Located in Moscow, the hotel "Russia" 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 pomp of the imperial architecture of the Stalinist era to the minimalism characteristic of the thaw period. The construction of the park on the site of the Rossiya Hotel, it would seem, 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 a concert hall of the same name.
Description
Hotel "Russia" consisted of four buildings adjacent to each other. Together they formed a rectangle with sides two and a half and a half hundred meters. Thus, a closed space was formed between the buildings, which served as a courtyard.
The exact address of the Russia Hotel is ul. Varvarka, 6 - one might not have known, since the Kremlin was a good guideline 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 basement.
The exterior of the building was distinguished by window openings located at the same distance from each other, which gave the exterior of the building greater rhythm. The windows were metal. The basement of the three buildings is finished with chocolate-colored granite. On the north side of the building there was a tower of twenty-three floors, and the south side was pierced by a long gallery for walks.
The total number of rooms for all four buildings was six thousand. Visitors were transported along the floors of about one hundred elevator cabins. The total length of hotel corridors exceeded eight kilometers. The hotel rooms were lit by electric lamps, the number of which was approximately one hundred thousand pieces.
Gulliver and Lilliputians
The complex of the Rossiya Hotel in Moscow included a concert hall and a cinema located one floor above. The concert hall could simultaneously accommodate up to two and a half thousand spectators, and the cinema was designed for one and a half thousand visitors. Art historians define the architectural solution in which "Russia" was built as an international style. The modern giant, no doubt, had a certain historical and cultural value. But, due to the unsuccessfully chosen place for construction, the complex caused a negative reaction in a certain part of the capital's population. Erected in the very heart of Moscow, the hotel suppressed with its gigantic appearance the impression of the monuments of ancient architecture that remained around it. A number of temples and buildings of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries of construction were looking losing against a huge monolith. The giant building, bursting into the architectural ensemble of the historical center of Moscow, due to its size distracted the attention of an outside observer from the architectural monuments, which should rightfully be the architectural dominant of the city center.
Zaryadye and the unrealized plan of Stalin
Before the construction of the Rossiya Hotel in Moscow, a residential area called Zaryadye was located at this place. During the reign of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, the ancient district, it was decided to demolish. But initially, not the Rossiya Hotel in Zaryadye was supposed to occupy a large part of the demolished quarter, but an even more massive building, another skyscraper, designed in the imperial style of Stalin's skyscrapers. This building would become the eighth building of such a magnitude, erected in the Stalin era. According to the architectural concept, 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, at the future location of the Rossiya Hotel in Moscow, they managed to erect a metal frame to build a monolithic building. Under the basement of this building were three underground floors. 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, the imperial architectural preferences of Stalin turned out to be irrelevant. Two years after the death of the leader of the peoples, a resolution was adopted on the liquidation remaining from the unfinished construction of the structure. The metal frame was transported to the Luzhniki Stadium, which was under construction at that time, and was used as a building material. The foundation, it was decided to use when building a new building on this site. The architect Chechulin, who was engaged in the implementation of the Stalinist idea, was extremely difficult to survive the closure of his project.
For ten years this wasteland in the very center of the capital of Russia was undeveloped. Only in 1952 it was decided to erect an ensemble of several buildings at this place. In the same year, the idea of creating a new high-rise hotel appeared, the chief architect of which was appointed Chechulin, whose dream of finally building a multi-story modern building in the center of the capital came true.
The largest hotel in the world
The opening of the Russia Hotel, the then largest in the world, took place five years after the start of construction.
In the seventies of the twentieth century, the hotel complex was awarded the inclusion in the Guinness Book of Records. Experts say that the former Rossiya Hotel is currently ranked nineteenth on the list of the largest hotels of all time, which includes both buildings that exist today and those that once existed. They also say that the chief architect almost got another nervous breakdown when Khrushchev suggested that he build a 13-story building instead of a 10-story building. As a result, they converged 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 Russia Hotel in Moscow, a fire occurred simultaneously on three floors. The visitors to restaurants on the upper floors of the tower were blocked by fire. A telephone call with a fire message arrived at the nearest fire station at ten in the evening. Specialists were already ready to go to the scene of the incident, because, a few minutes before the call, the alarm went off, which all the hotel rooms were equipped with. When the fire department staff arrived at the scene of the emergency, it turned out that the stairs 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 proposed to fasten all the existing stairs with hooks to each other. Thus, it became possible to rescue people on the upper floors of the building from the fire. Specialists rated this fire as an emergency of the highest degree of danger. When extinguishing it, firefighters of not only Moscow, but also regional departments were involved. In total, more than one thousand five hundred firefighters took part in the elimination of the fire and the rescue of hotel guests.
Consequences of an emergency and its causes
During the fire in the hotel "Russia" killed about fifty people. About the same amount of burns of varying severity and various injuries were received. In total, about one thousand hotel guests were evacuated. The fire in the hotel "Russia" damaged over a hundred rooms equipped with the most modern imported equipment at that time.
According to the official version, the fire happened due to a forgotten included soldering iron in the hotel's radio room. Radio service personnel suspected of violating fire safety regulations were soon arrested. Two people were on the dock. One of which 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 allowed into the hotel territory who began to repair the building.
Disaster scale assessment
This fire is recognized as one of the largest in the entire twentieth century. And not only in the Soviet Union, but also on a global scale. After this event, in all similar institutions of our country, they began to carefully monitor the observance of fire safety by both employees and guests. In the area of special attention were electric heating appliances household and professional.
In addition to the official version of the events, there are also several unofficial ones. The most common of which is the version of the intentional arson of one of the hotel buildings.
For a long time, the state media did not mention the event. 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 sort out 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 documentary television film was also shot about the fire.
The last years of the hotel
At the beginning of the new millennium, the Moscow government raised the question of the demolition of a hotel complex with the subsequent construction of a modern hotel in 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 structure itself had to match the style of the surrounding architectural ensemble. Accordingly, the number of hotel rooms was reduced 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 agreement on certain issues with the Moscow government. As a result, the reconstruction was canceled, and after a while the hotel itself was closed to visitors due to the emergency condition of the buildings.
Dismantling the complex
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, undermining of buildings is prohibited in this area. Therefore, the hotel was disassembled into its constituent panel blocks using tower cranes. Cranes mounted on special plinths lowered building blocks, which were then loaded onto barges and transported outside 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 sawn in half.
The dismantling of the Rossiya Hotel lasted a long three years. Its end coincided with the beginning of the global financial crisis of the late nineties. Therefore, the question of building a new hotel complex has disappeared by itself.
What is the place 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, of course, his eyes were 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 traffic arteries, because such projects are undoubtedly another factor hampering traffic. Therefore, on the site of the wasteland formed from the demolition of the hotel, it was decided to equip a park or entertainment complex.
Broken up on the site of the Rossiya Hotel, the new park was named after the residential area that was once located here - Zaryadye.
Of all the buildings of the hotel building now only the building of the concert hall "Russia" remains. He was saved from demolition by the fact that the room of this hall has unique acoustics, ideal for conducting live concert performances. An interesting fact is that the hotel hall opened only in the early seventies. Now it is surrounded by a park built on the site of the Rossiya Hotel.
And she herself forever went down in the history of our country as an example of the architecture of the Khrushchev era and the most prestigious hotel in the capital. This complex and its beautiful numbers have repeatedly appeared in Soviet and Russian films. It is in the hotel room "Russia" that the main characters of the film "Mimino" meet. And just getting a room in this hotel was the basis for the further development of the plot.