Revenge of the architect-saboteur or unfinished sickle: How the Sausage House appeared in St. Petersburg

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

For a long time, this five-story building, located on Babushkina Street, was considered the longest in St. Petersburg. Still, because it stretches in length for 300 meters, and because the building is built in the form of an arc, it was nicknamed "House-Sausage". And many who have seen this "miracle of architecture" ask themselves: why was it built and is it comfortable to live in?

Innovation or simple economy?

In fact, such a strange shape and length of the house was not at all the embodiment of the progressive architectural thought of the employees of the Stroykom bureau. Such a long, curved house was built in order to save money. At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, when it was being created, a course was taken in the USSR for cheap, economical housing like communes, and a huge number of young Soviet families could be settled in such a house. Since the building was designed as a multi-sectional one (as if “glued” from several residential buildings), the absence of “extra” ends meant lower heating costs, because, as you know, it is always colder in corner apartments. And the curvature of the building, according to the calculations of the authors of the project, should have saved a little area.

Professional architects see in the architecture of this building the style of Grigory Simonov, which he adopted from his German colleagues: open brick combined with plaster, continuous glazing of staircases, etc. Simonov really led this project and was one of those who signed it.

Legends about the origin of the house

In Soviet times, there was a legend among the residents of this house that this building was originally conceived as a part of the architectural composition "Hammer and Sickle", in other words, this house had to be crossed by an equally long "brother" - in the form of a hammer. Like, from a height it would look very impressive. However, for some reason, the project was not completed, and left the "sickle" alone. Now it is difficult to know whether this is true or not, but almost immediately after the construction of the curved building, a completely different nickname was fixed - "sausage".

There was also a more pessimistic, not at all romantic version about the origin of this building among the residents: according to rumors, the house was designed by a certain architect-saboteur - in order to make the life of Soviet people extremely uncomfortable, and when his insidious plan was revealed, he was sent to places not so distant. And to be honest, it was really not very convenient to live in it.

Is it easy to live in "sausage"?

At first, almost all apartments in the house were communal (three-room), and they were populated at the rate of 4.5 square meters per person. Interestingly, the design did not include bathrooms and no hot water. To wash "quickly", the tenant had to ask the neighbors for some time not to go into the kitchen and perform water procedures over the sink, drawing water under the tap and heating it on the stove. Many residents of the high-rise building went to bathe in the nearest city baths, which were located a few stops from the house.

In total, the building has 25 front (entrances). Simple Leningraders lived here. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, the people were friendly. During the war, like everyone else, they survived the blockade, helping each other.

In the second half of the last century, apartments gradually began to "modernize". Communal apartments were settled, many tenants made redevelopment in their apartments - for example, equipping a bathroom in the kitchen (fortunately, the area in the apartments was large).

Now representatives of completely different social strata live in this house - both wealthy people, and not so, and the intelligentsia, and ordinary workers. Although the building does not have the status of an architectural monument, it is considered a symbol of the Soviet era, and its creator, Grigory Simonov, is an architect ahead of his time, since such curved or long buildings began to appear in our country much later - 20-30 years later.

In those years, no one could have thought that a few decades later in Moscow there will be round houses.