Moscow high-rise buildings of the 1940-1950s. became a true masterpiece of Russian architecture of the twentieth century. Luxurious and photogenic, they always attract the attention of tourists and Muscovites. However, how should the style of post-war skyscrapers be called? It can be characterized by stylistic and large-scale comparison of Moscow high-rise buildings and American skyscrapers.
The architecture of Moscow high-rise buildings, obviously imbued with the spirit of competition with the American one, was created based on the experience of Art Deco skyscrapers, their designs, but not style 1 … The rivalry between the two architectural powers began with a competition for the building of the Palace of Soviets, in which the "ribbed style" of B. M. Iofan won 2 … This style, presented at the competition by works including G. Pelzig and G. Hamilton, to some extent dating back to the neo-Gothic and massively developed in the United States, paradoxically will become the hallmark of the USSR at exhibitions in 1937 in Paris and 1939 in New york 3 … However, after the war, Iofan was not destined to become the author of one of the skyscrapers (the building of Moscow State University). Sharply different from the style of the master of the 1930s, Moscow high-rise buildings competed with the skyscrapers of the United States not only in height, but also in originality of style.
The Great Patriotic War could not fail to make significant changes in the stylistic development of Soviet architecture in the 1930s – 1950s, a period often united by the term "Stalinist Empire". 4 It was a time of natural strengthening of the triumphant, patriotic features of architecture. According to T. L. Astrakhantseva, the “Victory” style emerged, embodied in the post-war pavilions of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, metro stations and high-rise buildings (Astrakhantseva 2010).
Common in the architecture of skyscrapers in the United States and Moscow high-rise buildings was an interest in archaic tectonics, and for the first time it appears in buildings that preceded the development of Art Deco. The grandiose 90-meter monument to the Battle of the Nations in Leipzig (1898-1913) first influenced the silhouettes of E. Saarinen's works - his projects for the Parliament in Helsinki (1908) and the building of the League of Nations in Geneva (1927), and then became an example of stupid tectonism for the Palace Iofan's Advice (1934) (Christ – Janer 1984: 48–50).
Eliel Saarinen's work will play a major role in the development of Art Deco: he was the first to combine neo-Aztec tectonism and neo-Gothic ribbing in the competition project "Chicago Tribune" (1922). The building itself will be carried out according to the neo-Gothic project of R. Hood, but the aesthetic victory will be won by Saarinen's project, his style will dominate at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, during the heyday of American Art Deco (however, the neoclassicism of the United States also delighted Soviet customers and architects) 5 … The famous graphics of H. Ferris, high-rise buildings in New York and Chicago could not but inspire. So in the 1930s, not only Iofan worked, but Ya. G. Chernikhov, as well as D. F. Fridman, one of the leaders of the Soviet version of Art Deco, and a whole series of masters: A. N. Dushkin, I. G. Langbard, A. Ya. Langman, D. N. Chechulin - everyone makes projects in a similar style 6 … In 1934, the ribbed style will be implemented in the very center of Moscow, exemplified by the most important tasks - the service station house and the NKVD building. It was not just “Iofan's school”, but Art Deco, which turned to foreign experience and was created to compete with it. 7 … And it is precisely in the development of the Soviet version of Art Deco that the main difference between the pre-war style and the post-war one will be.
The idea of the stylistic unity of the pre- and post-war decades, the so-called. "Stalinist Empire" is based on the powerful imperial images of Soviet architecture, but the style of the 1930s was not always as monumental as the style of the 1950s. The works of E. A. Levinson, one of the most successful masters of Leningrad architecture of the 1930s, are exquisite, but not brutal. And on the example of his work, the difference between the pre-war period and the post-war period is obvious. Suffice it to compare the nearby houses on Sadovaya Street (House of Light Industry (1931) and a residential building of the 1950s), houses on the Neva Embankment (House of Voenmorov, 1938) in Leningrad and academic post-war work.
