed to reflect directly into the eyes of passengers. To keep the bright and light appearance of the station, the vaults of the station were left simply plastered and painted white, with lighting coming from a zigzag arrangement of horizontal fluorescent tubes. The floor is a dark grey granite, typical of older Orthodox Churches. Contrasting with the ancient connotations are 12 bas-reliefs on the pylons by Yelena Yason-Manizer depicting traditional labours (hunting, fishing, grape-picking etc.) of different nationalities of the Soviet Union. Yelena Yason-Manizer was also sculptor of the original bas-relief at the end of the station which featured a large profile of Joseph Stalin and Coat of Arms of the Soviet Union. This was removed in 1961 and in 1967 replaced with the present mosaic by the same artist, titled Morning of the Cosmic Era.

Dobryninskaya – fisherman

Further works of Popov (and co-architect Tatarzhinskaya) include the station’s large vestibule, located on the corner of Lyusinovskaya Street and Serpukhovskaya Square. Like the platform halls the portico was based on medieval Russian themes and the pilaster was copied from an archaeological discovery in Taman that dates to Byzantine times. The interior of the vestibule again depicts patriotic Soviet themes including three large floor-to-ceiling mosaics (artists G. Rublev and B. Iordansky). The central piece is a large banner with a profile of Vladimir Lenin and the 16 Coats of Arms of Soviet Socialist Republics, flanked by feature images of two Parades on Red Square: on the left Sports in Soviet Union/Soviet athletes and on the right the Soviet Military. This once featured a portrait of Stalin being carried; like the bas-relief in the Central Hall, this was removed in 1961 and carefully replaced with an image of Yuri Gagarin. Other features of the vestibules include the majestic blue torchieres which flank the escalator ascend and a massive chandelier which is adorned with a large red glass star.

Dobryninskaya – harvesting

On 6 June 1961 the station was renamed in honour of Peter Dobrynin a bust of whom was placed in front of the vestibule. In 1983, the station Serpukhovskaya of the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line was opened (also a work of Popov) and a transfer-passage was created from the middle of Dobryninskaya to the middle of the new station. On 22 December 2006 the vestibule was closed for nearly 18 months during which time the old escalators were replaced, new turnstiles were installed and a complete overhaul of all communication systems, new security and a thorough restoration was carried out. The renewed vestibule was re-opened on 11 June 2008

Text from Wikipedia.

Dobryninskaya – before and after

Following Khrushchev’s denunciation of JV Stalin at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 there began a systematic effort to ‘write Stalin out of history’. Images and statues of the great leader were gradually removed from many public spaces. This came to a head in around 1961 when the Great Polemic in the International Communist Movement arrived at a point where there was a definitive break between the Communist Parties of the People’s Republic of China and the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

This occurred throughout the Moscow Metro system and this included Dobryninskaya station.

In the vestibule;

Before