Architectural sisters: why were copies of New York buildings built in Moscow

It sounds amazing, but almost every Moscow skyscraper in the Stalinist Empire style has a New York prototype. Blame it all - a business trip to the States of a Soviet architect. The details were shared by the edition ANSF.

In 1924, the Soviet architect Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky was sent to the United States. After spending 11 years in America, he thoroughly familiarized himself with the construction technologies of those times and even worked in high-rise construction in New York. Upon returning to his homeland, he was given the task of developing projects for houses that could become new architectural dominants and city-forming accents of Moscow.

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Eight high-rise buildings, the projects of which were created by Oltarzhevsky and other Soviet architects, were laid on the day of the 800th anniversary of Moscow - September 7, 1947. The number eight symbolized the number of centuries. However, later one of the buildings - in Zaryadye - was not completed. So, by 1954, seven skyscrapers appeared on the map of Moscow, which received the nickname "seven sisters" among the people. These include:

• building on Kotelnicheskaya embankment;
• the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Smolenskaya-Sennaya Square;
• Moscow State University building on Vorobyovy Gory;
• administrative and residential building at the Red Gate;
• hotel "Leningradskaya" on Komsomolskaya square;
• residential building on Kudrinskaya square;
• hotel "Ukraine" on Kutuzovsky prospect.

The height of the buildings was an unprecedented value for those times - from 138 to 239 meters.

There are actually more “sisters”, but you need to know where to look

Almost every Moscow skyscraper has a New York prototype, although this can only be seen from certain angles. For example, in a residential building on Kudrinskaya Square, the features of the Municipal Building of New York are guessed, the silhouette of the Foreign Ministry building is similar to the Woolworth Building, and the Leningradskaya Hotel has architectural parallels with the United States Courthouse.

However, the projects of Stalin's skyscrapers are not an exact copy of American monumental skyscrapers. So, in New York buildings in this style, many rooms were practically devoid of natural light, while Soviet skyscrapers were located in such a way as to solve this problem. Soviet architects also considered the weak rigidity of the supporting structures to be a disadvantage of American skyscrapers. So that the residents of the upper floors of the Stalinist skyscrapers did not feel vibrations during strong gusts of wind, other technologies were used during their construction in Moscow.

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It is not known for certain why Stalin decided to build such high-rise buildings in Moscow. One version says that he was a fan of the Gothic style, and he liked the skyscrapers because they resemble Gothic cathedrals. The other is that the task was to “overtake America”, in which the first skyscrapers appeared at the end of the XNUMXth century, and Moscow remained a low-rise city until the middle of the XNUMXth century. But be that as it may, the “seven sisters” have become architectural symbols of an entire era.