The phrase "metro Shabolovskoye" is quite common in advertisements and in various commercial advertisements for the sale and rental of real estate in one of the districts of Moscow close to the city center. Many are already so used to it that they don’t even think about the fact that such a toponym as "Shabolovskoe Metro" is simply not on the city map. Try to find it on the Moscow metro map. There is no such station on the orange Kaluga-Riga line. And if it does exist, it’s called a little differently.
Shabolovskaya metro station
And the fate and appearance of this well-known station is quite unusual. This section of the Kaluga-Riga line of the Moscow Metro named after Lenin was built in the early sixties of the last century. But it was designed much earlier, and the station on the section between Oktyabrskaya Radial and Leninsky Prospekt was planned.
But during the construction of this section of the line from the construction of the station, it was decided to abandon. That is, the station itself was built in 1962, but it was decided not to put it into operation. There were great technical difficulties in laying inclined escalator tunnels in difficult geological conditions. Yes, and passenger traffic in this section was expected to be very small. As a result, the station stood in the form of an empty underground volume for about twenty years, trains rushed through it without stopping. This is how it turned out to be the Shabolovskoye metro, which seems to be there, but at the same time it does not exist.
And the station was included into the number of existing ones only in the fall of 1980, when technical problems were overcome and a decision was made to put it into operation. This is precisely the reason for the fact that the appearance of the station is noticeably different from the neighboring ones, which were built two decades earlier. In a constructive sense, this is a three-vaulted deep-laid pylon station. The predominant finishing material is gray granite, the track walls are decorated with corrugated aluminum. The conceptual design of the station is associated with television and radio broadcasting, and many design elements have something in common with the Shukhov Tower located above. This famous tower has not only external expressiveness, it was a symbol of the era of architectural constructivism.
Shabolovskaya metro station, Moscow
When leaving the metro, we find ourselves in one of the oldest districts of Moscow, near the Garden Ring. This place has its own unique history and geography. Once there was a historical district of the Kaluga outpost, and it is associated with many events of both Moscow and Russian history. Today, when leaving the metro, we find ourselves on the old Moscow streets - Shabolovka and Academician Petrovsky. Once, the first Soviet television center was located on Shabolovka, and the Shukhov openwork tower served as its broadcast device. This fact is reflected in the thematic stained-glass window decorating the interior of the metro station today. This place in Moscow is very prestigious. Many realtors can testify that there are more people who want to move closer to the Shabolovskoye metro than to leave this area.