Tag Archives: architecture

The Old Wooden House

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At this point, I have been up and down Old Arbat Street several times. As I am walking, I seek out one spot, and my eyes linger on it as I walk past. This spot is actually a house – an old wooden house that seems incredibly out of place in the center of Moscow.

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The spot.


Through a little research I found out that the house is called Dom Porokhovshchikova, after A.A. Porokhovshchikov, who built the old-Russian-style home. He was a well-known builder, publisher, and philanthropist who worked in Moscow during the 1870s, and took part in the construction of the original Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
While it is a beautiful piece of architecture, it is also a sad place. Up until a couple of years ago, A.A. Porokhovshchikov’s grandson, the actor and director Aleksandr Poroshchnikov, lived in the house on a long-term lease from the city of Moscow (the house’s owner). His health began to deteriorate rapidly in spring of 2012, and while he was in the hospital his wife Irina, who was 23 years his junior, hanged herself in the house. He died about a month later from his illness, not knowing what had happened.
This strangely fascinating building now houses a restaurant, a billiard hall, and private apartments.
 
 

Ryabushinsky Mansion / Gorky House

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One of the cool things about being in a big, old city like Moscow is the way in which neighborhoods are often layered with remnants of different historical eras. At one street intersection you can find the church in which Pushkin married Natalia Goncharova in 1831 (Greater Church of the Ascension) and the Ryabushinsky Mansion, built in 1900 for an influential merchant family and writer Maxim Gorky’s residence from 1931 to his death in 1936. Today the mansion functions as a Gorky museum, but visitors can still see the hidden chapel that was used by the Ryabushinsky family to practice Old Believer Christianity in private.
The Ryabushinsky Mansion is a striking example of style moderne or art nouveau architecture.

the walls that surround the house

the walls that surround the house


Style Moderne favors curving lines and water motifs, as well as images of flowers. This is evident in the exterior of the house, with the curved, wave-like grates of the fence and the floral mosaics that adorn the walls.
Ryabushinsky mosaic
I found the outside of the building to be beautiful, and not that out-of-the-ordinary. And then I went inside, and saw a curving, intricately carved limestone staircase topped with a jelly-fish-like lamp.

This particular room makes you feel like you could be underwater. The rest of the house is similar – with watery stained-glass and unusual details (from above you realize that the lamp is actually a turtle). When I later found out that Ryabushinsky backed modern artist Wassily Kandinsky, I was not surprised.
Caroline Brooke, Moscow: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)