Patriarshy Ponds
Encyclopedia
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. For the last 200 years, there has been only one pond, although, as the name of Tryokhprudny Pereulok suggests, there used to be more. The area of the existing pond is 9900 square metres (106,562.7 sq ft); the depth is about two meters. Because of the area's proximity to Tverskaya Street
Tverskaya Street
Tverskaya Street , known as Gorky Street between 1935 and 1990, is the main and probably best-known radial street of Moscow, Russia. The street runs from the central Manege Square north-west in the direction of Saint Petersburg and terminated at the Garden Ring, giving its name to Tverskoy District...
business district, the area is popular with expatriates.
Origin
The area is named after the seventeenth century PatriarchPatriarch
Originally a patriarch was a man who exercised autocratic authority as a pater familias over an extended family. The system of such rule of families by senior males is called patriarchy. This is a Greek word, a compound of πατριά , "lineage, descent", esp...
's Goat Sloboda
Sloboda
Sloboda was a kind of settlement in the history of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. The name is derived from the early Slavic word for "freedom" and may be vaguely translated as "free settlement"....
(Патриаршая Козья слобода) located on the Goat Marsh (Козье болото). This marsh once connnected by a brook to the Presnya River west; by 1739, when the first topographic map was compiled, the brook disappeared and the marsh separated from Presnya. People considered the swamp as an anomalous zone; apparently this caused a proverb "Фома поспешил, да людей насмешил – увяз на Патриарших" ("Thomas has hastened, but made people laugh - he sticked in Patriarshy").
19th century
The pond acquired its present shape and was cleaned up in 1830-1831, a part of a plan to rebuild Moscow after the Fire of 1812Fire of Moscow (1812)
The 1812 Fire of Moscow broke out on September 14, 1812 in Moscow on the day when Russian troops and most residents abandoned the city and Napoleon's vanguard troops entered the city following the Battle of Borodino...
. The buildings around the pond were wooden; stone construction proceeded slowly through the second part of nineteenth century. In winters, the Russian Gymnastic Society operated a skating rink on the frozen pond.
At the turn of the century, cheap rental buildings around the pond were occupied by the University
Moscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...
students. During the December 1905
Russian Revolution of 1905
The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...
, the area was held by left-wing student militia and became a war zone. The Ponds also housed Moscow's first hospital for children (the Filatov Hospital, which later relocated to nearby Garden Ring
Garden Ring
The Garden Ring, also known as the "B" Ring , is a circular avenue around the central Moscow, its course corresponding to what used to be the city ramparts surrounding Zemlyanoy Gorod in the 17th century....
).
Modern history
Mikhail BulgakovMikhail Bulgakov
Mikhaíl Afanásyevich Bulgákov was a Soviet Russian writer and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, which The Times of London has called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.-Biography:Mikhail Bulgakov was born on...
and his wife Yelena Shilovskaya lived in this area in the 1930s.
From the later 1930s to the 1950s, the lowrise buildings were torn down. The two most important Soviet-era buildings constructed were The House of Lions, a luxurious residence for Red Army Marshals
Marshal of the Soviet Union
Marshal of the Soviet Union was the de facto highest military rank of the Soviet Union. ....
(1945, designed by Zholtovsky
Ivan Vladislavovich Zholtovsky
Ivan Vladislavovich Zholtovsky was a Russian-Soviet architect and educator. He worked primarily in Moscow since 1898 till his death. An accomplished master of Renaissance Revival before the Russian Revolution of 1917, later he became a key figure of Stalinist architecture.-Early years:Ivan...
workshop) and the 1935 Aviazhilstroy Apartments, a yellow postconstructivist
Postconstructivism
Postconstructivism was a transitional architectural style that existed in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, typical of early Stalinist architecture before World War II. The term postconstructivism was coined by Selim Khan-Magomedov, a historian of architecture, to describe the product of avant-garde...
high-rise by Vladimir Vladimirov (the building, conceived by Panteleimon Golosov
Panteleimon Golosov
Panteleimon Alexandrovich Golosov was a Russian Constructivist architect and brother of Ilya Golosov.-Career:Golosov graduated from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1911. From 1918 he taught at the State Free Artist Studios , then at VKhUTEMAS and at the Moscow...
, was completed in part. See original design). The boathouse on the ponds was built in wood in 1946. It was not until the 1980s that it was rebuilt in stone.
In 2000-2002, the controversial Patriarch Apartments were built (design by Sergei Tkachenko); this 13-story building, crowned with a 1/50 scale model of Tatlin's Tower
Tatlin's Tower
Tatlin’s Tower or The Monument to the Third International is a grand monumental building envisioned by the Russian artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin, but never built. It was planned to be erected in Petrograd Tatlin’s Tower or The Monument to the Third International is a grand monumental...
is also known as Alla Pugacheva
Alla Pugacheva
Alla Borisovna Pugacheva or Pugachova , born 15 April 1949), is а Soviet and Russian musical performer. Her career started in 1965 and continues to this day...
home.
Bulgakov legacy
The Pond is one of the main settings of Mikhail BulgakovMikhail Bulgakov
Mikhaíl Afanásyevich Bulgákov was a Soviet Russian writer and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, which The Times of London has called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.-Biography:Mikhail Bulgakov was born on...
's novel The Master and Margarita
The Master and Margarita
The Master and Margarita is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, woven around the premise of a visit by the Devil to the fervently atheistic Soviet Union. Many critics consider the book to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, and one of the foremost Soviet satires, directed against a...
. Monuments to Bulgakov and to Ivan Krylov
Ivan Krylov
Ivan Andreyevich Krylov is Russia's best known fabulist. While many of his earlier fables were loosely based on Aesop and Jean de La Fontaine, later fables were original work, often satirizing the incompetent bureaucracy that was stifling social progress in his time.-Life:Ivan Krylov was born in...
have been erected near the pond. The Master and Margarita begins with a tram
Tram
A tram is a passenger rail vehicle which runs on tracks along public urban streets and also sometimes on separate rights of way. It may also run between cities and/or towns , and/or partially grade separated even in the cities...
accident by the pond. Although there was never any regular tram service or permanent tram tracks around the pond, for a short time in 1930s, there was a temporary service track used for night storage.
Public transportation access
- Subway: Mayakovskaya, eastern exit; Pushkinskaya