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Video: What is the only Stalinist skyscraper in St. Petersburg famous for, and what does Viktor Tsoi have to do with it?
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
"House with a spire" - this is the name of this high-rise building in St. Petersburg, located at the end of Moskovsky Prospekt. And since Soviet times, it has received the nickname "General's House". Why is not difficult to guess. I must say that many interesting facts are known about this famous and mysterious St. Petersburg building - the only Stalinist skyscraper in the city, but the architecture of the unique house is no less remarkable.
Famous spire
This house is classified as a long-term building, because they began to build it even before the war, and finished - in 1953. Judging by modern standards, the height of this house is not so great: "some" nine floors in the center and six - on the sides (parts of the house overlooking Moskovsky Prospekt and Basseinaya Street). However, a giant spire with figures of doves at the base, crowned with a wreath and a star, makes the building visually majestic and tall. The 76-meter spire of this house can be seen from anywhere on the avenue. It is noteworthy that this iconic detail was installed on the building after the war. By the way, the star on the spire also serves as a weather vane.
There is a version that according to the initial project, the building should have been crowned not with a spire, but with a giant figure of a man holding a ship, which is, of course, symbolic for the city of Petra, but later this idea was abandoned.
However, there are still people here: just below the spire, men and women are depicted against the background of anchors. They symbolize the workers of the Admiralty Shipyards who were involved in the construction of this building. The authors of the figures on the building are the architect Lazar Khidekel and the sculptor Igor Krestovsky.
Skyscraper in Moscow style
The building project was created by a whole group of architects. These are Grigory Simonov, Boris Rubanenko, Vladimir Vasilkovsky and Oleg Guryev. It is believed that it was Guryev who designed the belvedere tower with a spire directly.
In terms of its architecture, the building is not quite typical for St. Petersburg - it was designed, as they say, "in the Moscow style." Well, if officially - then in the style of Stalinist neoclassicism. And, indeed, outwardly, it is very reminiscent of the capital's Stalinist skyscrapers. By the way, it was planned to build several Stalinist skyscrapers in the city on the Neva, but only one project was destined to be realized.
The height of the house together with the spire is almost one hundred meters, or to be more precise - 96. In other words, in height it is only a few meters inferior to St. Isaac's Cathedral.
There is evidence that on the site of the current Basseinaya Street, at the intersection of which this house stands with the avenue, it was planned to dig the Southern Bypass Canal, which would be parallel to the existing Obvodny and would connect the Neva and the Gulf of Finland. The famous skyscraper in architectural terms was to become its dominant point.
When the house was finally erected in 1953, the first thing to do was to populate uneasy people in it, as in the Moscow skyscrapers. Among the privileged tenants were generals and officers, which is why the house began to be called "generals". There really was a good layout, high ceilings, and the very location of the residential building - in modern terms, elite.
Viktor Tsoi lived here
As is often the case with similar houses, gradually the contingent of residents in a house with a spire began to change. Already nine years later, people of very modest income and position could be found here. Among these tenants was the family of Viktor Tsoi: father-engineer and mother-teacher. The first years of his life, the future rock idol lived in a house with a spire - in a walk-through room located in the tower part of the building. As a child, he loved to walk in Victory Park, and studied at a nearby school, where his mother worked as a physical education teacher.
Now the house is also home to absolutely different audience - there are also very wealthy people who make redevelopment and design repairs, there are middle-class people who have settled here quite recently (for example, by exchange). There are even old-timers in the house who remember the first generation of tenants, important people of that time and the family of Viktor Tsoi.
Continuing the topics, read about what can surprise the CFT House in St. Petersburg - a kilometer-long museum of Soviet architecture.
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