Now, when there is a competition for a concept for the development of territories along the Moskva River and its banks, a new stage of reconstruction awaits, it is appropriate to recall how the Moscow coastline has changed over the past two and a half centuries. What are the embankments of the main metropolitan river and why did they become the way we know them now? We will try to answer these questions in our short historical essay.
The first stone embankment opposite the Kremlin wall was foreseen by the projection plan of 1775, created about 15 years later than a similar plan for Paris. The plan paid much attention to the rivers within the city: he, among other things, planned the routing of a grandiose hydraulic structure - a drainage canal. Capital embankments, according to the plan, were planned to be erected in front of the Kremlin and Kitay-Gorod, including the Orphanage. In the European manner, these embankments were prescribed to be planted with two rows of trees.
In 1795, construction began on the first stone embankment in front of the Kremlin (to replace the old one, sheathed with logs). The work carried out by the Expedition of the Kremlin structure consisted of cladding the previously arranged wooden "stumps" with wild stone. Until 1800, only a fragment of the embankment with a length of about 1 kilometer was built. The body of the embankment wall was made of limestone, on a limestone base with hydraulic additives. Sandstone was used in the cladding, and a wooden pile grillage served as the foundation for the embankment.
In the same years (1796-1801), according to the project of Matvey Kazakov, the building of the Golitsyn hospital was built on the high bank of the river opposite the Khamovniki. The river bank in this place was fortified by the so-called "Golitsyn wall", which included a retaining wall of limestone slabs of various sizes with a parapet and two gazebos flanking it. In the 20th century, the hospital's parterre park became part of Gorky Park. During the complex reconstruction of the embankments in the 1930s. the retaining wall has been preserved, so today it is the oldest fragment of the Moscow embankments.
Let's return to the central part of Moscow - to the Moskvoretskaya embankment. The next well-maintained embankment was the site near the Orphanage. In 1801 it was "ordered" to cover the coast with stone in the same way as it was done near the Kremlin, but trees were not allowed to be planted. Construction work lasted until 1806, but even after their completion, the townspeople for a long time could not use the embankment, given to the full disposal of the inhabitants of the Orphanage - orphans, foundlings and children born out of wedlock or to poor parents.
Over the next ten years, an embankment was built opposite Kitay-Gorod with a length of 405 m. Along the way, filling and regulation of the low bank was carried out.
As part of large-scale work to restore Moscow after the fire of 1812, in 1832-1836, in addition to the existing Kremlin and Moskvoretskaya embankments, stone Sofiyskaya and Raushskaya were built. It is curious that an unusual two-level project was approved for the Sofiyskaya embankment: with a retaining wall near the water and an upper tier arranged on arches over the river.
The last major work on the improvement of embankments in pre-revolutionary Moscow was carried out in 1880, when another 516 meters of embankment with a staircase and a font was built in front of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior according to the project of engineer N. M. Levachev. As a result, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Moscow had only 4 km of comfortable embankments with a total length of the coastline of 40 km (within the then city boundaries).
Arrangement of old gatherings of Moscow embankments
Like the current embankments in the city center, the old Moscow embankments were walls separating the coast from the water. They had the shape of a rubble wall on a pile foundation and were faced with Tatar stone (sandstone, mined near the village of Tatarovo, not far from the village of Krylatskoye) and fenced with bollards with gratings. The height of the standard cabinet was 1.36 m. The retaining wall had a slope of 80 degrees and was decorated with a cornice in the form of a shaft 25 cm in diameter. The size of a standard slab was approximately 100 cm x 50-60 cm, which is much smaller than modern facing slabs.
An important characteristic of the old embankments was that the gatherings and exits were deepened into the body of the embankment and did not protrude beyond the regulation line, so as not to narrow the river bed. The width of the exit was approximately 3 m, the exit - 7 m. Thus, they were buried into the embankment by 10 m. More imposing structures of this type were located on the left, Kremlin bank, and utilitarian structures - cargo ramps - were located on the right bank, mainly downstream of the Kremlin.
After the reconstruction of the 1930s, the number of water access points was reduced. For example, on the section between Bolshoy Kamenny and Moskvoretsky bridges, there were initially 6 descents to the water, and after reconstruction only one remained, located along the axis of the Kremlin's Taynitskaya tower, on the opposite side of the river. On the section between the Moskvoretsky and Bolshoy Ustinsky bridges, there were 7 descents to the water, after the reconstruction there was also only one exit - at the Orphanage.
