Modern apartment buildings, Stalinist skyscrapers and high-rise buildings of the 1970s are not just residential buildings, but real city symbols. Under the heading "" The Village talks about the most famous and unusual houses two capitals and their inhabitants. In the new issue, we learned what it's like to live in a high-rise building on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment - one of the main symbols of Moscow.

At different times, its architect Dmitry Chechulin lived in the house, as well as Alexander Tvardovsky, Faina Ranevskaya, Galina Ulanova, in whose honor a museum was opened in the skyscraper. Many could see the building in the films “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears”, “Brother-2”, “Dandies” and in the TV series “Brigada”. In 2014, the skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya was actively written about, when the flag of Ukraine was on its spire, and yellow star half painted blue. In 2016, they began to talk about the skyscraper in connection with another scandal: the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the first deputy chairman of the government, Igor Shuvalov, owns ten apartments here with a total area of ​​more than 700 square meters.

Skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya

Address: Kotelnicheskaya embankment, 1/15

Architects: Dmitry Chechulin, Andrey Rostovsky

Building: 1937–1952

Height: 176 meters 32 floors

Housing: 700 apartments

After the victory in the Great Patriotic War in Moscow, the reconstruction program continued, which was supposed to make the city an exemplary capital of the world's largest power. The skyscrapers personified its greatness. And their number (eight) probably personified the first digit of the age of the city - the decision to build eight high-rise buildings was made in the year of the 800th anniversary of Moscow.

The construction of Stalin's skyscrapers is a unique experiment: firstly, the buildings themselves are unique, and secondly, they created specific living conditions. Skyscrapers are the first Soviet skyscrapers in the modern sense of the word, that is, high-rise buildings on a frame. At that time, buildings were actively built in this way in America, but our engineers managed to bring a number of innovations. For example, self-elevating cranes were invented, which greatly accelerated the frame assembly process. Or for the first time in the world they used welding in high-rise construction. Special foundations were also developed, which made it possible to place buildings on weak Moscow soils. I'm not talking about such unique operations as soil freezing. For example, the high-rise on the Red Gate was built at a certain angle, so that after the ground defrosted under the left wing of the building, it would take a strictly vertical position.

Secondly, for residential buildings like the skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment, it is especially important that the houses have received the most modern filling. They were the first in Moscow to have central heating and hot water supply from the city heating network, and not from the boiler house in the basement of the house. The houses had running water, sewerage (in those days, not many Moscow houses could boast of this), air conditioning, and even such an outlandish thing as central dust removal - a special socket in the wall to which you need to connect a hose and vacuum the apartment with it.

The decoration of public spaces in each Stalinist skyscraper is unique, since all buildings were developed by different teams of architects. In the central foyer of the high-rise on Kotelnicheskaya, mosaics on the ceiling and marble lining have been preserved. However, the original decoration of the apartments is not. Even in Ulanova's apartment, which has been mothballed as a museum, the decoration dates back to the 80s.

In the architectural sense, the skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya, in my opinion, is one of the most elegant and subtle. Its author was the chief architect of Moscow at that time, Dmitry Chechulin, who oversaw the construction program for eight high-rise buildings. The skyscraper seems to refer us to the Moscow architecture of the late 17th century, tower-like temples like the Intercession in Fili. However, the elegance of proportions often comes at the expense of living comfort. The small size of the floors in the upper parts of the building made many apartments small and inconvenient in layout.

From an urban planning point of view, the skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya is controversial. On the one hand, it creates a powerful high-altitude accent on the embankment and forms an arrow between the Yauza and the Moscow River. On the other hand, another excellent view of the city is hidden behind the skyscraper: Tagansky Hill, or Shvyvaya Gorka. With the advent of the skyscraper, it turned out to be completely excluded from the Moscow panoramas.

Nevertheless, it must be admitted: the skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya has firmly become a postcard view. Now it is difficult to imagine our city without her. It is as significant as the Kremlin or the main building of Moscow State University.

Pavel Gnilorybov

historian, Moscow expert, head of the Mospeshkom project

The skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya embankment has an interesting location - the city was often photographed from here in the 19th century, here behind the Yauza one of the best panoramic views of Moscow opened up. At that time, Kotelnicheskaya embankment, as well as the part of Balchug Island looking at it, was built up with pompous houses in the Stalinist Empire style. For example, 14-story buildings were erected on the neighboring Goncharnaya Street.

Architect Dmitry Chechulin built a skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya as a continuation of a nine-story residential building he had designed before the war. It is noteworthy that for the construction of Stalin, several lanes of old Moscow had to be destroyed.

The idea of ​​social complexes, where residents do not have to walk a kilometer to the nearest bakery, is typical of the Soviet architectural thought of that period. But if in the communal houses the idea was implemented somewhat straightforwardly, then in the skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya, in fact, modern concept public and commercial functions of the first floor. Not only stores are important, but also the Znamya cinema, which was renamed Illusion in 1966. All this emphasized the high status of the inhabitants of the house.

The history of the high-rise settlement is connected with the thaw. If the houses in the “river” part were given mainly to scientists and state security workers, then the creative intelligentsia was settled in the “land” part: actors, writers, composers. It is difficult to say how many times the building is mentioned in literature and memoirs. And the events of Vasily Aksenov's book "Moscow Kva-Kva" do take place near the skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya.

