"House under a glass" and urban legends: what did the architect of the building on Ostozhenka hint at?

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

This unusual old house in Moscow attracts attention at first glance, standing out from the series of buildings on the historic Moscow street Ostozhenka. Mainly because it is crowned with a turret that clearly resembles an inverted glass. What is this building and why does it have such an unusual appearance?

In the pre-revolutionary years, everyone knew him as the profitable house of the merchant Yakov Mikhailovich Filatov. The building consists of two parts. That part of it, which caused so much gossip, was built in 1907-1909 according to the project of the architect V. E. Dubovsky with the participation of N. A. Arkhipova. By the way, this was not the only profitable house of a rich merchant. But it is his building on Ostozhenka that has such a strange look and it is he who was dubbed among the people "The House under a Glass". So why is that? The exact information about the merchant's lifestyle has not survived, so several versions have survived to this day.

Version one

According to this legend, the customer for the construction of the house was none other than the father of the young merchant. They say that his son was addicted to drinking wine and, in order to shame and enlighten his son, Filatov Sr. showed him his new house and promised: "If you stop drinking, I will give it to you." Seeing such a prospect, the son decided to give up his addiction.

Second version

The merchant Yakov Filatov was very successful in business and wealthy. Hence the assumption that a wealthy life became the reason for his free behavior: like many merchants of that time, the young man loved to walk in grand style in drinking establishments, thanks to which he almost went broke. However, he, they say, changed his mind in time, gave up drinking and even increased his fortune, as a sign of which he built this tenement house, crowned with an overturned glass. With this symbolic "glass", according to this hypothesis, the merchant marked his return to a sober and prudent life.

Version three

According to this urban legend, the owner of the house was not the merchant's father, but his mother. They say that the woman was very worried about her son's addiction to alcohol and decided to consult with the priest what to do. He recommended to build this tenement house with cheap apartments for his son. Oddly enough, the advice helped, and the son stopped drinking. The woman ordered to crown the new house with an inverted glass - for the edification of descendants.

Version four

Despite rumors about the drunkenness of the merchant Filatov, the "alcoholic" version has a lot of opponents. They reasonably note that an honorary citizen, a successful merchant of the third guild, Yakov Mikhailovich Filatov, was an Old Believer. Moreover, he was a founding member and trustee of the Moscow Old Believer community of the Rogozhsky cemetery. In this regard, conversations about alcohol dependence of such an ardent adherent of the faith look implausible. How could a person who was so respected by the Old Believers be a drunkard?

According to this hypothesis, the famous architect of apartment buildings V. E. Dubovskoy loved to add something new to each of his brainchildren, and such a characteristic element of the building on Ostozhenka is not an inverted glass at all, but simply the fruit of the artistic imagination of an architect who loved to experiment with forms. Moreover, it was fashionable to do turrets on the corners of buildings at that time in Moscow.

Sea monsters

However, it would be unfair to believe that this building is unique and famous only because of the inverted glass. All of its architecture is very interesting and, by the way, has no analogues in Moscow. The apartment building is somewhat reminiscent of a castle. The courtyard facade has a very unusual plasticity of the volumes and protrusions of the walls, and the main facades fascinate with mysterious stucco decor. Shells, seaweed, fish heads, molluscs and fabulous underwater monsters are guessed in the mysterious figures. By the way, it is precisely because of the abundance of images of marine life on the facade of the building that fifth version: they say, the whole building, according to the architect's plan, is a sea kingdom, and the inverted bowl, symbolically crowning the apartment building, casts down streams of water from above.

Unique architectural monument or ridiculous building?

Contemporary art critics believe that the house on Ostozhenka reflects the brightest trends in Moscow's architecture of the Silver Age.

By the way, not everyone appreciated such a bold decision of the architect in pre-revolutionary Moscow. At the beginning of the last century, the Moscow Weekly newspaper wrote: “Each new year brings Moscow several dozen new, monstrously ridiculous buildings, which crash into city streets with some special, only Moscow alone, boldness. Well, where else can you find something like a new house at the beginning of Ostozhenka!.."

As for the further fate of the apartment building, after the revolution, communal apartments for the townspeople were equipped in it, and at the end of the last century, communal apartments gradually began to be transformed into multi-room apartments of new owners. To this day, the building has retained the status of a residential building.

By the way, at the beginning of the XXI century, the famous "glass" was restored. Alas, after the renovation, it became more modern and somewhat lost its original appearance, so familiar to old-time Muscovites. Now only retro photographs keep her memory.

In the center of Moscow, there are still several houses with quirky decor. For example, a stunningly beautiful building on Chistye Prudy, which is popularly called the "House with Animals".

Text: Anna BELOVA