Vasnetsov House and Vasnetsov Lane
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The house was built in 3rd Troitsky Lane (now Vasnetsov Lane) on the territory of the Trinity Compound according to the drawing and design of Vasnetsov himself. However, some argue that Vrubel took part in the creation of the concept and sketch.

Here, in the Trinity Compound, in the house opposite Vasnetsovsky, Patriarch Tikhon lived. Here in 1919 he wrote one of his famous appeals (meaning the “Appeal” of 1918, in which Tikhon anathematizes the Bolsheviks. - BG). Here he was arrested and sent under arrest to the Donskoy Monastery. After Tikhon, Vvedensky (Archpriest Alexander Vvedensky - BG) moved into this house with his renovationists, and after some time the house was built on and occupied by employees of the GPU and the NKVD. Behind the house is the Trinity Church - some time ago it was restored, but with a large admixture of remodeling - in general, it turned out to be quite leafy. And the building of the Trinity Compound itself makes a depressing impression: overbuilt floors, broken arches and remote elevators, embedded in pseudo-Russian ornaments of the 19th century. By the way, an interesting detail: for some reason, elevators were installed only in built-on buildings.

When you enter Vasnetsov’s house, don’t immediately run inside, sit in the garden, feel the atmosphere of this alley - as it was 40-50 years ago and as I still found it: on both sides there were wooden suburban houses; the ground floor was often made of stone, with basement windows peeking out from the ground; the entrance to such houses was on the side, and beyond the threshold there was a staircase to the second floor; in each entrance the staircase was special, unlike the one in the neighboring house. In fact, Vasnetsov’s house is the only one of this type that has survived.

In general, I envy those who come to Vasnetsov’s house for the first time. I remember how I brought my four-year-old Vera here: charming aunties - museum employees - took us around the rooms, showed her the boxes in which Victor Mikhailovich kept Christmas gifts. Then we sat in the studio - there were a lot of pictures there that were very creepy for a child’s mind: all the Gorynych Snakes. When we left, I asked Verka: “Did you like Vasnetsov’s?” - to which she replied: “Very. It’s a pity that he wasn’t at home” - this, it seems to me, is generally the best thing that can be said about the museum. And every time you come to this museum, you regret that the kind, bearded Viktor Mikhailovich was not at home this time.

And so all these houses were demolished and these beauties were built (points to gray panel twelve-story buildings).

Another vivid impression of childhood - although the streets were cleared in winter, the road was packed with snow, and I remember how they were filming a movie right under the windows - there were spotlights, and someone was riding a sleigh, and a man was running after them, shouting something and fell.

We also had a shed in our backyard in which Grandma Zhenya stored sauerkraut. One day the barn was flooded, and grandma Zhenya went to sell cabbage at the Central Market. Everyone complained: they say that not only is it expensive at the market, but also everything is some kind of “women-Zhenino”.

And now it turns out that the sheds are no longer at the backs of houses, but right on the facades.

The house where Buntman was born and spent his childhood (Vasnetsova lane, 9)
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This house is amazing simply because it is unclear how it was built in the first place. The platbands show that before the superstructure it was two-story. Moreover, between the second and third floors there is a bay window dating back to the beginning of the century, although the third floor has already been built on. The answer can be found by looking into the courtyard: from there we see that initially the building had a variable number of storeys - two and three floors.

This is exactly how it was built in 1906 by the architect Pyotr Vikentyevich Kharko. Few houses of this architect have been preserved in their original form - for example, the Vatican Embassy in Votkovsky Lane. He built in the 1900s, and then disappeared somewhere; the date of his death is unknown to anyone.

The apartments were divided into entrances only up to the second floor, on which there was a large staircase. From there, a staircase led to the upper floors, into the L-shaped corridors of communal apartments - an apartment on each floor. They didn’t “present” us with an elevator right away—my mother had to carry not only me, but also the stroller from the fifth floor and back. Have you ever seen a baby stroller from the 50s? It can only be compared to a tank. Low, but on huge wheels, cross-country ability is zero.