The style of the 1930s was very diverse, and this is another of its significant differences from the cemented spirit of post-war architecture, created, it seems, with one hand. The Soviet version of Art Deco was not monolithic; several trends were distinguishable in it. For example, in the 1930s, I. A. Golosov, one of the most talented masters of his time, was actively working in Moscow. His works, full of luxurious plastic imagination, were also part of the Soviet version of Art Deco, a style understood as borderless decorativeism.
The fixed stylistic difference between the pre-war and post-war periods of Soviet architecture, however, does not mean the absence of powerful imperial architecture in the 1930s, on the contrary. The works of L. V. Rudnev and N. A. Trotsky, E. I. Katonin and A. I. Gegello of the 1930s often look simply unattainable in power. The post-war style of such monumentalism did not inherit, that is, it ceased to express the totalitarian essence of its era as clearly as in the 1930s.
Soviet architecture of the 1940s – 1950s could no longer surpass that created in the cities of America, where more than 120 skyscrapers were built at the turn of the 1920–30s. However, the creators of Moscow skyscrapers, relying on the experience of American towers, primarily in historicism (for example, a skyscraper in Cleveland, 1926), sought to implement something new, unique in a global context and succeeded in this. More precisely, at the turn of the 1940s – 1950s, this new turn was to turn to the national tradition in response to the worldwide spread of modernism and international style.
The difference between the post-war skyscrapers of L. V. Rudnev or A. N. Dushkin from their pre-war works, obviously, lies in the Russification of the architectural form, however, the very search for forms of the national monumental style begins in Soviet architecture back in the late 1930s (which once again indicates on the stylistic diversity of the pre-war period). 8 Before the war, the pavilions of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, A. G. Mordvinov's residential buildings on Gorky and Bolshaya Polyanka streets were being erected 9 … In the second half of the 1930s, A. V. Shchusev (Theater in Tashkent) and even L. V. Rudnev (Government House in Baku) began to work in national (or quasi-national) styles 10 … The first and most successful example of this trend, which is outside the framework of both Art Deco and Neoclassicism, is the theater in Yerevan A. O. Tamanyan.
It was not only the war that became an insurmountable border between the pre-war and post-war periods, the difference between which was no less than between pre-revolutionary and Soviet architecture. At the turn of the 1930s – 40s. a whole generation of masters who have realized themselves in pre-war architecture is leaving. Only the neo-Renaissance of I. V. Zholtovsky will become the only one of the currents of the 1930s that survived and developed after the war (however, Zholtovsky, it would seem, the favorite of the authorities, will not be allowed to make either a metro station or a skyscraper).
The sad step of the change of generations took away more than half of the leaders of the style of the 1930s: I. A. Fomin and A. O. Tamanyan died in 1936, V. A. Shchuko and S. S. Serafimov died in 1939, - N. A. Trotsky, in 1942 - N. E. Lansere (repressed), in 1942 A. L. Lishnevsky, L. A. Ilyin and O. R. Munts die in besieged Leningrad, in 1945 - I. A. Golosov and P. A. Golosov, in 1946 G. P. Golts dies, in 1949 A. V. Shchusev. And, perhaps, it is precisely the change of generations of masters that can explain the large-scale and motivational dissonances that are characteristic to a large extent for post-war architecture.
Comparing the pre- and post-war periods, it should be noted that the style of the 1940-1950s, for example, of I. A. Fomin's students - P. V. Abrosimov and A. P. Velikanov, A. F. Khryakov and L. M. Polyakov, was not close to the architecture, in the creation of which they took part during the life of the master 11 … Let us compare, in particular, the house of the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR in Kiev (I. A. Fomin, P. V. Abrosimov, since 1935) or the Academy of Light Industry in Leningrad (P. V. Abrosimov, L. M. Polyakov, A. F. Khryakov, 1934-1937) and the Main Building of Moscow State University. This architecture is completely different in techniques and mood, and in the case of Fomin's grandiose creation in Kiev, the brutality of this architecture went back to the pre-revolutionary style of the master, his project of the Nikolaevsky railway station (1912). The architecture of Moscow State University was created at the intersection of different traditions, different plastic and compositional means.
