Alleys of Moscow. Gentlemen Volkonsky
Our somewhat amateurish, don’t consider this as coquetry, virtual travels through the capital’s alleys, of which local historians number at least a thousand, will most likely be limited to about fifty of them. And not because there is no more time.
There is simply no point in writing, especially in detail, about something that is generally familiar, but has never really become family. The author is thrown either to the West of the old center of Moscow, then to the south, or even to the outskirts, such as the Sokol district or the vicinity of the Kursk station not so long ago.
But most of the attention is still given to the north and northeast of the old capital, where I spent my childhood years, the sixties and seventies, where a lot is connected with study and work, with the stagnant eighties and dashing nineties.
In this sense, the two Volkonsky lanes, which connected Delegatskaya street, the former Bozhedomsky lane with Samotechnaya, do not seem to stand out as anything special. There was also a third, dead-end street, which ceased to exist after a solid Stalinist high-rise building was erected on Samotechnaya Street.
Gravity is almost a celebrity compared to the Volkonskys - at first it was a chain of ponds on the Neglinka River, then a square and even a boulevard. Well, Delegatskaya, when it was straightened shortly before the war, paved an elite path from the building of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, where the Russian Guard and one of the buildings of the Museum of Decorative and Applied Arts were now located, to the Central House of the Red Army.
This is the former Catherine Institute with a magnificent park and ponds, which has now somehow quieted down as the Cultural Center of the Ministry of Defense. And before, as they say, there was everything here - from a restaurant and a billiard room, where the incomparable Elina Bystritskaya often played, to a luxurious library, a chamber theater and art galleries.
Delegatskaya Street, due to the peculiarities of the local terrain, can be considered to have grossly violated the Moscow layout - traditional, with rings and radii. However, the area, perhaps, only benefited from this - it became easier to get to the Garden Ring near Karetny Ryad closer to Mayakovka, and to the park, also Delegatsky, from the same Samotyok it became very close.
But let's return to the modest Volkonskys.
Why modest? But because, with the exception of two national restaurants - the Indian Jaling and the Chinese Zhong Guo, there are almost no facilities here that can attract the general public. The cultural center, also Indian, doesn’t count; people go there only by special invitation.
On Volkonsky, hidden in the entrances and basements are not the most ordinary shops, for example, one selling puzzles or the obviously suspicious “Amanita and Hedgehog”, as well as countless offices, the inevitable beauty salons and clinics. There are also small hotels, one of them with a very characteristic name - “Hypnosis”.
Neither schools, nor the usual kindergartens, nor ordinary shops can be found here, on two Volkonsky, or even nearby. However, I have no doubt that this is quite satisfactory for the few residents. Although Volkonsky Lanes are clearly not suitable for a promenade.
Medical students can run up them to the dental institute, after having a smoke break or refueling with coffee nearby - in the tiny Seminarsky dead end. After classes, they will go down to Samotyok for a walk or to walk to the metro station - “Tsvetnoy Boulevard” or “Dostoevskaya”.
But from the windows of houses on Volkonsky Lanes, truly magnificent views of Moscow open up. You can see the Kremlin quite well, as well as the cathedrals of the Sretensky, Rozhdestvensky and St. Peter’s monasteries. And in the other direction, not paying attention to the protracted construction of the new Olimpiysky complex, it is easy to reach with your gaze the Ostankino TV tower.
Upstairs, on Delegatskaya, two Volkonsky lanes are closed by a high-rise building built in the 21st century (pictured above), which has clearly revitalized the area, where previously only old-timers remained for the most part. From there, almost all the local children visit the same children's Delegate Park with undisguised pleasure.
A little less popular, which is quite understandable, is a cozy club with a very creative name - “Brother and Rabbit's Hole”. From there it’s not difficult to get to Obraztsov Park, the tiny garden of the Sergei Obraztsov Puppet Theater, with access to 1st Volkonsky Lane.
Further - not very much stories. The name of the lanes, of course, is beautiful, in honor of the homeowners - the princes, among whom, however, there was no famous Decembrist Sergei Grigorievich, who openly preferred imperial Petersburg. By the way, just because of the next homeowner - merchant Nikolai Guzhevsky, 2nd Volkonsky Lane for some time bore his name - Guzhevsky.
Guzhevsky's house was rebuilt more than once, passed to another owner - State Councilor Nikolai Pospelov, and somehow survived to this day (see photo) in its no longer empire-style appearance. With offices instead of communal apartments.
Next to the Guzhevsky-Pospelov mansion there is now a faceless office center, and until recently there was, or rather, another mansion was quietly dying. He, the wooden one, played his special role - at home with a mielofon, in the now half-forgotten children's series "Guest from the Future." It was there that the base of space pirates, performed by Vyacheslav Nevinny and Mikhail Kononov, was located, who usually “went” to the gateway of house number 3.
In those days, when the Volkonskys had not yet settled here, the area was the outskirts of Nelidov’s estate, which first passed to the governor-general of the capital A. Tormasov, the one who, in the war with Napoleon, commanded the 3rd Western Army, which opposed the 12th Austrian corps of Prince Schwarzenberg .
After Tormasov’s death, gardens descended to the ponds from Bozhedomsky Lane - “Korsakov” and “Hermitage”, still old, which later moved to their current location inside the Garden Ring - on Karetny Row. The smaller part of the Hermitage became a children's park, and the rest was built up over more than two centuries.
Near the estate of the Volkonskys - Pyotr Fedorovich and his son Mikhail Petrovich, baths existed for quite a long time, also bearing the name of the Volkonskys, but still - Gravity. They are famous not only because they were competitors of the Rzhev and Astrakhan ones, as well as the neighboring Seleznevskys, who were considered Tatar, but also because, according to legend, Napoleon himself washed in them in 1812.
The gravity baths, like the legendary Sanduny, were owned by the “bath king” of the century before last, Pyotr Biryukov, the namesake and namesake of the current deputy mayor, a native of the coachmen of the Rogozhskaya Sloboda. It was customary for both families and groups to go to Samotyochnye, as well as to Sanduny, with their luxurious rooms, for the whole day, preferably with a continuation in the restaurant.
Some of the buildings of the bathhouse complex, which occupied two blocks from the Garden Ring to 2nd Volkonsky Lane, and closed only in the 1970s, have survived to this day.
Now there are offices there, but, by the way, Biryukov’s own house has also been preserved, with a facade on Sadovaya-Samotechnaya, decorated with wooden carvings, which only specialists can find these days.
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