Oleg Borodin

artist, rents an apartment in the main building of a skyscraper

Three rooms

85 square meters

I rent this apartment with my friend and girlfriend. It's hard to find a three-room apartment with white walls and wooden floors in Moscow, so when we accidentally found out about this option a year ago, we didn't think long. Of course, due to the status of the building, we had to pay a little more for rent than we expected, but it's worth it.

Everyone knows that the capital began because of Shuvalov (I. I. Shuvalov - First Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation. - Approx. ed.). Moreover, residents pay for it - the corresponding line is in the payment form. The quality of repairs is different everywhere. Historical things such as statues, ceilings and stuccoes are being restored well, but the staircase is being renovated rather strangely. There is always something falling off in it. The walls were recently painted, then they started to do the wiring, and, of course, I had to paint everything again. Repairs are very slow: for example, a new elevator is being made for more than a year. The deadlines for the completion of repairs are constantly postponed: latest information, it was supposed to end in December 2016.

Because of the renovation, the whole house is dusty, noisy and rubbish is scattered. Therefore, many residents decided to take advantage of the situation and carry out repairs in their apartments. If you look at the windows of the skyscraper in the evening, it becomes clear that many residents have temporarily moved out. On each floor, at least two apartments are in a state of repair, that is, the house is about half empty.

About the apartment

We moved into an empty white apartment with minimal furniture. I brought only a table and a mattress. Although over time we got a lot of good Soviet furniture that the neighbors throw away. The apartment has three rooms, a balcony, a dining room and two storage rooms, one of which opens onto a fire escape and a welded garbage chute. There is no garbage chute in the entrance: here it is inside the apartments, but most residents welded it up because of the abundance of cockroaches. We did almost no repairs - only repainted the walls and ceiling.

Our dining room has a strange fate. At first I was glad that the apartment had a common place for lunch and meetings. But the room turned out to be not very comfortable, and now we rarely spend time in it. Most often, our guests sit in the dining room. And I prefer to eat in the room or on the balcony, on which we hung a small hammock last summer.

I work as a freelancer and spend a lot of time at home. It is difficult mentally and physically to get out of a high-rise building into the street - you sit as if in a fortress, and you don’t want to go anywhere. Elevators in the house travel quite slowly, and it takes a long time to get to the metro. In the summer, the bike rental, which is located right next to the cinema, saves me.

Of course, there are inconveniences in the apartment, but they are not critical. Since ancient times, large black cockroaches have been found in high-rise apartments. The poet Yevtushenko, who lived here, even has a poem “Cockroaches” dedicated to them. I got them too. They are more than three centimeters, calm and hang out only on the floor. They didn’t bother me, and the previous tenants even liked them, their dog loved to play with cockroaches. However, after we established ventilation in the apartment, they began to appear much less frequently.

In summer, the apartment is constantly drafty. It often happens that when you enter an apartment, the balcony door slams so hard that the glass breaks in it. This happened three times in a year, and once during my breakfast on the balcony - then the glass fell right on me. During the recent hurricane in Moscow, due to strong winds, I simply could not close the window.

Also in the apartment there is a small problem with the soundproofing of the ceilings and floors. In the morning, I can clearly hear how the upstairs neighbor is cleaning and Bach is ringing on his phone. The neighbor below me also said that he heard what I was doing.

About the view from the window and seagulls

From the windows of the apartment you can see the whole of Moscow, but I got used to it in just a couple of months. I don’t have the feeling that I live in an apartment, because usually trees, houses, streets are visible from the window, but here I am, as it were, in an abstract point at a height. From here, the city is perceived differently: everything seems chaotic and standing on top of each other.

There is an eternal traffic jam next to the high-rise, and before moving I was afraid that the sounds of cars would interfere with me. In fact, it turned out that most of the unpleasant sounds and car gases do not reach my floor. I live above the tenth floor and it's much quieter here than outside. I often sleep with the window open and perceive the noise of the city as the sound of the sea. This is also facilitated by seagulls, which periodically fly past my window.

The only problem associated with sound arises in the summer, when tourist steamboats go along the Moskva River. As a rule, they always turn on bad music loudly. The sound is so well reflected from the water that it feels like Kirkorov or Leps is singing in the next room.

About parties, neighbors and the area

From time to time, my neighbors and I arrange parties, dinners, and work shows in the apartment. contemporary art and small electronic-acoustic apartment houses of musician friends. We warn neighbors about such meetings in advance and try to finish everything before 11 pm. The owner of the apartment is not against parties, he loves artists and trusts us. But the concierges are worried if more than 20 people come to us. After one incident, I even had to get acquainted with the district police officer.

There are three buildings in the main building of the skyscraper, each of which has its own entrance and its own concierge, but while repairs are underway, only the main entrance is working and three concierges sit together. They are vigilant and can not let guests in without the presence of the owners, because tourists and people who want to climb to the roof often try to get inside.

I'm in good relations with neighbors on the porch: everyone here is friendly and not averse to chatting in the elevator. High-rise residents have their own community on Facebook, where they discuss renovations, follow posts about the building, and discuss local news. Of course, I met wealthy people among the residents of the house, but still, the high-rise building on Kotelnicheskaya is not an elite housing stock. Mostly elderly people live here, exactly the same as at the River Station or anywhere else in Moscow.