The style of Moscow high-rise buildings is unimaginable in the 1930s, imbued with an experimental spirit. However, designed to create a large-scale environment that was so necessary for the Palace of Soviets, they, like the gigantic creation of Iofan, embodied the spirit of rivalry with the architectural achievements of the United States. And that is precisely why the facade techniques of high-rise buildings were designed to compete not only with the national heritage, but with the world12… Thus, the stepped projections and flat pilasters of a high-rise building on Vosstaniya Square were solutions that had already been worked out in skyscrapers in the United States (Fig. 1, 2). Moreover, the elongated pilaster structure in combination with interwindow medallions dates back to the architecture of the Chicago school of the 1900s (Fig. 3, 4)13… In the flattened order and silhouette of the Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye, Soviet architecture acquires a beautiful and necessary patriotic model for the era.
The creators of the post-war skyscrapers relied on the overseas experience of the 1910-1930s - the style range of American skyscrapers was extremely wide, and they tried to work in Moscow as well. Not all of the skyscrapers contained neo-Russian details. However, they were characterized by spiers, a stepped hierarchy of buildings and a multi-element structure, reminiscent of church five-domes. Capital skyscrapers, unlike Art Deco skyscrapers, have acquired a harmonious "temple-like" structure and silhouette14… As if they were started before the revolution (the role of the 800th anniversary of Moscow could be played by the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty in 1913).
Stylistically, the architecture of Moscow high-rise buildings turned out to be the closest to those first American skyscrapers in historical styles, which would have been rivals of Russian architecture, even if there were no two world wars and a revolution and its development proceeded at a global pace (Fig. 5, 6)15… And one should not doubt the possibilities for the construction of domestic high-rises, analogs of American skyscrapers, it is enough to recall the genius of V. G. Shukhov, the overseas career of N. V. Vasiliev16… However, before the revolution there were no conditions for mastering the achievements of the Chicago school. So the large warrant of Lyalevich and Shchuko was only small, encircling in D. Bernheim's buildings. This large-scale lag of pre-revolutionary architecture from the Chicago school was inherited by the USSR17… The high-rise buildings, realized in Moscow in post-war buildings in the neo-Russian style, were not supported by the side buildings of the high-rise buildings. The Moscow towers achieved their height parameters primarily due to the spiers, it was they who made it possible to surpass the direct prototypes of the Soviet towers (Fig. 7, 8)18.
Multiple elements and hierarchies have become specific features of high-rise buildings, however, even in high-rise buildings that are emphatically oriented towards tradition, it was not possible to bring national motives to the authenticity adopted before the revolution. In addition to completions, neo-Russian codes in other façade elements were not supported (so balconies, arches and rusts of the lower zones were often solved in "bookish" neopalladianism). The style play was not completed. And this is the inconsistency of the 1930s – 1950s: the massive demolitions of historical monuments were carried out simultaneously with the proclamation of the program of “mastering the classical heritage”.
Neoclassical techniques in high-rise buildings do not dominate (only the entrance porticoes and side buildings were used in the order), but the influence of Art Deco aesthetics was only indirect after the war (Fig. 9, 10). It would seem that post-war architecture contained a significant neo-Renaissance component, but (except in the works of Zholtovsky) it was deprived of the necessary authenticity of details and compositions. Against the background of the typification of the classical alphabet, this distinguished the buildings in the neo-Russian style, it was in them that authenticity and novelty were felt now (first of all, this refers to the residential house of Ya. B. Belopolsky on Lomonosov Avenue and the house of the Ministry of Coal Industry on Mira Avenue (Fig. 11)). However, in the architecture of high-rise buildings, the details that form the neo-Russian image were present to a minimum.19… And if the post-war era as a whole is characterized by the parallel development of two currents - the Neo-Renaissance and the Neo-Russian style, the style of Moscow high-rise buildings assumed the possibility of combining the techniques of different traditions in one building, or, in other words, was eclectic (and in this again it was close to the architecture of skyscrapers)20.
