Moscow Metro – Paveletskaya – Line 5

Posted on 24/01/2024 by Michael

Paveletskaya – Line 5 – by A Savin

Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Paveletskaya – Line 5

Paveletskaya – Line 5 – 03

Paveletskaya (Павеле́цкая) is a station on the Koltsevaya line and Zamotskvoretskaya line of the Moscow Metro. Opened on 1 January 1950 as part of the first segment of the fourth stage, the station is a pylon-trivault built in the style of the late 1940/early 1950s Stalinist architecture to a design by architects Nikolai Kolli and I. Kasetl. The station’s theme comes from the Paveletsky railway terminal from which trains depart towards the Volga Region. Thus agricultural influences are clearly seen, these include the square white koyelga marble columns decorated with red marble strips, flanked by marble columns with modern Ionic capitals. Bright bronze chandeliers provide lighting. The walls repeat the two tone marble, white on top, red on bottom, and the floor is laid with grey and white granite.

Paveletskaya – Line 5 – 04

The station’s vestibule is built into the corner of the Garden Ring and Zemlyannoy Val, and occupies the ground floor of the building there. Inside above the escalator is a circular mosaic panel by Pavel Korin Red Square which depicts the Lenin’s Mausoleum and the Saint Basil’s Cathedral, framed by a bas-relief with typical soviet banners and floral arrangements with names of Volga cities on the sides. The vestibule has another artwork by Iosif Rabinovich, which is a mosaic on the dome of the vestibule on the theme of the permanent end to drought in the Volga.

Paveletskaya – Line 5 – 01

As the station was made to be a transfer point to Paveletskaya station of the Zamoskvoretskaya line, the vestibule was built as an entrance to both stations, however as the radial station of the Zamoskvoretskaya line was undergoing reconstruction the vestibule doubled as a transfer point. A direct corridor was opened only on 30 July 1955, which saw the addition of large staircases surrounded by marble balustrades in the centre of the platform. The other major change was that initially in the end of the station was a large medallion with image of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, but during the 1961 de-Stalinization drive this was removed and instead replaced by the present artwork by Pavel Korin showing the Coat of Arms of the Soviet Union being held by a worker man and peasant woman amid floral backgrounds.

Paveletskaya – Line 5 – 02

Text from Wikipedia.

Location:

GPS:

55.7318°N

37.6379°E

Depth:

40 metres (130 ft)

Opened:

1 January 1950

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Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Mayakovskaya – Line 2

Posted on 17/04/2023 by Michael

Mayakovskaya

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Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Mayakovskaya – Line 2

Mayakovskaya (Маяковская), is a Moscow Metro station on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line, in the Tverskoy District of central Moscow.

Mayakovskaya – Line 2 – 01

The name as well as the design is a reference to Futurism and its prominent Russian exponent Vladimir Mayakovsky. Considered to be one of the most beautiful in the system, it is a fine example of pre-World War II Stalinist Architecture and one of the most famous Metro stations in the world. It is best known for its 34 ceiling mosaics depicting ’24 Hours in the Land of the Soviets’. During World War II, it was used as a command post for Moscow’s anti-aircraft regiment.

Mayakovskaya – Line 2 – 06

The station was built as part of the second stage of the Moscow Metro expansion, opening on 11 September 1938. If the first stage was more focused on the building of the system itself, both architecturally and in terms of the engineering, the stations appear modest in comparison to those that the second stage brought to the system. For the first time in the world, instead of having the traditional three-neath pylon station layout, the engineers were able to overlap the vault space and support it with two colonnades, one on each side. This gave birth to a new Deep column station type design, and Mayakovskaya was the first station to show this.

Mayakovskaya – Line 2 – 02

Located 33 meters beneath the surface, the station became famous during World War II when an air raid shelter was located in the station. On the anniversary of the October Revolution, on 7 November 1941, Joseph Stalin addressed a mass assembly of party leaders and ordinary Muscovites in the central hall of the station. During World War II, Stalin took residence in this place.

Mayakovskaya – Line 2 – 04

At the 1939 New York World’s Fair the Soviet Pavilion included a life-size showcase copy of this station, whose designer Alexey Dushkin was awarded Grand Prize of the 1939 World’s Fair.