I rarely walk around the area, mostly I spend time either in the apartment, or for work I go to the printing workshop on my own street. I also like the high-rise courtyard, in my youth I often spent time there. In the yard there is an underground garage, on the roof of which there are former tennis courts. This year the courtyard should be restored. Now it is a little shabby, but it is still nice and cozy in it. To some extent, it replaces the park for me.

Recently, after restoration, the Illusion cinema was opened, and it still has an excellent repertoire: classics, films from European festivals, films from film, films with live voice acting and music are often shown. In addition, it is also cheap: on weekdays, tickets cost about 100 rubles.

Ksenia Vechtomova

brand manager of Wonderzine, rents an apartment in a high-rise side building

Two rooms

80 square meters

70 thousand rubles per month

About moving

In my youth, I spent a lot of time on Taganka and always thought that I wanted to live in a Stalinist skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya. Not in any high-rise, but in this one. I remember her from the films of my childhood: “Moscow does not believe in tears” and “Brother-2”. Every time I pass by it, there is a feeling of greatness inside. Last year, I decided to rent an apartment in Moscow, and as soon as I saw an offer in this building, I immediately ran.

Rent costs 70 thousand rubles a month. I rent a room not alone, but together with my young man and his friend, so we did not bargain. True, two months after moving in, I saw an advertisement for renting an apartment in the next entrance for 50 thousand rubles.

My apartment was rented almost unfurnished: only the kitchen was furnished, and in one of the rooms there was a double bed. Initially, I wanted to change a lot in the apartment, but soon realized that it was quite difficult to do this. Firstly, the hostess forbade changing the wallpaper, because they are dear to her, and she says that some kind of golden threads are sewn into them. And secondly, the wall has long been rotten, and if you tear off the wallpaper, it will begin to fall apart. But the apartment has high ceilings, original chandeliers, and an old mirror in an amber frame hangs in the bathroom.

About the apartment

There are only three sockets in the whole apartment, so I have extension cords all over the floor. Moreover, the sockets are located in the most inconvenient places, and in the kitchen there are none at all - a wire from the corridor stretches here. As far as I understand, this is the situation in all high-rise apartments.

If you make repairs in the apartment, then you need to start by replacing the wiring, which has not changed here since the building was built. It is so bad and old that the light bulbs burn out every other day. Of the five light bulbs in the kitchen, only two now work, the rest are broken, and I'm just tired of endlessly buying new ones. The owner of the apartment advises to buy cheap light bulbs and not to bathe. And the fact that at any moment can short-circuit, she does not care.

There is no refrigerator in my apartment, but in the kitchen, since the time of construction, under the windowsill, there has been a small cabinet with several shelves, in which you can open the outer doors, and the products that are in it will be, as it were, on the street. In winter, the locker does a great job: food is cold, and the kitchen is warm. In the summer, of course, you should not store perishable food in it, but I usually eat at work or in a cafe, so the lack of a refrigerator is not a problem for me.

Another feature of the apartment is a kind of audibility: for example, not a single sound will come from the kitchen, and every rustle comes from my room. Also, thanks to the old ventilation, I can clearly hear what is happening in neighboring apartments. Sometimes I wake up at five in the morning from the fact that someone from the neighboring apartment turns on the anthem of the Soviet Union or the Mushrooms group. More often than not, I still hear birds singing and bell ringing. The windows of my room overlook the courtyard, beyond which the monastery is visible, and to the left rises the main building of the skyscraper. I have been living here for almost a year, and the view from the window did not bother me - in many respects because of it I love smoking on the balcony so much.

Many of my friends are asking for a visit - everyone is wondering what it's like to live in a high-rise building. But when they come, they don’t feel delighted - there’s nothing special to watch. Life in my apartment is like life in a museum. Everyone wants to look at you, and you sit inside all crooked.

Something constantly burns out and breaks in the apartment - and two months after the move, I realized that the building was built for beauty, and not for life. Yes, it is located in the center, but it takes a long time to get to the metro from it. And to get around it, you need at least 20 minutes. I think living in a high-rise building on Krasnopresnenskaya is much more convenient: there is also a cinema next to it, there are many shops and restaurants, and most importantly, the metro. My lease will end in the autumn, and I will try to move there.

About neighbors and entrance

All the inhabitants of this house have a common feature, a kind of Soviet sense of intelligence. It seems to be transferred with settlement or registration. For example, when you rent an apartment in an ordinary house, you are most often asked where you work and how much you earn, but here the hostess first of all found out from me what school I went to. She wanted me to graduate. good school in the center of Moscow.

Last year, in another building of the house, Igor Shuvalov bought eight apartments - that is, the entire floor. After that, major repairs began throughout the house. Moreover, the repair was most likely done at the expense of the state, because the residents definitely did not finance it.

In my entrance, mostly local residents over 40 live, there are very few young people, and those who rent an apartment, too. Most of the neighbors are nice and friendly. When Pyaterochka was opened in our house, local residents came to the event and actively engaged in unhurried small talk. Periodically, between the seventh and eighth floors, meetings of the residents of the entrance are held. I have never been there and I don’t know what they are discussing, but I know that it was important for many residents that, as part of the renovation, identical entrance doors and handles were installed in all apartments. Therefore, now I have the same pen as in Pyaterochka and like Shuvalov.