The decorative style of Moscow high-rise buildings was no longer related to Art Deco. The brightest New York images of the turn of the 1920s and 30s, fantasy or ascetic, were already too avant-garde, geometric for the conservative taste of the customer21… America's Art Deco was not "temple-like" enough. However, post-war skyscrapers were created already in conditions of economy and even haste.22… Thus, the high-rise building on Kotelnicheskaya embankment favorably distinguished itself by its spectacular three-beam composition of volumes, however, plastically, the image remained devoid of the necessary integrity. However, in a country that has survived the war, Moscow high-rise buildings are the maximum that was possible. In Europe, such high-rise buildings were not erected. Moscow high-rise buildings have become a symbol of the post-war revival of the country, its readiness for scientific and technological achievements and its appeal to artistic traditions - national and international (Fig. 12, 13)23.
Moscow's high-rise buildings were the culmination of a government-initiated return to historicism, which made it possible to compete with pre-revolutionary and foreign architecture. And although the skyscrapers did not inherit the fragile artistic balance of scenery and asceticism, large-scale and silhouette solutions found in the skyscrapers of the United States, it was precisely the peculiar harmony of Art Deco that was different from the order architecture that became the main artistic rival and formal source of inspiration for Soviet masters of the 1930s and 1950s (seemingly eclectic, this Art Deco harmony was held together by archaic tectonics). And it was when working with Art Deco images that the masters of Moscow high-rise buildings managed to achieve the highest success.
The high-rise building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has become the only figuratively solid and at the same time close to Art Deco, skyscraper architecture in Houston and San Francisco and the Fisher Building imbued with the neo-Gothic spirit in Detroit (Fig. 14, 15) 24 … And the Foreign Ministry building, originally designed without a spire (that is, 130 m high to the "Kremlin" teeth), exactly coincided in height with its overseas counterparts25… Not only the characteristic combination of neo-Gothic ribbing and neo-Aztec tectonism, but also stepped attica and a special pile-up, hypertrophy of fantasy-geometrized details, speaks of the belonging of the Foreign Ministry building to Art Deco.26… That is why the Foreign Ministry building surpassed all its prototypes in the expressiveness of its architecture. Thus, V. G. Gelfreikh will become the author of the first sample of the Soviet version of Art Deco - the library named after V. G. VI Lenin, and the last - the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the 1930s, both Iofan and Friedman worked in this style (Fig. 16, 17).
In high-rise buildings, created under the leadership of L. V. Rudnev, post-war architecture, it seems, was the closest to creating a certain style of its own27… In the main building of Moscow State University and in the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, Art Deco imagery was translated into the universal language of the classics (historicism). In the 1920s, a similar image of a high-rise building - dressed in a warrant (as in the building of New York City Council), but created based on Saarinen's Art Deco tectonics - was proposed by Corbet and Ferris (Fig. 18-20)28… They dreamed of both a square and a romantic distance between the towers, but these ideas remained on paper. Without a square, a high-rise building is lost - this, perhaps, was the main conclusion drawn by Soviet architects following their trips to the United States.29… And therefore, all seven high-rise buildings in Moscow were delivered flawlessly30… So the symbiosis of different traditions - the motives of pre-Petrine Russia and neo-Gothic ribbing, neoarchaic yielding and neoclassical elements, already partially embodied in the skyscrapers of the United States - formed the style of post-war high-rise buildings.
Moscow high-rise buildings are strikingly different from the US skyscrapers in their number and style, their urban planning role and dominance in the square, as well as the presence of spiers, which are usually devoid of rationally designed American towers. Moscow high-rise buildings differ from the crowded, narrow in cross-section skyscrapers by the powerful foundation of their buildings, and most importantly, by the harmony of the silhouette and the appeal to neoarchaic tectonism. In the 1920s and 1930s, architects of the United States dreamed of embodying such images, but only in Moscow will the hierarchical composition of Moscow State University many times exceed its prototype - the Angkor Wat temple complex, and therefore will become a unique architectural phenomenon in the world context.
1 A number of publications are devoted to the topic of comparing Moscow high-rise buildings and American skyscrapers, for example: (Zueva 2010), (Sedov 2006).
