The fantastic house of the merchant Ryabushinsky: the mansion in which the writer Gorky was almost forcibly settled

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

This house on Malaya Nikitskaya Street in Moscow is very original on the outside, but even more extravagant on the inside. I can't even believe that it was created a hundred years ago. It is even more curious that in such a strange building once lived the writer Maxim Gorky, who loved simplicity in everything and certainly did not differ in his love of modernist experiments. However, the writer did not choose such a house for himself: one fine day he was simply presented with a fact.

Palace with a secret prayer room

Initially, the house belonged to the young merchant Stepan Ryabushinsky - an icon collector, industrialist, founder of the ZIL plant. The young man, like his brothers, was distinguished by foresight and progressive views in everything - both in commercial matters and in artistic preferences. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that he decided to order a building in exactly this style (European Art Nouveau) to the then fashionable architect Fyodor Shekhtel, who built more than one Moscow building at the beginning of the last century - from theaters to mansions.

A brick facade cladding wrapped around a mosaic frieze, a massive front door, wavy (as if from a fairy tale) windows with lattice trees, fantastic patterns in arched openings - all this was invented by a Moscow architect. And the artist Mikhail Vrubel took part in the creation of the interior design together with Shekhtel.

If you enter this quaint house, you can see a wondrous undulating staircase, the style of which, they say, Shechtel took over from the great Spanish architect Gaudí. His work was also influenced by the Frenchman François-Xavier Schölkopf, who believed that it was impossible to convey the beauty of buildings with straight lines, because they do not exist in nature.

Stained glass windows, decorative lights and marine life (like the jellyfish lamp) and incredible window moldings are eye-catching and delightful. It is interesting that with all this pretentiousness and variegation, neither the external appearance nor the internal design of the house evoke a feeling of bad taste, but, on the contrary, seem to be very harmonious and refined.

Ryabushinsky really wanted his house to be hidden from prying eyes and so that anyone who is in it would have a feeling of solitude. Then Shekhtel came up with an interesting way out: to hide part of the building with a garden.

In 1903, the merchant moved into his new mansion. In one of the premises, he opened a restoration workshop, where artists, under his supervision, restored ancient icons. And in the far part of Ryabushinsky's house there was a secret room, in which there was an Old Believer prayer house with an iconostasis, because he, like many Moscow merchants, adhered to this old faith, and it was considered forbidden in the country until 1905.

The new owner did not understand the design

After the revolution, the owner of the house hastily emigrated with his family to Italy. The Soviet authorities nationalized the mansion, and it began to move from one organization to another. Over the years, an orphanage, a publishing house, the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs and other assorted offices were located here. Over the years, part of the unique interior of the house has been irretrievably lost. And in 1935, the building was handed over to Maxim Gorky, who had just returned to the USSR - by the way, just from Italy. Here, on Malaya Nikitskaya, the writer lived his last years.

Gorky himself felt a little out of place in this house, because his tastes and lifestyle were contrary to the pompous style of the pre-revolutionary merchant's mansion. The writer liked everything to be simple, without excessive pretentiousness and embellishments incomprehensible to him. He said more than once that everything seems to be beautiful in this house - yes, there is nothing to smile about. But he couldn't refuse such a gift from the authorities. Therefore, Gorky resigned himself and simply arranged everything in the house for himself.

He filled the rooms with massive bookcases, put an ordinary bed in the bedroom, and ordered his "writer's" furniture to be moved to the office so that the room would resemble those in which he had worked before when he lived in a foreign land. And the new owner also put a huge table in the house. Gorky's colleagues, Soviet writers and poets, often gathered behind him, so that the building on Malaya Nikitskaya eventually became something of a literary society. Stalin also came here to visit the "proletarian writer."

I am not the master of the house

When one of his acquaintances mentioned under Gorky that this house was his (for example, he called the writer the owner), he was offended and annoyed: “What kind of boss am I? I have never had any private houses! And this building was given to me by the state”.

Gorky generally did not like it when his persona was exalted. For example, it is known that even the news that Nizhny Novgorod was renamed in his honor did not please the writer. When, even before the renaming, Stalin told him about this idea, which he wants to coincide with his anniversary, the writer made it clear that he was against it. The leader strictly noted that this was the will of the Soviet government, and, most importantly, of the people, and he would have to reckon with it. It was senseless and even dangerous to object to Stalin, and Gorky decided simply not to react to this fact. In everyday speech, he continued to say "Nizhny Novgorod". And to the official congratulations on the anniversary received from the residents of Gorky, he replied with a short letter in which he thanked them for their congratulations, but did not even mention the renaming. Gorky was also dissatisfied with the fact that Tverskaya Street received his name in Moscow.

The writer spent the morning hours and almost the entire afternoon at work in his office on the first floor. He almost never went upstairs, because it was physically difficult for him to climb the steep undulating stairs. The family of his son lived in the upper rooms.

Now the Ryabushinsky mansion houses the writer's museum. Here you can see his books, a collection of oriental figurines, a favorite chair, and a tea set.

Officially, this unique building is called the "House-Museum of Maxim Gorky", but lovers of the architecture of old Moscow still often call it "Ryabushinsky's Mansion" - it sounds more organic.

Maxim Gorky was a man with a difficult character. His categoricalness in some issues was so great that it even became the reason quarrels with an old friend, Fyodor Chaliapin.