The Rossiya Hotel in Moscow has remained in the memory of people as a landmark building, which for many was one of the symbols of the Soviet era. The time of its construction coincided with the transition from the pomposity of the imperial architecture of the Stalin era to the minimalism characteristic of the thaw period. The construction of the park on the site of the Rossiya Hotel seemed to have erased all reminders of the huge building that stood here. However, this is not quite true. From the world's largest hotel complex of its time, a small part of it remained in the form of the concert hall of the same name.
Description
The Rossiya Hotel consisted of four buildings adjoining each other. Together they formed a rectangle with sides of two and a half and one and a half hundred meters. Thus, a closed space was formed between the buildings, which servedyard.
The exact address of the Rossiya Hotel is st. Varvarka, 6 - one could not know, since the Kremlin was a good guide for finding it. However, this location was not entirely successful in terms of architectural construction. The relief of the earth's surface in this place is extremely uneven. Therefore, several hotel buildings were erected on a special stepped plinth.
The appearance of the building was distinguished by window openings located at the same distance from each other, which gave the appearance of the building a great rhythm. The window trim was metal. The basement of the three buildings is finished with chocolate-colored granite. On the northern side of the building there was a tower of twenty-three floors, and the southern side was pierced by a long gallery for walking.
The total number of rooms for all four buildings was six thousand. Visitors were transported to the floors by about one hundred elevator cabins. The total length of the hotel corridors exceeded eight kilometers. The hotel rooms were lit with about one hundred thousand electric lamps.
Gulliver and the Lilliputians
The Rossiya Hotel complex in Moscow included a hall for concerts and a cinema on the floor above. The concert hall could simultaneously accommodate up to two and a half thousand spectators, and the cinema hall was designed for one and a half thousand visitors. Art historians define the architectural solution in which "Russia" was built as an international style. modern giant,undoubtedly had a certain historical and cultural value. But, due to an unsuccessfully chosen place for the construction, the complex caused a negative reaction from a certain part of the population of the capital. Erected in the very heart of Moscow, the hotel, with its gigantic appearance, suppressed the impression of the monuments of ancient architecture preserved around it. A number of temples and buildings of the sixteenth-nineteenth centuries of construction looked losing against the backdrop of a huge monolith. The gigantic building, bursting into the architectural ensemble of the historical center of Moscow, due to its size diverted the attention of an outside observer from architectural monuments, which by right should be the architectural dominant of the city center.
Zaryadye and Stalin's unrealized plan
Before the construction of the Rossiya Hotel in Moscow, this place was a residential area called Zaryadye. During the reign of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, it was decided to demolish the old district. But initially, not the Rossiya Hotel in Zaryadye was supposed to occupy most of the demolished quarter, but an even more massive building, another skyscraper designed in the imperial style of Stalinist skyscrapers. This building would be the eighth building of this magnitude erected in Stalin's time. According to the architectural design, the building was supposed to have thirty-two floors. But in connection with the death of the leader, construction work was stopped. By that time, a metal frame for the construction of a monolithic building had been erected at the future site of the Rossiya Hotel in Moscow. Under the plinth of this structure were three undergroundfloors. The uppermost of them was intended for utility rooms, and the two lower ones were a military bunker that could serve as a bomb shelter in the event of an air attack on the capital.
New architectural approach
Under Khrushchev, Stalin's imperial architectural predilections turned out to be irrelevant. Two years after the death of the leader of the peoples, a decision was made to liquidate the structure left over from the unfinished construction. The metal frame was transported to the Luzhniki Stadium, which was under construction at that time, and used as a building material. It was decided to use the foundation for the construction of a new building on this site. The architect Chechulin, who was involved in the implementation of the Stalinist idea, experienced the closure of his project extremely hard.
For a long ten years, this wasteland in the very center of the Russian capital stood undeveloped. Only in 1952 it was decided to erect an ensemble of several buildings on this site. In the same year, the idea of creating a new high-rise hotel appeared, the chief architect of which was Chechulin, whose dream of building a multi-storey modern building in the center of the capital has finally come true.
The biggest hotel in the world
The opening of the Rossiya Hotel, which at that time was the largest in the world, took place five years after the start of work on its construction.
In the seventies of the twentieth century, the hotel complex was included in the Guinness Book of Records. The experts claimthat the former Rossiya Hotel currently occupies the nineteenth line in the list of the largest hotels of all time, which includes both the buildings that exist today and the buildings that once existed. They also say that the chief architect almost got another nervous breakdown when Khrushchev suggested that he make a thirteen-story building instead of the planned ten-story building. As a result, they agreed on twelve floors.