The apartment had 12 rooms, 43 people and one kitchen with three stoves with four burners each - that’s one burner per family. The burners were used in different ways. I remember once the Chelyadinov family moved in with us - a mother and three girls, sixteen, eighteen and twenty years old. So they took turns drying their hair on their only burner - never do that!

Around the corner in the corridor lived an absolutely enchanting man - Andron Nikolaevich Samoshkin - the official alcoholic of our apartment. In any Soviet communal apartment there are many drinkers, but there should be only one official alcoholic. It was believed that Samoshkin lived on vodka and tea leaves - no one saw him cook. But every evening, already pretty drunk, he put the kettle on and forgot about it. The kettle boiled over, the fire was extinguished, and the gas came out of the burner. The residents decided to take action and, seeing Samoshkin, twisted the handles of the stove. But this did not help - he turned the gas with pliers, put on his kettle and immediately forgot about it. Even when my father was at training camp and my mother was sick, he would run to the bakery on Durov Street and bring her gifts. But that same evening he could take an ax and break into our room, wanting to talk to my mother about something. Thank God, the neighbors saved my mother from these “talks.”

Another colorful character I remember was Rosalia Semyonovna - a lonely lady with a braid around her head. She sang romances of her own composition, and told about herself that during the war she was a fighting friend of Marshal Malinovsky.

I didn’t find my grandfather: in 1941 he went to the front with the militia and never returned. But my father told me how he did exercises: my grandfather stood on his hands, reached the opposite end of the house and returned in the same way, on his hands. The wooden beam at the end of the corridor also kept the memory of my grandfather: traces of hands glistened on it - from my grandfather’s frequent and diligent exercises.

One night we had a fire, and I was most upset because I didn’t see the firefighters putting out the fire. I threw a tantrum, and when my parents no longer knew what to do with me, a fireman came in full uniform to check the rooms, and I finally calmed down.

This is how we lived. Then our apartment was moved out, a lot of things changed, and now there is a business school in the entrance. One day they came to us on air and brought a booklet where I was horrified to discover the address of my childhood. To my menacing retort: “So it was you who occupied my apartment!?” — they began to awkwardly apologize and show some documents. Apparently, everything is not so clean with them.

In the courtyard there was an extension to the house, which housed a Chinese laundry before the war. Then the Chinese were declared spies and disappeared somewhere. And it’s completely unclear where. There is no information that they were deported, shot or sent to camps - they simply disappeared, and only a pre-war joke remained: “They bring laundry to the laundry, and the Chinese say: “Mine is not preska, mine is sipiona.”

Embassy of Sri Lanka (Shchepkina, 24)
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Looking at the well-kept mansions of the Art Nouveau era, I would like to say thank you to the UpDK (Administration of the Diplomatic Corps under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR/RF. - BG). In this case, thanks to the UpDK and the Festival of Youth and Students. In 1957, there was a dormitory for Chinese students who came to the festival, and after the festival - the Ceylon Embassy. Ceylon became Sri Lanka and is now the Sri Lankan Embassy. In connection with this embassy, I learned a wonderful phrase - Sirimavo Bandaranaike. This is the name of the Prime Minister of Ceylon that my mother told me. It’s completely unclear why, but I still remember it.
Mosque
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They wanted to demolish the cathedral mosque even before 1980, when the Olympic Stadium was being built. Then, through heroic efforts, she was saved. Now it is being remade - I hope it turns out beautifully.

Durova Street in my childhood was narrower than it is now: at the intersection with Shchepkina Street there was a corner house in the Art Nouveau style with a store. To expand the street, it had to be demolished: on Fridays it was completely impossible to walk here - Muslims were coming in a dense stream from the Botanical Garden metro station (now Prospekt Mira). As I remember now, they were old Moscow Tatars, all in leather boots with galoshes - this type has survived to this day. I once overheard a conversation between two tram drivers who had gotten stuck in a traffic jam because of this traffic: “Tatar May Day,” one said to the other.

