Park Kultury metro station (Koltsevaya Line) is located in the very center of Moscow. It is difficult to find those who are not familiar among both native Muscovites and people who occasionally visit the capital. This is not surprising, since we are talking about one of the oldest stations in the Moscow Metro, which came into operation along with the Ring Line. But we should not forget that the metro station in Moscow began at the Park Kultury station . It opened back in 1935 as the terminal station of the Sokolnicheskaya line.
Symbol of his time
The name for the station was chosen from several options, such as Krymskaya, Krymsky Bridge and Chudovka. But the determining factor was located on the opposite bank of the Moscow River Park of Culture. The metro is located at a considerable distance from it, but it was believed that the main flow of passengers would be directed to this object. For a long time the station was called "Gorky Park of Culture". Fundamental changes in the metro scheme occurred in 1950, with the commissioning of the Ring Metro Line, one of the stations of which is Park Kultury. The metro received a whole network of interchange nodes located along the entire Garden Ring. And the Park Kultury station became a transfer station, connecting the Koltsevaya and Sokolnicheskaya metro lines. Now there are many complaints about such a scheme, its irrationality, but at that time such a decision was fully justified.
Architecturally, the station is an excellent example of its era and stands in the same stylistic row with other stations of the Ring Line. It was such a spectacular imperial splendor, as conceived by Stalin, that Moscow should have been different. Metro "Park of Culture" gives a very clear idea of such a style. This is a pylon three-vaulted deep station. A combination of two stations of different lines, radial and ring, was very successfully solved. They do not contradict one another, despite the 15 years separating them. The decoration used contrasting varieties of marble and sculpted marble bas-reliefs in the style of
socialist realism on the theme of the rest of workers in the park.
It is interesting to note that both the complete denial of this style and the absurd attempts to imitate him were not successful. In the Moscow metro, especially in its peripheral part, there is a lot of evidence to this. Apparently, the era is impossible to repeat.
On the surface of the earth
Park Kultury metro station has long and organically blended with Moscow reality. Its vestibules will lead us to Krymskaya Square and Zubovsky Boulevard, nearby is the old Ostozhenka Street with the most expensive real estate in the center of Moscow. This place is always crowded, both in the lobby and walkways, and on the surface of the earth. A never-ending flow of passengers goes to different points of the city through the transfer station and to the city center along Ostozhenka. A lot of people move across the Crimean bridge to the historic Culture Park. The metro performs the task for which it was built in the thirties of the last century.