2 "Ribbed style" - from the English. "Ribbed" - covered with flutes, ribs (this definition is used in English literature to describe skyscrapers of the Art Deco era). The first examples of the "ribbed style" appear in Europe as early as the 1910s - these are the works of M. Berg, G. Pelzig, P. V. Jansen-Klint. The ribbed telescopic architecture of the Hall of the Century in 1926 was addressed by J. Urban, the author of the project of the Metropolitan Opera building in New York, in 1927 - E. Saarinen, a participant in the competition for the building of the League of Nations in Geneva. In 1929, in a similar ribbed telescopic architecture, I. G. Langbard designs a theater in Kharkov, since 1932 - BM Iofan's Palace of Soviets (Palace of Soviets 1933).
3 Selected for the Palace of Soviets and implemented in the architecture of the theater in Minsk (1934), the “ribbed style” was, however, already unimaginable in the 1940s – 1950s.
4 Consideration of Soviet architecture 1932-1955. was devoted to the conference "Stalinist Empire", held by NIITAG RAASN in 2007. Its materials were published in a collection of articles (Architecture of the Stalinist era 2010). The general term "Stalinist Empire" was often used by the patriarch of Russian historical and architectural science, acad., Arch. S. O. Khan-Magomedov to designate the main direction of Soviet architecture in the early 1930s - mid-1950s.
5 Thus, the grandiose w-shaped in plan Hilton hotel in Chicago (1927) inspired the participants in the competition for the building of the NKTP in Zaryadye (1935), the projects of V. A. Shchuko and L. M. Bezverkhny. At the same time, the ambitiousness of the unrealized projects of the 1930s strengthened the determination of post-war architecture to finally "catch up and overtake America." And therefore, the residential building of Ya. B. Belopolsky on Lomonosovsky Prospect (1953) not only possessed the romanticism of English castle architecture, but also corresponded to the w-shaped one, decorated only in the upper zone of Tudor City in New York (1927), its aesthetics of a brick wall with white details in Moscow was translated into the language of the Naryshkin style.
6 So, the basis of the USSR pavilion at the exhibition in Paris (competition 1935-1936) will be the dynamic slab of the Rockefeller Center (1932), in the NKTP project (1936) Iofan will turn to another New York creation of R. Hood - the McGraw Hill Building (1931). Friedman, working on the competition design for the NKTP building (1934), was inspired by two neighboring Chicago skyscrapers - One La Salle Building (1929) and Foreman Building (1930). The Riverside Plaza building in Chicago influenced the work of D. N. Chechulin, the design of the Central House of Aeroflot (1934) and the House of Soviets of the RSFSR in Moscow (1965-1979).
7 In February 1934, the version of the Palace of the Soviets in the form of a three-tier telescopic volume takes on its final form. The height of the Palace of Soviets was supposed to be 415 m and would become the culmination of Soviet architectural rivalry with the United States - in 1931, the construction of the Empire State Building 381 m high was completed in New York (Eigel 1978: 98).
8 Already in 1938, SM Ezeinstein's film "Alexander Nevsky" was released.
9 In the pavilions of the republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, the techniques of national traditions were used. However, in a number of other buildings of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition in 1939Not only is the influence of Art Deco aesthetics perceptible (thanks to bas-relief friezes), but direct parallels with the architecture of the exhibitions in 1925, 1931, 1937 in Paris (in particular, this is noticeable in the architecture of the mausoleum pavilion "Glavmyaso", architect F. Ya. Belostotskaya). Moreover, the Main Pavilion (architects V. A. Shchuko and V. G. Gelfreikh), the pavilion of the Moscow, Tula and Ryazan Regions (architect D. N. Chechulin) and the Volga Region pavilion (architects S. B. Znamensky, A. G. Kolesnichenko) will inherit the image of the dynamic plate of the Rockefeller Center. The pavilion of the Ukrainian SSR (architects A. A. Tatsiy, N. K. Ivanchenko) was made in the “ribbed style”. In fact, Art Deco aesthetics acted on a par with national traditions and formed the basis of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition in 1939.