At the same time, quite vigilant people live here. My roommate is Ossetian, and when we were moving, an unpleasant story happened in the entrance. He was climbing the stairs with bags, some granny started yelling at him, threatening to call the police, accused him of organizing a brothel and asked to see the registration. I remember he called me and in a trembling voice asked for help.

The contingent of people who live in the main building and those who live here is different. Wealthy people live there, who can afford to buy an apartment in such a house, while we have successive Muscovites. The difference is visible even in the cars parked in the yard. Near the entrances of the main building there are new high-class cars, and at the entrances of other buildings there are simpler cars, for example, like our hostess: a gold-colored Volvo of the year 2000.

The order in the entrance is watched by three guards who work in turn. They spend the night in a spacious utility room, which even has a bathroom. In fact, they are more than guards, a sort of guard-dispatchers. They know all the residents by name and in person, and the guests are asked in detail who they are going to and why. You can come to them for any question. For example, they turned off the water - the guard already knows what's the matter and when it will be given. Or if you fix something on the little things, you can not call the master, but ask the guard. My favorite security guard's name is Andrew. He is tall, handsome, sits with a straight back and wears a suit.

About the area

It takes a long time to walk from the skyscraper to the entrance to the Taganskaya metro station, so I use a taxi. But there are constant traffic jams in the area due to the construction of the Zaryadye park. Whichever way you go, there are cars everywhere. Between my place of work and home - eight kilometers, and usually takes an hour, so I start working right in the car. The maximum time I spent on the road was an hour and a half. Sometimes I go to the Lenin Library and from there I take a taxi for a hundred rubles - it's faster and cheaper.

In warm weather, I like to walk along the embankment or along the wonderful bridge to Novokuznetskaya or to Kitay-Gorod. The Powerhouse is a five-minute walk away, but there isn't much else to go. The nearest cafes and restaurants are located near Taganskaya, and there are not very many of them. On Kitai-gorod the situation is much better, but it still needs to be reached.

The situation with stores is even worse. It seems like you live in the city center, but there is no infrastructure nearby. In winter, a funny Pyaterochka store was opened in the building of the house. Its ceilings and walls are covered with marble, and advertisements for potatoes for 40 rubles are hung inside. But such a surreal aesthetic does not bother me.

The nearest round-the-clock pharmacy is located near the Proletarskaya metro station. If it gets bad at night, there is nowhere to go. Sberbank in a high-rise building is open from 10 am to 5 pm, which is inconvenient. Although older residents probably live comfortably here: everything is at hand and works during the day.

Stalin skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya embankment- one of the monuments of Soviet architecture of the Stalin era. The authors of the project of this monumental building, made in the Stalinist Empire style, are famous architects Dmitry Chechulin and Andrey Rostkovsky.

The building, which closes the prospect from the Kremlin to the mouth of the Yauza River, was built in two stages. The first stage of construction lasted from 1938 to 1940, the second - from 1948 to 1952. The height of the central part of the building has 26 floors and is about 176 meters. In total, there are 700 residential apartments in the high-rise, there are several shops, a post office and the Illusion cinema. This huge architectural complex consists of four buildings.

The first stage in the construction of the famous skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya embankment was the construction of building A. This is a nine-story building, the facade of which overlooks the Moscow River. Since it was designed back in the thirties, it provided for wood-burning heating: there were chimneys in the kitchens, and wood-burning stoves in the rooms. However, this type of heating was not involved - over time, a gas supply was connected to the building.

In building A, in its lower part, there is the very first private car parking in Moscow. It was from him that the construction began, in which, by the way, a large number of political prisoners and captured German soldiers participated. Parking, in addition to its main purpose, also performs the function of a retaining wall. So the designers secured the building located on the hill from possible landslides.

The second stage in the construction of the skyscraper was the construction of building B - the most majestic and highest part architectural complex. In total, there are 33 floors in the building (together with utility and utility rooms). It should be noted that this part of the building is really striking in its splendor and scope. At central entrance beautiful lanterns and benches for rest were installed, and in the design of the lobby, the grisaille architectural technique, characteristic of the Baroque era, was used. Porcelain bas-reliefs, giant crystal chandeliers, chic bronze candlesticks, massive front doors - all this symbolizes greatness, power, strength and beauty.

Another body included in architectural ensemble, is called building B. The facade of this part of the building overlooks the Yauza River. There is a post office and a telegraph office. One of the halls of the building has the shape of a stone flower. In its center there is a gigantic mailbox, which depicts the coat of arms of the country of the Soviets.

The building also houses the Illusion Cinema. Once upon a time, giant queues lined up at the ticket office; nowadays, the cinema is also popular among fans of old films. Being state organization, the cinema offers tickets for sessions at very affordable prices.

"And when fear subsides, for a second, a short moment,
I will fly on wings over the boulevard and high-rise,
And, flying over the Yauza, whistling loudly with all his might,
By the way, I'll jokingly arc through the black night." (G. Sukachev)

A residential building on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment in Moscow is one of the "high-rise buildings" built at the mouth of the Yauza in 1938-1952. The authors of the project are D.N. Chechulin, A.K. Rostkovsky, engineer L.M. Gokhman. Supervised the construction, including insisted on choosing a site for the construction of the house Lavrenty Beria.

