Whatever Professor Preobrazhensky may say, Izvestia was the first official Soviet newspaper in the literal sense - the Petrograd Soviet published their first issue the day after the February revolution. Then they planned to fight for the Constituent Assembly, but after its dispersal and the transfer of the capital, they moved to Moscow and became the main press organ of the executive power, the Central Executive Committee and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in contrast to the Bolshevik party Pravda. Which was a little less prestigious, but also honorable. For some time the newspaper was published in the Sytinsk printing house near the Passion Monastery. But newspapers were important for the new government, and soon enough, in 1924-1925, a competition was held for a project of a new architecture building. The winner was Grigory Borisovich Barkhin, who built a new house for Izvestia near the old printing house, in about a year and a half, together with his son Mikhail. Grigory Barkhin was not in the full sense a revolutionary architect, he rather joined constructivism (however, many did this, for example, the same Ivan Fomin). Before the revolution, Barkhin graduated from the Academy of Arts and, together with Roman Klein, built the neoclassical building of the Moscow Museum of Fine Arts, the current Pushkin Museum.
However, the winning project, which was initially intended to be built to the west, at the corner of Tverskaya and Strastnoy Boulevards, was a rather fast-paced twelve-story tower, similar to the famous project of Leningradskaya Pravda by the Vesnins. The tower was supposed to argue with the bell tower of the Passionate Monastery, which was not planned to be demolished in 1925. But according to the then actual general plan of the city "New Moscow" in the Strastnoy area, almost as now, height restrictions were in effect - it was impossible to build more than six floors. All that remained of the tower was the vertical staircase with a series of balconies extended to the facade, and a small loggia with a clock on the corner facing Tverskaya. The inscription - "Izvestia" - as a result, was placed horizontally.
Izvestia did not become an icon of constructivism, and nevertheless the building was included in all thematic guidebooks and is well known as a monument to the history of the avant-garde. At the same time, the subject of protection, as it often happens in our times, is rather narrow: the facades are protected, and inside there is only Bukharin's office on the top floor (he was the editor of the newspaper for three years), plus that very staircase overlooking Pushkin Square, and that's it. … It is fortunate that Aleksey Ginzburg, the great-grandson of Grigory Barkhin and the grandson of Moisei Ginzburg, the heir of two architectural dynasties, who was equally passionate about modern architecture and restoration, including avant-garde monuments, had to work with the restoration of Izvestia. Alexey Ginzburg has been working in the Izvestia quarter for several years, recently the restoration of a profitable
Tyulyaeva's houses on Dmitrovka opposite Lenkom, the second was Izvestia, work with the building of the Sytinsk printing house and the two-story estate of the Dolgorukov-Bobrinsky at the corner of the boulevard and Dmitrovka was almost completed. Izvestia in this motley row is the only building of the 1920s, a monument to the avant-garde.
The building was well preserved and was easily recognizable even before the start of work. Although the avant-garde lettering was soon replaced by the classic serif; the marquee, which was a novelty for the 1920s, was also removed almost immediately. In the 1990s, the building was rented out for offices; in the same way it is planned to be used in the future, as well as the neighboring building of the newspaper, which expanded in the late 1970s.
One of the main distortions of the author's intention was the windows of restaurants on the first floor pierced by the entrances to the street. And although now, most likely, restaurants will also be located here, Alexei Ginzburg managed to return the lower window-showcases to their original appearance: now there is only one entrance, through the main entrance. The wide lower windows were intended to illuminate the lower semi-basement floor of the newspaper workers' dining room: those walking along the main facade now, while the restaurants have not yet settled, can clearly see its space. There is a semi-basement under both buildings, street and yard; only at the main southern facade is it illuminated through wide windows overlooking the street under the ceiling, and in the former technical courtyard building, where the relief is higher, through skylights.
The restoration, according to Alexei Ginzburg, is not archaeological and historical, but architectural. Therefore, not all elements have been restored: for example, Barkhin's angular constructivist inscription, like the clock, was revived, but the running line did not become.
In addition, the building has received several modern additions, most notably new elevators in the middle passage. However, it should be remembered that the building had already been seriously rebuilt after the war: then the passage between the buildings was expanded to the west with a spacious lobby, and in the courtyard, from the north, an additional volume with a basement was added. At the same time, the doors were replaced - with light yellow, Brezhnev-style; the elevator was replaced by the main staircase facing the façade. The northern post-war extension was dismantled, leaving only its basement part. The extension to the passage between the buildings, on the other hand, has been preserved, tidying up the late vestibule with spectacular large caissons on the ceiling.
However, Alexei Ginzburg managed to preserve and restore many important details. For example, having found fragments of Metlach tiles on the floors - simple, white with bluish inserts at the corners, the architects ordered a similar one in Germany and restored the floors of the lobbies and corridors.