10 In the design of the USSR pavilion at the international exhibition in New York in 1939, K. S. Alabyan proposed to combine a ribbed (in the style of the Palace of Soviets) drum and a neo-Russian tower in silhouette (Exhibition Ensembles 2006: 380).
11 In the first half of the 1930s, P. V. Abrosimov, A. P. Velikanov, A. F. Khryakov and L. M. Polyakov worked under the guidance of I. A. Fomin in the architectural and design workshop of the Moscow City Council No. 3.
12 And these are not only skyscrapers of the United States, but the images of medieval Europe, the motif of the Gothic tower of the cathedral in Norwich in the silhouette of the skyscraper on Vosstaniya Square, the proportions of the main tower of the Milan Sforza castle in the composition of the facade of the skyscraper at the Red Gate.
13 Cannellised pilasters without bases and capitals of the 1930s (as in the Moscow house of A. Ya. Langman's STO (1934) or the Lefkowitz building in New York, architect W. Hogard (1928)), first appeared in the works of Hoffman in the 1910s - the pavilion in Rome (1910), the Villa Primavesi in Vienna (1913) and the pavilion in Cologne (1914). The anta order of the 1930s goes back to the innovations of the 1910s - the rectangular order of Tessenov (dance hall in Hellerau, 1910), Hoffman (Stoclet Palace (1905) and the pavilion in Rome (1910)). The innovations of the 1910s, flat pilasters and the anta order were approved by the customer in the early masterpiece of Soviet Art Deco - the building of the library. V. I. Lenin (1928). Its side facade echoed the architecture of the Shakespeare Library in Washington (1929), created in the same years, the entrance portico of Shchuko's creation was stylistically close to another work of F. Cret - the Federal Reserve building (1935).
14 The "temple-like" nature of Moscow high-rise buildings is indicated in (Sedov 2006).
15 So the influence of many authors notice the influence of the City Hall in New York (40 floors, 177 m, 1909). It largely determined both the appearance of the completion of the Main Building of Moscow State University, and the planning x-shape of the building on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment. (26 floors, 176 m), and a three-risal composition of the facade of a high-rise on Vosstaniya Square.
16 Thus, at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, Vasiliev fulfilled the perspectives of several skyscrapers made by firms where he worked as a draftsman-visualizer, in particular, the neoclassical New York Central Building (Warren & Wetmore firm, 1927) and 500 house on Fifth Avenue, already designed in ascetic Art Deco (Shreve, Lam and Harmon, 1930) in New York, as well as the Alfred Smith Building in Albany (1928) (Lisovsky, Gachot, 2011. С. 294, 299, 341).
17 Soviet architecture of the 1930s – 1950s was able to master the scale of the Florentine palazzo, but did not work with the number of storeys of the Chicago school. Thus, constructing multi-storey buildings throughout his career, D. Bernheim in the 1890-1900s went from the Manadnock Building (16th floor, 1891) and the Fisher Building (20th floor, 1895) in Chicago to the famous Flatiron in New York (22nd floor, 1902) and the grandiose Oliver Building in Pittsburgh (25th floor, 1908).
18 Designed initially without spiers (the buildings of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the buildings on the square near Krasnye Vorota, as well as indirectly the buildings of the Moscow State University and the buildings of Vosstaniya Square), Moscow skyscrapers were closer to the Art Deco aesthetics that gave birth to them. However, they were carried out with the maximum altitude characteristic, reinforcing national, retrospective features in their image. For example, the Leningradskaya Hotel (17th floor, 136m) is higher than the Panellenic Tower in New York (28th floor, 88m), a high-rise building on Vosstaniya Square (24th floor, 156m) is higher than the Alfred Smith Building in Albany (34 floor, 118 m) and the Greybar Building in New York (30 floor, 107 m), the Foreign Ministry building (27 floor, 172 m) above the Fisher Building in Detroit (30 floor, 130 m), hotel Ukraine (34 floors, 206 m) above the Palmolive Building in Chicago (37 floors, 172 m). (Oltarzhevsky 1953)
19 These are decorative elements of the Spassky Gate of the Moscow Kremlin in a skyscraper near the Red Gate, the battlements of the Kremlin wall in the Foreign Ministry building, a triangular elongated pediment of St. Basil's Cathedral and the tent of the Kazan Syuyumbike tower in a skyscraper on Vosstaniya Square, motifs of the Tsar Tower of the Moscow Kremlin and a double arch of the Krutitsky courtyard on the facade of the Main buildings of Moscow State University.