Mayakovskaya – Line 2 – 01

Alexey Dushkin’s Art Deco architecture was based on a Soviet future as envisioned by the poet Mayakovsky. The station features streamlined columns faced with stainless steel and pink rhodonite, white Ufaley and grey Diorite marble walls, a flooring pattern of white and pink marble, and 35 niches, one for each vault. Surrounded by filament lights there are a total of 34 ceiling mosaics by Alexander Deyneka with the theme ’24-Hour Soviet Sky’.

Mayakovskaya – Line 2 – 03

In 2005 a new second north exit was built, along with a new vestibule. Passengers leaving the station first descend on a short escalator ride into an underground vestibule, and then ascend the long way to the surface. The new exit also allows access to the 35th mosaic, which was previously hidden behind the service section. Other mosaic works were designed from scratch, accompanied by ample use of marble and stainless steel sculpturing. The bust of the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky was moved to the new surface vestibule, whose ceiling was also decorated with a mosaic composition from Mayakovsky’s poem ‘Moscow Sky’.

Text above from Wikipedia.

Mayakoyskaya

Date of opening;

11th September 1938, known as Ploshchad Mayakovskogo in the project

Construction of the station;

deep, column, three-span

Architects of the underground part;

A. Dushkin in collaboration with engineer R. Sheinfan

Grand-prix of the World Industrial Exhibition of 1938 (New York)

Mayakovskaya became the second station, after Kropotkinskaya, among other outstanding projects of A. Dushkin. His wife remembers that when he projected the station in 1936-1937, he asked her to play him Bach or Prokofiev. The image of the station which he created can be named ‘steel’. There was a lot of worry when adopting the project – new material which has been never used in the architecture frightened many. Some people said that Dushkin with all his projects and ideas was crazy. However Dushkin asked aircraft designer A. Putilov to help him persuade the heads of the metro construction enterprise to use steel for decorating the station. Light well-proportioned columns of special sorts of steel were used instead of massive heavyset pylons for the first time in the USSR. Mayakovskaya was built at very complicated hydrogeological conditions. Jurassic clay is deposited near the station with a thick quicksand nearby. While mining calottes, langorines and standers crumbled from rock pressure. When the first vaults were concreted and timbering was removed, builders found that the vaults were covered with lengthwise cracks. The fate of the station hung by a thread. One of the Commission members, foreign expert J. Morgan, definitely said that all the finished part of the chamber had to be concreted immediately. Even the idea to build a column station had to be rejected. The only way out was to get several metres deeper and build a station similar to Krasnye Vorota. However workers and engineers found the solution. The three span ceiling was made of cast iron tubes. The vault of the middle passenger hall was 2.5m higher that the vaults of the tunnels. The station was built ahead of time without a single accident.

Builders had also much trouble by facing the arches with wide banded stainless steel. There was only one wide-banded shaping mill which could corrugate steel bands of required shape in the USSR at that time. It was located in the town of Direzhablestroy (now Dolgoprudny] where it was planned to manufacture non-rigid Tsiolkovsky’s airships. Airship builders made steel bands of the required shape in time and assembled them on the arcades of Mayakovskaya. So 35 hip-roof sections appeared in the central hall of the station. They are divided by ribs radiating from the columns caps. The sections grow from two opposite columns. They are oval and extend crosswise the hall. The central part of each section has an additional oval deepening with a flat bottom. There are mosaic medallions depicting ‘A Day of the Soviet country’ (made by V. Frolov by the cartoons of A. Deineka). They are sequenced to evoke a day. Coming from the escalator passengers see early morning, cherry-trees in blossom, and two planes in the sky. The next panel – divers plunge into water head first on the background of the sky. Next – ripe peaches, signalman on a ship mast and a seaplane, parachutist, and avia-parade. In this medallion the clock of the Spasskaya Tower shows noon. The morning has ended. The afternoon has started. The first afternoon panel shows a girl driving a combine harvester. Grains are in the ear. Wind blows about red flags. The second one – a pole-vaulter clearing a crossbar. Next – three gliders in the sky, four parachutists with many-coloured parachutes and a plane flying away, ski jumping, brazen reflection of sunset on pines and a flying plane, sculpture ‘A Girl with an Oar’ in Gorky Park, a red plane in the sunset sky. Here the night starts. The first night panel shows two planes on the background on sunset clouds. Then, the planes but at night. The plane lights are switched on. Next – an airship over the Spasskaya Tower (the clock shows midnight), night parachute jump, a biplane in searchlight, two planes in false dawn. Early morning. Fuming chimneys and tail cones of chemical mills. Beyond the chimneys – a stratoplane starts, pioneers launch air models, three guys play volleyball, morning parachute jump, airplane flies above semicircle colonnade, a steeplejack takes load, seagulls are above a ship with a flag, a woman with an infant in arms, two red airplanes, a plane above a transmission line pole, sunflowers. Two last medallions are closed now because the second exit is under construction. Going from panel to panel, plunging by perception in imaginary pictures, which, like Byzantium mosaics, pull a person out of the objective reality, a passenger seems to appear in the mysterious world. Lamps fixed by the outline of the internal ovals illuminate the mosaic medallions as well as the station itself.