Reconstruction of embankments in the 1930s
Today's embankments and slopes to the water are the result of a comprehensive reconstruction of the water infrastructure, which took place since the mid-1930s as part of the 1935 General Plan of Moscow. During this period, a radical rethinking of the role of the river in the city took place. In addition to the utilitarian, transport function, it began to be understood as the most important city-forming element. This quality was further strengthened by two parallel routes to the river: "The river is enclosed between two main thoroughfares of the city: the axis of the old city (diameter: Leningradskoe shosse - center - ZIS), the axis of the new city in the Southwest (Rublevskoe shosse - Kashirskoe shosse)" (Cit. from the book "Embankments of Moscow. Architecture and constructions". M., 1940). At the same time, a green frame was superimposed on the transport frame, the most important component of which was the Moskva River, one of the largest "wedges" of which was the park zone, stretching from the Sparrow Hills through the Central Park of Culture and Leisure and Bolotnaya Square to the Kremlin.
The transport function also received its further development due to the active construction of new canals and hydraulic structures linking Moscow with the Volga. In total, the ensemble of the Moscow-Volga canal, stretching for 128 kilometers, has built more than 240 structures with a historical and cultural potential comparable to VDNKh.
In the 1930s, the Moskva River bed was reconstructed in order to adapt it to the passage of the combined Volga transport, oil tankers, and cargo caravans. The coastline was corrected and partially straightened in accordance with the route of the fairway. The literature of that time indicates that it was not possible to achieve ideal alignment of the regulation line everywhere. For example, the regulation line of the Krymskaya Embankment (near the current Muzeon Park) was not sufficiently straightened and retained a small kink, which is explained by a large water pipe running near the coast: it was decided not to relocate it.
The transport role of the river has left its mark on the construction of new bridges. At an early stage of the design, it was planned to take a girder bridge as the basic type of bridge, but such bridges would require the erection of additional supports in the river bed, which would limit the freedom of movement of river vessels, therefore, in the end, a single-span arch-type structure was preferred. As a result, today all bridges across the Moskva River have a similar design, with the exception of the previously built Borodinsky and Novospassky.
The main types of Moscow embankments
The reconstruction of the 1930s is characterized by a strict division of the embankments into city-wide, park and port ones. Such delimitation still determines the character of the coastline of the Moskva River along its considerable length.
The citywide embankment implied, first of all, the construction of a travel road and a new red line with an offset of 40 m from the embankment regulation line. In the course of construction work, first of all, the embankments themselves were reconstructed, and secondly, the adjacent buildings, and this second stage, which includes the construction of houses along the new red lines, was only partially completed. Perhaps the only example where it was brought to perfection is the Frunzenskaya Embankment.
The peculiarity of the park embankment is the absence of a clear separation of the coast from the water with the help of a wall and the diversion of transit traffic from the river. An embankment of this type has been realized in Moscow only in Gorky Park. It has two levels: the upper one - for limited transit (intra-park passage) and the lower one, located almost at the water level, which gives the feeling of direct contact with the water mirror, which was used in the middle of the 20th century when organizing sports events and celebrations. It was planned to build similar slopes on several sections of the Moskva River, in particular, near the Novodevichy Convent, but this plan was not implemented.
The port embankments were intended for technical needs, which automatically excluded the possibility of transit and city-wide use. These embankments include the territories of the Western and Southern river ports. It should be noted that according to the plan for the reconstruction of Moscow in 1935, it was also planned to build new cargo berths on the straightening canals (Dorogomilovsky, Andreevsky, Luzhnetsky). Apparently, in the future it was assumed that the technical function was transferred from the banks of the main channel of the Moscow River to the banks of the canals, but this did not happen. Today the territories of industrial embankments represent a serious problem and, at the same time, a significant potential for development.
Retaining wall decoration
In accordance with the reconstruction program of the 1930s, the embankments were decorated with granite for about 30 kilometers of the Moskva River channel (from Krasnopresnenskaya embankment to Kozhukhov). When facing the embankments, profiles of different types were used. An inclined type of wall with a variable steepness of the edges was taken as the basic one. This type was preferred due to the fact that such a wall less obscures the buildings on the bank when perceived from the water mirror, and also since the inclined wall well emphasizes the smoothness of the river bends, which was very important in the case of the winding channel of the Moskva River. The use of profiles with varying degrees of slope was associated with a different constructive arrangement of the embankments. The strictly vertical type of wall was used only in one place: on the embankment of the unrealized Palace of Soviets.