The height of the building is 176 meters. This is the third tallest Stalinist skyscraper (after Moscow State University and the hotel "Ukraine"). It was built, of course, by prisoners who lived nearby, in the "Lagpunkt" (a concentration camp on Taganka). The lists of tenants were approved by I.V. Stalin himself. Therefore, some of the apartments were inhabited by all kinds of KGB workers, party and military figures, the other part was received by famous scientists, artists, writers.

"Our people will live in our house." (I.V. Stalin about the skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya).

The exact number of apartments in this building has always been a mystery. First, because of secret agents who lived in apartments without numbers, then because of the "new Russians" who massively bought up and united and separated apartments among themselves. We can say that there are about 700-800 apartments in the house.

Dmitry Nikolaevich Chechulin was the chief architect of the skyscraper. This man was generally a general among architects Soviet period, he began to work under Stalin, and finished under Brezhnev. In addition to the house on Kotelnicheskaya, he built, for example, the Rossiya Hotel, the House of Soviets of the RSFSR (White House), the Moscow swimming pool, residential buildings on Kutuzovsky and Leninsky Prospects. We can see his image in famous movie"Faithful friends".

The high-rise building was built in two stages. Before the war, there was the so-called "Building A", which stretches along the river. And after the war, the architect "inscribed" the high-rise building itself, adjacent to the building in the place where the Yauza flows into the Moscow River.

Chechulin was an unusual person for his time. He was not afraid to check the orders of Stalin himself for expediency. In fact, it was planned to build not seven, but eight Stalin skyscrapers. The last, the highest, was supposed to stand near the Kremlin itself. But Chechulin was well aware of how this would disfigure and set off the center of Moscow, and he dragged on, delayed the construction, rejected all proposals. And he reached the point that instead of a skyscraper, the Rossiya Hotel was built.

He paid for this, thank God, not with a term, but only with the fact that he received an apartment in his own offspring not on a high floor, as he dreamed, in order to see the whole city from there, but at the very bottom.

The skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya is like a city within a city. This house has everything: shops of all kinds, a library, a school, kindergarten. There is also a cinema. Muscovites know him very well.

Now it is the only cinema-museum in Moscow. And in the old days, we burst here for the premieres of new films with Belmondo or Delon, and earlier someone also burst here for Jean Gabin or films by Akira Kurosawa.

"Illusion" is still working. Nothing has changed here. The same cozy cafe, the same live pianist plays under silent films, the same rare premieres. Plus, this cinema is considered something like a dating club for intelligent single people. We sampled two freshly squeezed juices, a cake and 50 grams of Ararat.

In the apartments of some famous residents of the house, they even arranged a museum. For example, now the house-museum of Galina Ulanova works here.

Composer Nikita Vladimirovich Bogoslovsky lived in this house (Dark Night, Scows Full of Mullets, Beloved City, Lizaveta). He was a big joker. His favorite pastime was to bring his neighbors, fellow composers to a heart attack.

One day, the composer Anatoly Grigoryevich Novikov (“Smuglyanka”, “Oh, the roads ...”) wanted to admire Moscow late in the evening. But going to the window, he suddenly noticed Nikita Bogoslovsky from the other side, pale as death, in clothes made of sheets, howling ominously. The floor was not high, but not low either. Novikov recoiled in horror from the window, and there he continued to howl: "Ouuu! Wow!" Plucking up courage, Novikov went to the window and saw that Bogoslovsky was standing in the lifting basket of a machine for working on high altitude. For ten he agreed with the driver to play the fool.

Another time, our joker called the composer Dmitry Shostakovich, and in a changed voice announced that they were calling him from intelligence, and the agents reported that a robbery would take place in his apartment at night. The robbers are supposed to be disguised as doctors. Shostakovich, of course, called the police, and they set up an ambush. In the dead of night, an ambulance rang, and a weeping voice said that the great composer Shostakovich felt bad. Well, of course, the doctors came on a call, where they were screwed by the cops.
In the morning, the repentant Bogoslovsky himself turned himself in and paid the fines for false summons and petty hooliganism. And they could have been planted.

So many lived in a high-rise famous people that you can’t stock up on memorial plaques for everyone. I don't know by what principle some boards were hung up and others not. For example, there is a board by Konstantin Paustovsky.

But the boards of my beloved Faina Georgievna Ranevskaya, with whose name most Muscovites associate this house, we did not find. Ranevskaya received here two-room apartment seems to be on the second floor in the left wing of the building. She said that she lives "above bread and circuses" (a bakery and a cinema).

Her neighbor in the stairwell was the writer and poet Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky, who called her "my great neighbor." Once Tvardovsky lost the keys to the apartment, could not enter and really wanted to go to the toilet. He asked Ranevskaya to use her toilet. She, of course, let her in, but then, when she met him, she shouted to the whole yard: "Alexander Trifonovich, my closet is always at your disposal!"

Another of her neighbors was the composer Vano Ilyich Muradeli. She said to him: “You are a bugger, my friend, you don’t hit a single note, mu instead of mi, ra instead of re, de instead of do and li instead of la.”

"I would send you, but I see - you are from there" (F.G. Ranevskaya).

Inviting neighbors to visit, she said:
- If the bell doesn't work, tap your feet.
- Why feet, Faina Georgievna?
“Well, you won’t come to me empty-handed!”