The steel cover of the numerous columns of Mayakovskaya nicknamed the whole station – ‘Mayakovsky’s Steel Jacket’ (analogue of the well-known jacket of the poet). The column edges are adorned up to the human height with strips of rare, good-looking, pink-purple stone with delicate silky glance – Ural rhodonite. It is a decorative stone, i.e. precious and expensive, such as jasper, onyx, agate, or amber. In some places the rhodonite of Mayakovskaya even includes precious materials. Unfortunately, nowadays most unique adornments are lost and replaced with marble of similar colours or painted gypsum patches.

The walls below are faced with red marble with intricate white impregnations. It is from the Georgian Saliety Deposit. Above the walls are decorated with grey-white-bluish Ural marble from the Ufaleyskoye Deposit.The floor of the station is covered with white, yellow, and sugar-like marble from the Uzbek Gazgan Deposit, which is famous of its abrasion resistance, with decorative inserts of pink and grey granite and narrow strips of black diabase.

Text from Moscow Metro 1935-2005, p42-45

Location:

GPS:

55.7701°N

37.5958°E

Depth:

33 metres (108 ft)

Opened:

11 September 1938

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Moscow Metro – Komsomolskaya – Line 5

Posted on 15/04/2023 by Michael

Komsomolskaya – Line 5

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Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Komsomolskaya – Line 5

Komsomolskaya (Комсомо́льская) is a Moscow Metro station in the Krasnoselsky District, Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow. It is on the Koltsevaya line, between Prospekt Mira and Kurskaya stations.

The station is located under the busiest Moscow transport hub, Komsomolskaya Square, which serves Leningradsky, Yaroslavsky, and Kazansky railway terminals. Because of that, the station is one of the busiest in the whole system. It opened on 30 January 1952 as a part of the second stage of the line.

Komsomolskaya – Line 5 – 04

Evolution of the design

Stations on the first southern segment of the Koltsevaya line were dedicated to the victory over Nazi Germany, while those on the northern segment (Belorusskaya-Koltsevaya to Komsomolskaya) were dedicated to the theme of post-war labour. Komsomolskaya was designed by Alexey Shchusev as an illustration of a historical speech given by Joseph Stalin November 7, 1941. In the speech, Stalin evoked the memories of Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy and other military leaders of the past, and all these historical figures eventually appeared on the mosaics of Komsomolskaya.

Komsomolskaya – Line 5 – 06

The early roots of the station’s design can be traced to a 1944 draft by Shchusev implemented in pure Petrine baroque, a local adaptation of the 17th century Dutch Golden Age. However, after the end of World War II the drafts of 1944 were discarded and the stations of the Koltsevaya line were completed in the mainstream late Stalinist style of the period. Shchusev, who died in 1949, retained his baroque nonce order.

Komsomolskaya – Line 5 – 07

Komsomolskaya remained Shchusev’s first and only metro station design. The station was initially planned as a traditional deep pylon type. Later, Shchusev replaced the heavy concrete pylons with narrow octagonal steel columns, riveted with marble tiles, creating the larger open space.