Fire
In the late seventies, a severe fire broke out in the hotel. On this day, in the northern building of the Rossiya Hotel in Moscow, a fire occurred simultaneously on three floors. The visitors of the restaurants on the upper floors of the tower were blocked by fire. A telephone call with a message about a fire came to the nearest fire station at ten o'clock in the evening. The specialists were already ready to go to the scene, because, a few minutes before the call, an alarm went off, which was equipped with all hotel rooms. When the fire brigade arrived at the scene of the emergency, it turned out that the ladders available to the rescue team were designed only for the height of a seven-story building.
The way out of this situation was found thanks to the experience and courage of the team's fighters, who offered to fasten all the available ladders with hooks to each other. Thus, it became possible to rescue people who were on the upper floors of the building from the fire. Experts assessed this fire as an emergency of the highest degree of danger. Atits extinguishing involved the employees of fire departments not only in Moscow, but also in regional departments. In total, more than one thousand five hundred firefighters took part in extinguishing the fire and rescuing the hotel guests.
Consequences of the emergency and its causes
During the fire at the Rossiya Hotel, about fifty people died. Approximately the same number received burns of varying severity and various injuries. In total, about one thousand hotel guests were evacuated. The fire at the Rossiya Hotel damaged more than a hundred rooms equipped with the most modern imported appliances at that time.
According to the official version, the fire was caused by a forgotten soldering iron in the radio room of the hotel. Employees of the radio service, suspected of violating fire safety rules, were soon arrested. There were two people in the dock. One of whom was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, and the other received a term of one and a half years.
An interesting fact is that even before the end of the trial, workers were admitted to the territory of the hotel, who began to repair the building.
Assessing the scale of the disaster
This fire is recognized as one of the largest in the entire twentieth century. And not only on the territory of the Soviet Union, but also on a global scale. After this event, in all similar establishments in our country, they began to carefully monitor the observance of fire safety by both employees and guests. Electric heaters are in the area of special attention.household and professional.
In addition to the official version of events, there are also several unofficial ones. The most common of which is the version of the deliberate arson of one of the hotel buildings.
The state media did not mention the event for a long time. Only a few days later the incident was announced. On behalf of the government, condolences were expressed to the families of the victims and a promise was made to look into the tragedy and find the culprits.
The tragic events at the Rossiya Hotel formed the basis of the plots of several literary works, and a TV documentary was made about the fire.
The last years of the hotel's existence
At the beginning of the new millennium, the Moscow government raised the issue of demolishing the hotel complex with the subsequent construction of a modern hotel on this territory with an underground garage for several thousand cars.
At the same time, it was decided to reduce the number of floors to six, and the building itself had to match the style of the surrounding architectural ensemble. Accordingly, the number of hotel rooms decreased several times.
In 2004, a competition was held among companies offering their services for the restoration of the hotel. But the winner of the right to carry out repair work failed to reach an agreement on certain issues with the Moscow government. As a result, the reconstruction was canceled, and the hotel itself was closed for visitors after some time due to the emergency condition of the buildings.
Dismantlingcomplex
In 2006, a decision was made to eliminate the complex, and in the same year the Rossiya Hotel was dismantled. Buildings were destroyed in this way. Due to the close proximity of the Kremlin, it is forbidden to blow up buildings in this area. Therefore, the hotel was dismantled into its component panel blocks using tower cranes. Cranes mounted on special plinths lowered building blocks, which were then loaded onto barges and taken out of the city along the Moscow River. In some cases, the blocks could not be lifted even with cranes designed to lift multi-ton loads. In such situations, the blocks were cut in half.
The dismantling of the Rossiya Hotel lasted three long years. Its end coincided with the beginning of the global financial crisis in the late 1990s. Therefore, the question of building a new hotel complex has disappeared by itself.
What is the site of the Rossiya Hotel in Moscow now?
This question worries many citizens of Russia, because almost every country has visited the capital and Red Square at least once in his life, and, undoubtedly, his eye was attracted by a huge modern building, surrounded by smaller creations of architects of bygone centuries.
In 2012, during a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, it was decided not to start large construction projects in the center of Moscow due to the heavy congestion of transport routes, because such projects are undoubtedly another factor complicating motiontransport. Therefore, on the site of the wasteland formed from the demolition of the hotel, it was decided to equip a park or an entertainment complex.
The new park, built on the site of the Rossiya Hotel, was named after the residential area that once was here - Zaryadye.
Of all the buildings of the hotel building, only the building of the Rossiya Concert Hall remains today. It was saved from demolition by the fact that the premises of this hall have unique acoustics, ideal for live concert performances. An interesting fact is that the hall in the hotel opened only in the early seventies. Now it is surrounded by a park built on the site of the Rossiya Hotel.
And she herself entered the history of our country forever as an example of the architecture of the Khrushchev era and the most prestigious hotel in the capital. This complex and its beautiful rooms have repeatedly appeared in Soviet and Russian films. It is in the room of the hotel "Russia" that the main characters of the film "Mimino" meet. And it was getting a room in this hotel that was the basis for the further development of the plot.