Before her death, her sister, Bella Feldman, settled with her, who was amazed that Ranevskaya was not at all rich. Last years life, the actress did not live in this house, but in Yuzhinsky Lane. Due to her popularity, she, of course, should have been buried on Novodevichy cemetery, but she modestly asked to be buried with her sister at the Donskoy cemetery. She was an amazing person.

From the courtyard, you can climb a rather steep staircase to the Shvyvaya Gorka, to the Church of Nikita the Martyr and the Museum of the Russian Icon.

Alexander Shirvindt lives in this house. He wrote the book "Shirvindt, wiped off the face of the earth" (that was the name of the city in Prussia), in which he several times mentions a skyscraper on the embankment. Shirvindt proposes to introduce three new orders for our officials - "for partial, temporary and final loss of honor and dignity."

He notes that old tenants who are long retired cannot pay for huge apartments in famous house and forced to sell them to all sorts of cool guys.

One day, his old neighbor, the general's widow, met Shirvindt and complained that she had to sell the apartment, but the main problem was that she could not find Jews to repair. What's with the Jews? Shirvindt was surprised. Well, of course, because I have to make a Euro-repair here, - the old woman answered.

The skyscraper is unique and asymmetrical. Here, for example, a huge balcony stuck to one side, you can play football on it.

And in many apartments now live the heirs of the great, who were just lucky to be born in a proper family. A three-ruble note in this house can be exchanged for several other very decent apartments, rent one of them and never work again.

The story of how the famous actress Lidia Nikolaevna Smirnova got an apartment in the house is curious. She and her husband, operator Vladimir Rappoport, lived in a communal apartment and dreamed of moving out of it.

Vladimir Rappoport was also a celebrity, he made films such as " Quiet Don"or" Young Guard ", but no matter how much he went through the authorities, nothing worked. He simply did not know how to ask, and mumbled, as they say, it's good for them to live like that.

And Lydia Nikolaevna decides to take a desperate step - she writes a petition to Beria himself, which at that time was the strictest violation of subordination, and for such jokes it could be very bad.

But Smirnova was among Beria's favorite actresses, and he immediately imposed a resolution: "Give them an apartment!"

Before they had time to collect things, Beria was arrested. All his decisions were vetoed, and Smirnova fell into complete despair. And suddenly a call from there: "Why haven't you moved yet ?!" One of the few decisions of Beria was not canceled, because the new bosses also turned out to be a fan of Lidia Nikolaevna.

And when she came to watch new apartment, she fainted from happiness, the poor thing went in this state on the elevator up and down until the neighbors found her.
Already quite old, before her death, Smirnova said that now only the view from the skyscraper window to her beloved Moscow saves her.

The famous Irina Nikolaevna Bugrimova, a Soviet circus artist, lion trainer, the first woman trainer in the USSR, lived in the same house. Her husband was the famous motorcycle racer Alexander Buslaev.

True, they divorced quite quickly. Bugrimova later said that a female tamer rarely has a personal life, because it is much easier to tame a husband than a lion or a tiger.

She was the first to perform with a group of male lions. It is very dangerous. The fact is that lions live in prides, in one pride there are no two seasoned males, and if they are together, then their aggressiveness increases by an order of magnitude.

Bugrimova had about 80 lions in her group. The success was crazy, but the lions tore Irina Nikolaevna repeatedly, and several times she finished the number in the arena covered in blood.

In 1976, during a tour in Lvov, the lions unexpectedly once again rebelled and attacked Bugrimova right in the arena. Assistants repulsed her from predators, but after this incident, the trainer decided to stop performing.

The leader of this informal male lion pride was a huge lion named Caesar. All the other lions were afraid of him. He performed for 23 years, which is an incredibly long time for a lion. But then he became decrepit, he could no longer perform, and it was decided to write him off to the zoo. But Bugrimova stood up for him with her breasts, saying that there was nothing for him behind bars, took him to her and dragged a huge lion everywhere with her. So he was also partly a resident of the famous house on Kotelnicheskaya.

When Bugrimova performed in the arena with other lions, Caesar sat backstage in a cage, and was very worried that the number was going on without him. He rolled around the cage and whined, and when the trumpets sounded, he threw himself at the bars with his chest to take his place of honor in the arena among the others. Once after the number he was found dead on the floor. Leo died of grief that he could no longer perform.

In the end, we went to a deli in a high-rise building to buy something cold to drink.

I was very surprised. This deli resembles the former Smolensky or the high-rise building on Krasnaya Presnya, but unlike them, it has remained the same as it was many years ago. There are no people, the prices are very low, the saleswomen are impeccable.

I took a picture of these cakes. Many years ago, I also admired cakes in famous grocery stores, but then I could not afford them.

A lot of interesting stories keeps this house, a high-rise residential building on Kotelnicheskaya embankment. Only one house in the city, and write about it and write. The very first photo from the helicopter, of course, is not mine.