After Shchusev’s death, the station was completed by Viktor Kokorin, A. Zabolotnaya, V. Varvarin and O. Velikoretsky and Pavel Korin, the creator of the mosaics.

Komsomolskaya – Line 5 – 01

Architecture and decoration

Beginning with the large vestibule located among the former of the two train stations, the building features a large octagonal dome topped by a cupola, and a spire crowned by a large star and imposing full-height portico with stylised Corinthian columns. Inside amid the Baroque-style ornaments, rich torchères and chandelier lights, two escalators descend, one leading to the old 1935 Komsomolskaya-Radialnaya station, and the second to this one.

On the platform level, there is a Baroque ceiling, with accompanying friezes, painted yellow. Supporting the enlarged barrel vault are 68 octagonal columns faced with white marble, and topped with baroque pilasters. The platform is lit up by chandeliers and additional concealed elements in the niches of both the central and platform halls.

Komsomolskaya – Line 5 – 02

The theme of the design, the Historical Russian fight for freedom and independence, is expressed in eight large ceiling mosaics by Pavel Korin. Korin said that the inspiration came from Joseph Stalin’s speech at the Moscow Parade of 1941, where he inspired the soldiers amid the catastrophic losses in the early period of World War II to remember the historical heroics of their Russian forefathers. The idea to design the art as a mosaic came from the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev, where Korin saw that such artforms could last for eternity. Chronologically the mosaics are as following:

1242: Alexander Nevsky after the Battle on the Ice.
1380: Dmitry Donskoy after the Battle of Kulikovo.
1612: Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky after the end of the Time of Troubles.
1799: Alexander Suvorov after the Crossing of the Alps.
1812: Mikhail Kutuzov after the Battle of Borodino.
1945: The original mosaic here was of Red Army troops on Red Square receiving the Guards banner from Soviet army command, but because it contained images of some commanders whose careers and legacy would later be re-evaluated (including Joseph Stalin) most of the mosaic was replaced with that of Vladimir Lenin addressing a meeting in Red Square, thus moving the date of the artwork to a period between 1917 and 1922.
1945: Soviet Troops on the Reichstag building after the Battle of Berlin (according to some, the original banner had superimposed profiles of Lenin and Stalin: the latter was removed to leave just Lenin remaining).

1945: The original image was of a Victory parade with Soviet soldiers throwing captured Nazi banners in front of Lenin’s mausoleum. However, for the same reason as the sixth image, this image was retouched on several occasions. When Lavrenty Beria was arrested in 1953, his glasses were erased and then the whole figure was removed. Then in 1957, after the political crisis saw the end of the careers of Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich, their images followed suit. Finally, after 1961 brought the end of Stalin’s personality cult, in early 1963 the whole panel was taken down, and Korin redesigned it by placing a maiden (symbolising Mother Russia) standing on the Nazi banners in front of the same mausoleum, holding a hammer and sickle in one hand and a palm branch in the other. This mosaic is made of more than 300,000 tiles, takes up 31.5 square metres (339 sq ft) and weighs more than three tonnes.

In between each of the main mosaics there are smaller ones made of gilded smalt depicting various weaponry and armour. One set is focused on ancient Russian equipment, a second on the Napoleonic era, and the third on World War II. At the end of the platform is a bust of Vladimir Lenin under an arch decorated with gilt floral designs and the Coat of arms of the Soviet Union.

Komsomolskaya – Line 5 – 05

In the centre of the red granite covered platform are two passageways, surrounded by marble balustrades with escalators that descend into a lobby with a main escalator tunnel upwards to the Sokolnicheskaya line’s Komsomolskaya station. On the wall opposite the escalator is a large fluorescent mosaic, also of Pavel Korin, depicting the Order of Victory surrounded by red and green banners and Georgian colours.

Komsomolskaya – Line 5 – 02

In 1951 both Pavel Korin and Alexey Schusev were posthumously awarded the Stalin Prize for their work on the station, and on 30 January 1952 the station was opened to the public as the first on the second stage of the Koltsevaya line. In 1958 the station was awarded the Grand Prix (‘Grand Prize’) title of Expo ’58 in Brussels.

