How capitals were rebuilt: the osmosis of Paris, the Stalinist reconstruction of Moscow, etc

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

Old Paris, some believed, was destroyed under Napoleon III. And the end of the thirties of the last century was a period of retreat into the past of the old, "tsarist" Moscow. It was not possible to "freeze", to preserve the large capitals in their original form, and the cities had to be changed - sometimes almost beyond recognition, sometimes - not so radically. Ottomanization or Brusselsization - what did the European capitals benefit from, and which path did Moscow take?

How Baron Haussmann turned Paris into a comfortable European capital

You can get a rough - very approximate - idea of old, medieval Paris in the Marais quarter - this part of the city has hardly experienced any reconstruction of the last quarter of the 19th century. Tall buildings, narrow winding streets - their width in the French capital was once from one to five meters. Let's add the heaps of buildings, constantly thrown into the rivers and on the pavement sewage, a great overcrowding, because with the beginning of the industrial revolution, the city's population was constantly growing, and up to twenty people could live in a small room. Before the reconstruction of Paris, epidemics practically did not subside in the capital, and of the seven babies born, four died within a year.

They began to think about reconstruction already during the French Revolution, and Napoleon Bonaparte even began to implement his plan, which he did not have time to fully implement. It was under him that the wide Rue de Rivoli appeared, while still along the Tuileries Gardens (later it will be extended to Châtelet). The main goal was to "make the air circulate", to ensure access of light and sun to the Parisian pavements. It was also necessary to solve the problem with transport, because on the narrow medieval streets it was difficult or even impossible for two carriages to leave, and the number of carriages and carriages was constantly increasing with the growth of the population.

The authorities also faced another unpleasant consequence of such an organization of urban spaces: in the event of popular unrest, and they were not at all rare in the 19th century, blocking narrow streets and erecting barricades turned out to be a very simple matter. From 1830 to 1847, Paris experienced seven armed uprisings. Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who came to power in 1848, in the future - Emperor Napoleon III, took seriously the reconstruction of Paris. Georges-Eugene Haussmann was appointed to the post of prefect of the Seine department, an energetic, purposeful person who knows how to defend his point of view.

The latter quality turned out to be not superfluous - there was plenty of criticism. First of all, for the construction of wide and even very wide streets, as envisaged by Haussmann's project, it was required to seize a huge number of buildings into state ownership, and move Parisians to the outskirts of the city or even outside of it. For this, a corresponding law was issued. The townspeople were also forbidden to build houses outside the street - this was how they prevented the cluttering of Parisian avenues in the future.

The old city, according to the plan of the reformers, was to become a thing of the past - along with houses on dilapidated bridges across the Seine, sewage flows into the river and its tributaries, unsanitary conditions and epidemics. Haussmann planned the construction of spacious, unusually wide avenues, many boulevards, as well as the creation and maintenance of the "lungs" of Paris: in the north, south, west and east of the city appeared, respectively, the parks of Buttes Chaumont, Montsouris, Boulogne and Vincennes.

For seventeen years, about six hundred thousand trees were planted in Paris. The Star Square appeared, now - Charles de Gaulle Square. The Ile de la Cité, the oldest part of Paris, has completely changed its appearance; the dilapidated buildings had been torn down, and straight streets connected to bridges now ran across the island. The districts that had the fame of the dirtiest and most dangerous, like Petit-Polon, were destroyed, and Malserbes Boulevard appeared in this place. The epidemics have come to naught.

Stalinist reconstruction

Moscow was not, of course, a classical medieval European city, but by the beginning of the twentieth century the need for its transformation was already being discussed with might and main by the mayors. The city's layout, which had evolved over the centuries, no longer corresponded to the time; it was necessary to take into account both the rapid development of vehicles and the need for a centralized supply of electricity. Even before the revolution, in 1912, a commission was created at the City Duma, which was engaged in the development of a redevelopment project for Moscow. But then the First World War began, followed by revolutionary upheavals, and they returned to the issue of reconstruction of the city after the establishment of Soviet power.

In 1918, several architectural projects were proposed, including the "City of the Future" by Boris Sakulin, which assumed the unification of the road system of Moscow proper with Greater Moscow, that is, the cities located around. The project of Alexei Shchusev and Ivan Zholtovsky was based on the same idea, which provided for five belts of Moscow; the nearest to the Kremlin is Boulevard, on the site of the White City, and the farthest is the belt of garden cities. An interesting option was proposed by Nikolai Ladovsky: to get away from the traditional ring structure of the city by opening the rings that held back Moscow's growth. Thus, a parabola arose - two diverging axes between which the city would develop, and the city in the plan would be a “comet”, where the historical center remained the core, and the “tail” could grow arbitrarily far up to Leningrad.

The master plan was adopted in 1935. It was supposed to start the construction of the subway, the Moscow Canal (at that time - the Moscow-Volga Canal). Streets and squares of Moscow were expanded - due to the demolition of buildings. First of all, church buildings were destroyed. In the late thirties, the Sukharev Tower was demolished, the Iberian Gate was part of the Kitaygorodskaya wall, and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was blown up. Most of the buildings of the Simonov Convent, founded in the XIV century, the triumphal arch of O. Bove, erected near the Belorussky railway station after the victory over Napoleon, did not survive the reconstruction.

The first hotel to be built in the Soviet capital was "Moscow", house No. 13 on Mokhovaya, as well as the House on the Embankment, intended for party workers, heroes of the civil war and heroes of labor, writers and scientists, appeared. In 1937, the later infamous house No. 77 on Osipenko Street (now Sadovnicheskaya) was turned around and moved. The massive demolition of old buildings and the active construction of new ones was stopped by the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. With its end, work resumed - but significant adjustments were made to the plan.

Orthodox churches were no longer destroyed one by one. On one day - September 7, 1947, eight "Stalinist skyscrapers" were laid at the same time - buildings that were designed to create accents in Moscow, to unite separate architectural ensembles around them. Seven of the skyscrapers were erected, the eighth - the Palace of Soviets - was not built due to "senseless gigantomania." and increased conveniences for that time. Typical elements of such houses were a garbage chute in the kitchen and a winter refrigerator - a cabinet taken out to the street to cool food in the cold season: electric refrigerators were a rarity.

Brusselsization

Both the Ottoman and Stalinist reconstruction were much criticized: through these projects, numerous historical buildings were destroyed, and the city centers seriously changed their appearance. True, there was a worst version of the restructuring of cities, even a special term appeared - Brusselization. Yes, it is the capital of Belgium that has been subjected to unsuccessful modernization experiments over the past century and a half.

It all began according to the Parisian model - in the second half of the 19th century, streets were widened and straightened in Brussels. Later, the king conceived the construction of a number of grandiose structures in the center of the city; individual tasks related to the improvement of transport links in the city were solved. In turn, the war left its mark on the architecture of Brussels - new buildings were urgently erected to resettle the inhabitants, there was no single construction plan.

The absence of any general urban planning policy resulted in a peculiar approach to the organization of urban space in Brussels. The capital was built up chaotically, haphazardly, under the jurisdiction of different communes without general management. Everything was determined by developers who sought to recognize certain quarters of Brussels as emergency and erected new, modern buildings instead of old ones.

But architectural flaws can be interesting in themselves: how 12 historical unfinished projects with mysterious stories.