In the facing of the embankments, granite of several colors from the Ukrainian and Ural deposits was used. Thus, the embankment near the Kremlin was faced with gray rocks, and the wall of the Raushskaya embankment was made of gray granite with a pink parapet. This color combination was not considered very successful by critics. Some sections of the embankments (near the Krasnopresnenskaya CHPP, on the territory of ZIL) are faced with red granite.
The embankment parapets were made in two versions: solid granite in the central part of the city, in the form of cast iron gratings with granite pylons outside the center. At the same time, immediately after the completion of the work, critics noticed that the solid walls of the embankments, although they make it more monumental (which was the main task in solving the appearance of the embankments), obscure the view of the river mirror on narrow fragments of the river, for example, at the Orphanage.
Gatherings architecture
Since the river in the 1930s was perceived as a transport highway, first of all, the embankments had to be adapted for mooring ships, and only then - for access by people, and only in certain sections. The possibility of arranging lowered walking levels along the river was not envisaged at all (with the exception of the Gorky Park embankment), so as not to narrow the already rather narrow (about 90 m wide) channel in the center of the capital.
If the architecture of gatherings in the XIX century. was emphatically utilitarian, then in the 1930s. much more importance was attached to it: first of all, it had to be expressive. We have to admit that we rarely pay attention to the architectural design of descents to the water (mainly due to their inaccessibility due to highways). But the decision of each gathering had to be unique, perhaps it is difficult to name two identical gatherings on the Moskva River.
Let's list the architects who participated in the creation of the descents to the water (unfortunately, it was not possible to establish the initials everywhere): Sokolov (Derbenevskaya, Krutitskaya, Moskvoretskaya, Paveletskaya embankments), I. A. French (Kievskaya, Berezhkovskaya, Smolenskaya, Rostovskaya, Kotelnicheskaya, Goncharnaya embankments), Kirillov (Sofiyskaya embankment), A. V. Vlasov together with Moskvin and Schmidt (Pushkinskaya embankment), A. M. Faifel (Yauza embankments), G. P. Golts (Vysokoyauzskaya embankment of Yauza), A. D. Suris (Krasnokholmskaya arrow). Of course, this list is far from complete and needs to be clarified.
The descents to the river, serving as berthing sites - stops for river transport, were made with different steps, but the distance between them almost never exceeds 1000 m, which meets the requirements of water transport. The only exception in the city center is the section of the river between the Moskvoretsky and Sofia gatherings, which reaches a length of 1100 m.
The placement of the gatherings is by no means accidental. The architects were faced with the task of strictly linking them to the axes of buildings: according to the ideas of the 1930s, the embankment was conceived as a stylobate of the monumental development of the coast, and all elements of the coastal arrangement (retaining wall with descents, bridges, buildings on both banks) had to be strictly connected between themselves and make up a single ensemble.
It should be noted that the linking of buildings to embankments was also not implemented everywhere. Thus, the residential house of architects opposite the square of the Kievsky railway station (architects A. V. Shchusev and A. K. Rostkovsky) remained separated by a wide parterre plane from the water surface and did not receive access to water.
The implementation of this plan took several decades. Almost all the projected gatherings were brought to life, however, the city's boundaries continued to expand, and a single understanding of the coastline did not happen. The powerful impetus that was given to the understanding of the topic of water in the city in the 1930s influenced the situation for two decades and subsequently gradually faded away. It will be fair to note that some ideas for the development of water infrastructure were also declared in the general plan of 1971, but they remained ideas, and there was no fundamentally new development of this issue.
Today we have to re-open the river to the city, which was originally created as a city on water. What qualities should the newly conceived Moscow embankments possess? First of all, I would like to hope that the city's embankments along their entire length will form a full-fledged frame with a balanced water, pedestrian, bicycle and automobile infrastructure. For most of their length (and not only in park areas, as is the case today), embankments should offer the city an accessible environment with "contact" water. Embankments should become a comfortable space and give the city a new quality of life.