20 The heyday of the Art Deco style and the peak of the construction of high-rise buildings in the United States occurred at the turn of the 1920s – 1930s, and this was a period of fan-shaped development of several trends. The neoclassical, neo-gothic, avant-garde, neoarchaic or fantasy-geometrized component could dominate the work or form an equally interesting “interstyle” fusion. Moreover, all these architectural trends at the turn of the 1920s and 30s were equally represented in the cities of America. The masters, like their colleagues of the eclectic era, did not limit themselves to work in only one of the styles.
21 The architecture of the post-war skyscrapers turned out to be drawn to the artistic fashion of half a century ago, to the realism in sculptural decoration, which rejected the innovations of the 1920s and 1930s. For example, in the architecture of the luxurious lobby of the Leningradskaya Hotel, you can catch the features of the interior of one of the first skyscrapers in lower Manhattan, the American Shurety Building (1894). One of the last Moscow interiors, clearly bearing the features of Art Deco, was the Elektrozavodskaya metro station (started by V. A. Shchuko together with V. G. Gelfreikh and I. Ye. Rozhin, it was opened in 1944), the peaked zippers in its decorative design reminded of the famous lobby grilles of New York's Chenin Building (1927).
22 American skyscrapers at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s no longer envisioned the total decoration of the high-rise volume. This was due to a number of reasons: visual fatigue from the abundance of decorations on the facades of the first skyscrapers, and moderation (that is, the emphasis on individual nodes and accents (entrance area and completion), as well as savings that gradually increased after the crisis of 1929. and the growing fashion for the ideas of the avant-garde (for example, the facades of the New York skyscrapers of R. Hood - Daily News Building, 1929 and McGraw Hill Building, 1931) are almost devoid of decor.
23 Noting the multi-element and hierarchical nature as a specific feature of Moscow skyscrapers, it should be admitted that such were the skyscrapers of the United States. These are, for example, the three-rizalite Civic-Opera Building in Chicago (1929) and the Astoria Hotel in New York (1929), as well as the masterpiece of American Art Deco - the City Hall in Buffalo (1932).
24 The creator of the Fisher Building (130 m, 1928) was the leader of Detroit architecture, Albert Kahn, who was invited to the USSR in the 1930s to work on industrialization projects (Meerovich 2009).
25 We are talking about the Russ Building in San Francisco (127 m, 1927), as well as the Gulf Building skyscraper in Houston (130 m, 1929), which exactly reproduces Saarinen's project for the "Chicago Tribune" neo-gothic crown.
26 Emphasizing the order and at the same time the national image of the towers, the architects of Moscow skyscrapers, instead of stepped Art Deco attics (which made it possible to accurately simulate the thinning of skyscrapers), used flattened cornices of the Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye. And the only high-rise building using not cornices, but attics, was the creation of Gelfreich.
27 It would seem that the influence of the New York works of E. Roth can be traced in the creation of L. V. Rudnev. So, the silhouette of the high-rise part of Moscow State University resembles the skyscraper "Oliver Cromwell" (1927), overlooking the Central Park Beresford (1929) and San Remo (1929) could prompt, respectively, the multi-turret and completion of the tower with a classical rotunda (this is also the decision of the City Council building, 1909). However, the main building of Moscow State University surpasses E. Roth's neoclassical skyscrapers in terms of monumentality and town-planning role, in terms of the complexity of the associations used.
28 In 1925 g. Corbett and Ferris prepared two final skyscraper sketches, taking into account the zoning law, and both of them, in Art Deco and Neoclassicism, influenced Moscow's high-rise buildings 30 years later. Thus, the churches on the side projections of the Moscow State University, imbued with amazing romanticism, were the answer to the neoclassical version of Corbet (this project also inspired Fridman in his work on the composition of the building of the NKTP in Zaryadye, 1936). Designed in the style of Saarinen, the ribbed three-rizalite version of Ferris became one of the likely prototypes of the Foreign Ministry building (Stern 1994: 509, 511).