Here is a very, very abbreviated list of famous residents (both those and those):
- Aksenov, Vasily Pavlovich
- Bogoslovsky, Nikita Vladimirovich
- Bugrimova, Irina Nikolaevna
- Voznesensky, Andrei Andreevich
- Evtushenko, Evgeny Alexandrovich
- Zharov, Mikhail Ivanovich
- Zykina, Lyudmila Georgievna
- Litvinova, Renata Muratovna
- Luchko, Klara Stepanovna
- Lyubimov, Yuri Petrovich
- Milyutin, Yuri Sergeevich
- Mokrousov, Boris Andreevich
- Nagiev, Dmitry Vladimirovich
- Ognivtsev, Alexander Pavlovich
- Paustovsky, Konstantin Georgievich
- Ranevskaya, Faina Georgievna
- Smirnova, Lidia Nikolaevna
- Tokarev, Vilen Ivanovich
- Ulanova, Galina Sergeevna
- Chechulin, Dmitry Nikolaevich
- Shirvindt, Alexander Anatolievich
- Shifrin, Efim Zalmanovich

Dmitry Nikolaevich Chechulin was the chief architect of the skyscraper. This man was generally a general among the architects of the Soviet period, he began to work under Stalin, and finished under Brezhnev. In addition to the house on Kotelnicheskaya, he built, for example, the Rossiya Hotel, the House of Soviets of the RSFSR (White House), the Moscow swimming pool, residential buildings on Kutuzovsky and Leninsky Prospects. We can see his image in the famous film "True Friends".

The high-rise building was built in two stages. Before the war, there was the so-called "Building A", which stretches along the river. And after the war, the architect "inscribed" the high-rise building itself, adjacent to the building in the place where the Yauza flows into the Moscow River.

Chechulin was an unusual person for his time. He was not afraid to check the orders of Stalin himself for expediency. In fact, it was planned to build not seven, but eight Stalin skyscrapers. The last, the highest, was supposed to stand near the Kremlin itself. But Chechulin was well aware of how this would disfigure and set off the center of Moscow, and he dragged on, delayed the construction, rejected all proposals. And he reached the point that instead of a skyscraper, the Rossiya Hotel was built.

He paid for this, thank God, not with a term, but only with the fact that he received an apartment in his own offspring not on a high floor, as he dreamed, in order to see the whole city from there, but at the very bottom.

The skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya is like a city within a city. This house has everything: shops of all kinds, a library, a school, a kindergarten. There is also a cinema. Muscovites know him very well.

Now it is the only cinema in Moscow. And in the old days, they burst here for the premieres of new films with Belmondo or Delon, and even earlier - for Jean Gabin or films by Akira Kurosawa.

"Illusion" is still working. Nothing has changed here. The same cozy cafe, the same live pianist plays under silent films, the same rare premieres. Plus, this cinema is considered something like a dating club for intelligent single people.

In the apartments of some famous residents of the house, they even arranged a museum. For example, now the house-museum of Galina Ulanova works here.

Composer Nikita Vladimirovich Bogoslovsky lived in this house (Dark Night, Scows Full of Mullets, Beloved City, Lizaveta). He was a big joker. His favorite pastime was to bring his neighbors, fellow composers, to a heart attack ...

One day, the composer Anatoly Grigoryevich Novikov (“Smuglyanka”, “Oh, the roads ...”) wanted to admire Moscow late in the evening. But, going to the window, he suddenly noticed Nikita Bogoslovsky from the other side, pale as death, in clothes made of sheets, howling ominously. The floor was not high, but not low either. Novikov recoiled in horror from the window, and there he continued to howl: "Ouuu! Wow!" Gathering courage, Novikov went to the window and saw that Bogoslovsky was standing in the lifting basket of a machine for working at high heights. It turned out that Bogoslovsky for the "ten" agreed with the driver to play the fool ...

Another time, our joker called the composer Dmitry Shostakovich, and in a changed voice announced that they were calling him from intelligence, and the agents reported that a robbery would take place in his apartment at night. The robbers are supposed to be disguised as doctors. Shostakovich, of course, called the police, and they set up an ambush. In the dead of night, an ambulance rang, and a weeping voice said that the great composer Shostakovich felt bad. Well, of course, the doctors came on a call, where they were screwed by the cops. In the morning, the repentant Bogoslovsky himself turned himself in and paid the fines for false summons and petty hooliganism. Or they could plant...

So many famous people lived in the skyscraper that you can’t get enough memorial plaques for everyone. It is not known by what principle some boards were hung, while others were not. For example, there is a board by Konstantin Paustovsky.

But the boards of the beloved Faina Georgievna Ranevskaya, with whose name most Muscovites associate this house, are not. Ranevskaya received a two-room apartment here, it seems, on the second floor in the left wing of the building. She said that she lives "above bread and circuses" (a bakery and a cinema).

Her neighbor in the stairwell was the writer and poet Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky, who called her "my great neighbor." Once Tvardovsky lost the keys to the apartment, could not enter and really wanted to go to the toilet. He asked Ranevskaya to use her toilet. She, of course, let her in, but then, when she met him, she shouted to the whole yard: "Alexander Trifonovich, my closet is always at your disposal!"

Another of her neighbors was the composer Vano Ilyich Muradeli. She told him: “You are a bugger, my friend, you don’t hit a single note, mu instead of mi ra instead of re de instead of before and whether instead of la".

"I would send you, but I see - you are from there."
(F.G. Ranevskaya).

Inviting neighbors to visit, she said:

- If the bell doesn't work, tap your feet.
- Why feet, Faina Georgievna?
“Well, you won’t come to me empty-handed!”

