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A walk up
Tverskaya street and into
Pushkin Square with
Masha and
Diana explaining what is going on. Tverskaya is one of the most expensive shopping streets in the world.
Tverskaya Street (Тверская улица), known as
Gorky Street (улица Горького) between 1935 and
1990 and (unofficially)
Piterskaya (Питерская улица) in the preceding decades, runs from the central
Manege Square north-west in the direction of
Saint Petersburg and terminated at the
Garden Ring, giving its name to
Tverskoy District. The route continues further as
First Tverskaya-Yamskaya
Street,
Leningradsky Prospekt and
Leningradskoye Shosse.
Tverskaya Street existed as early as the
12th century. Its importance for the medieval city was immense, as it connected
Moscow with its superior, and later chief rival,
Tver. At that time, the thoroughfare crossed the
Neglinnaya River. The first stone bridge across the Neglinnaya was set up in 1595
.
In the 17th and
18th centuries, Tverskaya Street was renowned as the centre of Moscow's social life. The nobility considered it fashionable to settle in this district. Among the
Palladian mansions dating from the reign of
Catherine the Great are the residence of the mayor of Moscow (1778-82, rebuilt in ), and the
English Club (1780s).
During the imperial period, the importance of the thoroughfare was highlighted by the fact that it was through this street that the tsars arrived from the
Northern capital to their Kremlin residence. Several triumphal arches were constructed to commemorate the coronation ceremonies. In
1792, the Tverskaya
Square was laid out before the residence of the governor of Moscow as a staging ground
for mass processions and parades. In
1947, the square was decorated with an equestrian statue of
Prince Yury Dolgoruky, founder of Moscow.
During
Pushkin's time, the Tverskaya was lined with five churches. The poet wove his impressions from the street into the following stanza of
Eugene Onegin:
The columns of the city gate
Gleam white; the sleigh, more swift than steady,
Bumps down Tverskaya Street already.
Past sentry-boxes now they dash,
Past shops and lamp-posts, serfs who lash
Their nags, huts, mansions, monasteries,
Parks, pharmacies, Bukharans, guards,
Fat merchants, Cossacks, boulevards,
Old women, boys with cheeks like cherries,
Lions on gates with great stone jaws,
And crosses black with flocks of daws.
Towards the end of the
19th century, the street was reconstructed, with stately neoclassical mansions giving way to grandiose commercial buildings in an eclectic mixture of historical styles. A characteristic edifice of the time is the eclectic
National Hotel (
1901), whose interior is a landmark of
Russian Art Nouveau. In
1888 the actor, theatre director and founder of the
Moscow Art Theatre,
Constantin Stanislavski, rented the Ginzburg
House on the street and had it converted into a luxurious clubhouse with its own large stage and several exhibition rooms, in order to house his newly-formed
Society of
Art and Literature.
The Society gave its last performance there on 3 January 1891 and the building burnt down on the night of
10 January.
Between the
Russian Revolution of 1917 and the rise of stalinist architecture in mid-1930s, the street acquired three modernist buildings - constructivist Izvestia
Building by Grigory Barkhin (1925-1927, Pushkin Square),
Central Telegraph Building (1927-29, 5 Tverskaya), a modernist masterpiece by
Ivan Rerberg, and a stern "black cube" of
Lenin Institute in Tverskaya Square (1926) by
Stepan Chernyshyov.
Further expansion occurred in line with
Stalin's 1935 master plan. During that period, all the churches and most other historic buildings were torn down in order to widen the street and replace low-rise buildings with larger, early stalinist apartment blocks and government offices.
Arkady Mordvinov, who handled this ambitious project, retained some historical buildings, like the ornately decorated Savvinskoye Podvorye by
Ivan Kuznetsov. This building was moved to a new foundation north
from the new street line, and is now completely enclosed inside Mordvinov's stalinist block at 6, Tverskaya Street.
- published: 19 Nov 2009
- views: 8916