Text above from Wikipedia.

The ‘re-writing’ of history;

One of the panels also underwent a major ‘renovation’ in the era of Khrushchev and here there wasn’t a complete change but what it did so is change significantly the intended meaning. By substituting VI Lenin for JV Stalin outside the Kremlin the revisionists were seeking to destroy the continuity in the Soviet Union from the mid-1920’s and, in effect, attempted to turn VI Lenin into a merely historical figure – denying his ideas.

Komsomolskaya

Komsomolskaya – circle line

Date of opening;

30th January 1951

Construction of the station;

deep, pier, three-span

Architect of the underground part;

A. Shchusev (died 1949), co-authors of the project, V. Kokorin and A. Zabolotskaya

Transition to Komsomolskaya of the Sokolnicheskaya Line

Komsomolskaya is a peak of the great Stalin emperor style characterised by mightiness, pomposity, combination of classicism, Empire style, and Moscow baroque. Painter P. Korin, an equal co-author of the architect, in this case, contributed much to the creation of the station.

Komsomolskaya cardinally differs from other stations of the Circle Line. Instead of usual massive pylons, there at a greater depth, at complicated geological conditions, an original load-carrying structure was used, absolutely new for that time. There are arcades – 34 columns on each side – linked by elegant arches. They carry the common entablature with a cornice stretching throughout the station. The entablature carries the basements of the vaults of the central hall and two track tunnels. The vault of the central hall is half as much high as the side halls. All this, simplicity and height, creates the feeling of open space, which extends by the rhythmic step of the arches running to perspective. The station is light, elegant, and harmonic.

The decoration of the station is concentrated on its main vault. The vaults of the track tunnels are simply white, winding with narrow transversal belts slightly in relief.

There are eight smalt mosaics along the main axis of the central hall and 16 more golden mosaics in pseudo-pendentives highlighted with mouldings. The mosaic panels are located in a chronological order starting from the blind end of Komsomolskaya. The end wall of the station carries a mosaic coat of arms of the USSR, gold on the claret-coloured background rounded with florid ornament. A small marble bust of V. Lenin is beneath the coat of arms.

The first panel is devoted to the victory of Prince Alexandre Yaroslavich in the Battle on the Neva. The Prince holds a banner in his hands with half-covered Christ’s face on it. On the pendentives – criss-cross swords, pole-axes, and quivers on the background of the coat of arms with George the Victorious. The second panel shows Dmitiy Donskoy before the Kulikovskaya Battle. The Prince holds a banner in his hands with Christ’s face. Peresvet and Oslyabya on horseback are in front. The third panel shows Prince Pozharsky and citizen Minin summoning people’s army in the Red Square. The Cathedral of the Cover is on the background. On the pendentives – criss-cross unicorn guns, sabres, pikes, and bayonets on the background of cuirass and shako with double-headed eagle. The forth panel shows Suvorov in The Alps. His marvellous heroes are in front. The fifth panel shows Kutuzov in the Borodino Field. There are Orthodox crosses on banners. On the pendentives – criss-cross sickle, hammer, and submachine guns on the background of Order of Victory. The sixth panel shows Lenin speaking at the parade of the Red Army before their journey to battle against Kolchak’s. The seventh panel show the capture of Berlin. Soldiers carry a banner with Lenin’s face. The eighth panel shows the Victory Parade in Moscow.

A barefooted lady with an olive branch in her left hand and sickle and hammer in her right hand tramples on fascist banners thrown to the basement of the mausoleum. All the panels are set off with wide mouldings inspired by Russian mansion ‘grass’ painting. The similar moulding forms separate geometrical shapes, such as belts, frames, and edgings.

There is a staircase at the end opposite to the blind end, which leads to a cupola hall. The vault is adorned with a red star with golden rays and 16-branch circle chandelier. A short passageway whose walls are decorated with meat-red marble leads to an escalator to the ground hall.

Text from Moscow Metro 1935-2005, p54-57