Before her death, her sister, Bella Feldman, settled with her, who was amazed that Ranevskaya was not at all rich. The last years of her life, the actress did not live in this house, but in Yuzhinsky Lane. Due to her popularity, she, of course, should have been buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery, but she modestly asked to be buried with her sister at the Donskoy Cemetery. She was an amazing person...

Alexander Shirvindt lives in this house. He wrote the book "Shirvindt, wiped off the face of the earth" (that was the name of the city in Prussia), in which he several times mentions a skyscraper on the embankment.

Shirvindt proposed introducing three new orders for our officials - "for partial, temporary and final loss of honor and dignity" ...

In the same book, he notes that the old tenants, who have been retired for a long time, cannot pay for huge apartments in the famous building and are forced to sell them to all sorts of cool people.

One day, his old neighbor, the general's widow, met Shirvindt and complained that she had to sell the apartment, but the main problem was that she could not find Jews for repairs. What's with the Jews? Shirvindt was surprised. Well, of course, because I have to make a Euro-repair here, - the old woman answered ...

The tower is visible from afar. And many streets in the center of Moscow, like rays, are directed straight towards it. This is how it looks from Taganskaya Square.

And in many apartments now live the heirs of the great, who were just lucky to be born in a proper family. "Treshka" in this house can be exchanged for several other very decent apartments, rent one of them and never work again.

The story of how the famous actress Lidia Nikolaevna Smirnova got an apartment in the house is curious. She and her husband, cameraman Vladimir Rappoport, lived in a communal apartment and dreamed of moving out of it.

Vladimir Rappoport was also a celebrity, he made films such as "Quiet Flows the Don" or "Young Guard", but no matter how much he went through the authorities, nothing worked. He simply did not know how to ask, and mumbled, as they say, it’s good for them to live like that.

And Lydia Nikolaevna decides to take a desperate step - she writes a petition to Beria himself, which at that time was the strictest violation of subordination, and for such jokes it could be very bad.

But Smirnova was among the favorite actresses of Beria and he immediately imposed a resolution: "Give them an apartment!"

Before they had time to inspect the new apartment, Beria was arrested and shot. All his decisions were vetoed and Smirnova fell into complete despair. And suddenly a call "from there": "Why haven't you moved yet ?!" One of the few decisions of Beria was not canceled, because the new bosses also turned out to be a fan of Lidia Nikolaevna.

And when she came to see a new apartment, she fainted from happiness, the poor thing went in this state on the elevator up and down until the neighbors found her. Already quite old, before her death, Smirnova said that now only the view from the skyscraper window to her beloved Moscow saves her.

The famous Irina Nikolaevna Bugrimova, a Soviet circus artist, lion trainer, the first woman trainer in the USSR, lived in the same house. Her husband was the famous motorcycle racer Alexander Buslaev.

True, they divorced quite quickly. Bugrimova later said that a female tamer rarely has a personal life, because it is much easier to tame a husband than a lion or a tiger.

She was the first to perform with a group of male lions. It is very dangerous. The fact is that lions live in prides, in one pride there are no two seasoned males, and if such are found together, then their aggressiveness increases by an order of magnitude.

Bugrimova had about 80 lions in her group. The success was crazy, but the lions tore Irina Nikolaevna repeatedly. And several times she finished the number in the arena covered in blood.

In 1976, during a tour in Lvov, the lions unexpectedly once again rebelled and attacked Bugrimova right in the arena. Assistants repulsed her from predators, but after this incident, the trainer decided to stop performing.

The leader of this informal male lion pride was a huge lion named Caesar. All the other lions were afraid of him. He performed for 23 years, which is an incredibly long time for a lion. But then he became decrepit, he could no longer perform, and it was decided to write him off to the zoo. But Bugrimova stood up for him with her breasts, saying that there was nothing for him behind bars, took him to her and dragged a huge lion everywhere with her. So he, in part, was also a resident of the famous house on Kotelnicheskaya.

When Bugrimova performed in the arena with other lions, Caesar sat backstage in a cage, and was very worried that the number was going on without him. He rolled around the cage and whined, and when the trumpets sounded, he threw himself at the bars with his chest to take his place of honor in the arena among the others. Once after the number he was found dead on the floor. Leo died of grief that he could no longer perform.

This house, a high-rise residential building on Kotelnicheskaya embankment, keeps many interesting stories. Only one house in the city, and write about it and write!

Here is a very, very abbreviated list of famous residents (both those and those):

Aksenov, Vasily Pavlovich
- Bogoslovsky, Nikita Vladimirovich
- Bugrimova, Irina Nikolaevna
- Voznesensky, Andrei Andreevich
- Evtushenko, Evgeny Alexandrovich
- Zharov, Mikhail Ivanovich
- Zykina, Lyudmila Georgievna
- Litvinova, Renata Muratovna
- Luchko, Klara Stepanovna
- Lyubimov, Yuri Petrovich
- Milyutin, Yuri Sergeevich
- Mokrousov, Boris Andreevich
- Nagiev, Dmitry Vladimirovich
- Ognivtsev, Alexander Pavlovich
- Paustovsky, Konstantin Georgievich
- Ranevskaya, Faina Georgievna
- Smirnova, Lidia Nikolaevna
- Tokarev, Vilen Ivanovich
- Ulanova, Galina Sergeevna
- Chechulin, Dmitry Nikolaevich
- Shirvindt, Alexander Anatolievich
- Shifrin, Efim Zalmanovich...