Instead of the post-war light yellow doors and wall panels, they chose dark brown ones, as well as the doorknobs that fit the 1920s style.
Particularly noteworthy is the staircase overlooking the main facade - the space is very bright, transparent, with large windows to the floor. It seems to be the ridge of light of the entire building, both from the outside and from the inside - it is not surprising that the architects paid a lot of attention to it and worked with jewelry.
The second staircase overlooking the courtyard is designed in the spirit of the first, albeit more laconic - the same railings, the same beige color of the steps underfoot.
But the process of restoring the original metal binders of the stained-glass windows overlooking the main facade turned out to be especially difficult. The surviving original frames were covered with a very thick layer of paint, in order to clean it, a sandblaster with ceramic chips was needed; a huge amount of dirt has formed on the floor. “Down to the knee,” the architect admits. It was much easier to replace them with double-glazed windows, especially since the window covers have nothing to do with the objects of protection - but Alexei Ginzburg managed to insist on competent, albeit laborious, cleaning of the original frames. Some of them were in poor condition, they were replaced, but mostly on the upper floors. More than half of the original bindings of the lower floors, thin and complex, with rivets, have been preserved - which is very important for the feeling of the building's authenticity.
The bindings are painted black on the outside and white on the inside. On the facades, they form a thin structuring grid, while inside they work to expand the space and intensify the light. Especially the staircase with its gray-white broomstick, gigantic stained-glass windows for the 1920s, light blue walls, whose color was restored from the fragments found - seems very light when viewed from both the inside and the outside.
The second important component of the original facade is the preserved and carefully cleaned dark gray terrazzite plaster by Grigory Barkhin. It took quite a long time to select a hydrophobic solution to strengthen it: the first compositions did not fit, spoiled the color, making it either darker, then adding a blue or even green tint, says Alexey Ginzburg. Ultimately, it was possible to achieve an even gray color by strengthening the façade.
But dark gray, contrastingly emphasizing the whiteness of the light interiors visible through the wide windows, the main facade was the only one near the Barkhin building. According to the tradition of the late XIX - early XX centuries, firewalls and courtyard facades were left brick, saving expensive plaster, explains Ginzburg. - It was later, after the war, all of them were painted with oil paint.
In the Izvestia quarter, the architect is restoring the "historical justice" of the old brick facades. So Alexei Ginzburg did both with Tyulyaeva's house and with the neighboring mansion; The same brick walls were opened in Izvestia, akin to the work of the avant-garde with neighboring, and, in fact, close in time houses of the early XX century. The brick is cleaned, covered with a hydrophobic solution, brand new aluminum ventilation pipes are stretched to the height, unexpectedly emphasizing the brutal technical purpose of the former printing building. Only the post-war western façade in the courtyard received a neutral beige paint.
It must be said that in Alexei Ginzburg's experiments with brick firewalls, historical reconstruction probably plays the least role - it is curious as a plot, nothing more. Most citizens won't notice. Much more significant is the coloristic significance of this technique, without any additional efforts turning the city into a cheerful "patchwork quilt", where the colored front surfaces of the facades are "sewn", well, or superimposed on a common bright terracotta, living base, capable of uniting a two-story Moscow estate with cast-iron balconies and the glamorous house of the Silver Age with the harsh typography of the Soviets of the proletarian state. To unite - and to do it easily and directly, as, perhaps, easily the subtle classic Grigory Barkhin mastered the language of constructivism, in some incomprehensible way without changing himself and remaining more of a "facade" architect, but talented and conscientious in everything to the smallest detail.
In a word, this restoration is an extremely interesting experience, primarily because it went to the "hereditary" architect, who was keen on restoration and conscientiously, just like his great-grandfather built, who restored here everything that was possible in modern circumstances. Indeed, in our time it is, as usual, - architects perceive monuments rather as an encumbrance: either a complication of the work process, if they still need to be preserved, or as a burden on their conscience, if they need to erect a fake. Many architects worship the avant-garde, it's true. But someone only redraws, and someone strives to create a copy in the same "style". It is not often an architect who is immersed in a problem in such a way that, having fulfilled many of the customer's requirements, having repurposed, after all, the building for a different function, retained the maximum of the original, and even restored something. But the result is easy to read: in the Pushkinskaya area, thanks to the efforts of Alexei Ginzburg, a new version of Moscow is slowly growing. The city that we have lost. And when the courtyard is landscaped and the passages from arch to arch open, then we will be able to appreciate not only the restored monument, but also the atmosphere created not by kilometers of storming, but by several years of thoughtful work. Which, however, will have to wait.
About the Izvestia building Barkhin see the article by N. N. Bronovitskaya in the book: Architectural Monuments of Moscow. Moscow 1910-1935 M., 2012. S. 238-239.