29 In 1947 this position was expressed by BM Iofan in his article “Architectural Problems of the Construction of Multi-Storey Buildings” (Iofan 1975: 234–235).
30 The ensemble was conceived as a distinctive feature of Soviet architecture (especially post-war), and skyscrapers became the apotheosis of this urban planning idea. However, just at the city level, this plan did not receive full-fledged embodiment - new quarters were dispersed. And therefore, created not by a state, but by a private initiative, New York, in its chaotic development, is paradoxically close to the fragmentation of Moscow in the 1930s – 1950s.
Literature
1. Architecture of the Stalinist era 2010 - Architecture of the Stalinist era: An experience of historical comprehension / Comp. and otv. ed. Yu. L. Kosenkova. M.: KomKniga, 2010.
2. Astrakhantseva 2010 - Astrakhantseva T. L. Style "Victory" in decorative and ornamental art of the 1940-1950s: on the problem of definitions in Soviet art of the Stalin era // Architecture of the Stalin era: An experience of historical comprehension. M.: KomKniga, 2010. S. 142-149.
3. Exhibition Ensembles 2006 - Exhibition Ensembles of the USSR 1920-1930. M.: Galart, 2006.
4. Palace of Soviets 1933 - Palace of Soviets of the USSR. All-Union competition. M.: Vsekohudozhnik, 1933.
5. Zueva 2010 - Zueva P. P. New York skyscrapers as prototypes of "Stalinist skyscrapers" / Comp. and otv. ed. Yu. L. Kosenkova // Architecture of the Stalinist Era: An Experience of Historical Understanding. M.: KomKniga, 2010. S. 435–451.
6. Iofan 1975 - Iofan B. M. Architectural problems of the construction of multi-storey buildings // Masters of Soviet architecture on architecture. T. 2. M.: Art, 1975. P. 233–236.
7. Lisovsky, Gashot 2011 - Lisovsky V. G., Gasho R. M. Nikolay Vasiliev. From modern to modernism. Saint Petersburg: Kolo, 2011.
8. Meerovich 2009 - Meerovich M. G. Albert Kahn in the history of Soviet industrialization // Project Baikal. No. 20. 2009. P. 156-161.
9. Oltarzhevsky 1953 - Oltarzhevsky V. K. Construction of high-rise buildings in Moscow. M.: State publishing house of literature on construction and architecture, 1953.
10. Sedov 2006 - Sedov V. V. High-rise buildings of late Stalinism // Project Classic. No. 13, 2006. P. 139-155.
11. Eigel 1978 - Eigel I. Yu. Boris Iofan. Moscow: Stroyizdat, 1978.
12. Christ-Janer 1984 - Christ-Janer A. Eliel Saarinen: Finnish-American Architect and Educator. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
13. Stern 1994 - Stern R. A. M. New York 1930: Architecture and Urbanism between the Two World Wars. New York: Rizzoli, 1994.
annotation
Moscow's high-rise buildings, like the Palace of the Soviets, conceived by the world's high-rise record holder, embodied the spirit of competition with the architectural achievements of the United States. And that is precisely why the facade techniques of high-rise buildings were designed to compete not only with the national heritage, but with the world one. High-rise buildings in New York and Chicago could not help but inspire. The creators of Moscow skyscrapers, relying on the experience of American towers, primarily in historicism, strove to create something new, unique in the world context and succeeded in this. The stepped risalits and flat pilasters of the high-rise building on Vosstaniya Square were solutions already worked out in the skyscrapers of the United States. However, post-war architecture is acquiring a beautiful and necessary patriotic model in the order and the falling silhouette of the Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye. Thus, the symbiosis of different traditions: motives of pre-Petrine Rus and neoclassical elements, as well as the ribbing and yielding of skyscrapers of the 1920s – 1930s, formed the style of post-war high-rise buildings.