Houses along Shchepkina Street near Olimpiyskiy (Shchepkina, 17)
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There was a row of wooden houses with incredible carvings - you can read about them in the third volume of “Architectural Monuments of Moscow (1830–1910).” Among them, the Khrushchev house stood out, which is included in all the classic catalogs of wooden Moscow houses. However, among boys of the 40s and 50s it was known as Babich's house. Everyone knew that Evgeny Babich, the greatest Soviet hockey player from the stellar galaxy of Babich - Bobrov - Shuvalov, lived in this house.

All houses were completely demolished. For a long time there was a vacant lot and parking lots here, until two glass office buildings were built in the 2000s.

Church of Metropolitan Philip
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The only thing we can thank the builders of the Olympic Stadium for is the restoration of the Church of Metropolitan Philip. The church was built by Matvey Kazakov in the 18th century, and during the construction of the “Olympic” it was not touched thanks to a stupid legend, according to which the church was either built with the money of A.V.’s family. Suvorov, or Suvorov got married in it. The latter, however, is complete nonsense. A similar fictional legend is associated with the house of the Decembrist Shteingel in Gagarinsky Lane, where Ryleev allegedly stayed. In fact, Ryleev visited Steingel’s house on Chistye Prudy, but this misunderstanding, as in the case of the Church of Metropolitan Philip, allowed the preservation of the architectural monument.
"Olympic"
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As soon as they dug the pit for the Olympic sports complex, it filled with water. The fact is that the ponds in Catherine Park are fed by a system of rivers and streams that flow here - Kapelka, Naprudnaya, Samotek. There was a scandal at the level of the CPSU Central Committee, water had to be pumped out, construction was delayed.

The sports complex was built at an accelerated pace and opened for the Olympics. For some time, like a chicken running around with its head cut off, it was still used for its intended purpose, but over time, sporting events began to be held there less and less. For the second decade now, Olimpiyskiy has been home to bookstores, clothing stores, spare parts stores, tire shops - in general, everything except sports. Was it worth demolishing a dozen or two architectural monuments for this?

Kapelsky Lane
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The yellow house with a colonnade on the corner of Kapelsky Lane and Mira Avenue was built on the site of the destroyed Trinity Church in Kapely. Once an old woman there told me the fate of this house: “There was a church with a cemetery here, the Bolsheviks demolished everything, built a house for themselves, and then shot them all” - I call this story “The Shortest Course in the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).”

Hospital Church of MONIKA (Moscow Regional Research Clinical Institute)
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The church on the territory of MONIKA is a heroic example of the restoration of a temple - heroic, because no money is allocated for such reconstructions, and for the second decade it has been restored literally brick by brick. The building behind the church is the former maternity hospital No. 8, which existed since pre-war times: Vysotsky was born here, and a couple of decades later, so was your humble servant.
The school where Buntman studied (Bolnichny lane, 4)
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In 1949, the French special school No. 2 named after. Romain Rolland. On the facade, in accordance with the tradition of those years, the attributes of education are sculpted - compasses and triangles, reminiscent of Masonic symbols. Under Stalin, such analogies apparently did not occur to anyone - otherwise the builders would have been in trouble.

Many interesting people studied at the school - director Andrei Smirnov, his brother Seryozha Smirnov. I remember their father, Sergei Sergeevich Smirnov, told us about the Brest Fortress. Then for him and for all of us, the heroes who stood to the death in that fortress became a real revelation. In those years, such things had not yet become epic and it was not customary to talk about them.

In the tenth grade, I was once sent to clean the attic. I had to throw the plywood out of the attic window. It was not interesting to just throw it away, and we launched it in various unusual ways - we almost crashed ourselves. One of the pieces of plywood I threw flew around the building and broke a window on the other side. But even if I admitted to this crime, no one would believe it.

In the school yard, on the site of the playground, there was a residential barracks. Sasha Tyurin lived there, a guy a year younger than us. Only the school director's son lived closer, because the director's apartment was located right in the school. Sasha Tyurin was always late for classes, and later I noticed a peculiarity: people who live closest to school, college, or place of work are always late.

Further along Solodovka lived the horror of our childhood - the terrible killer Mosgaz: all the newspapers wrote about a robber who, ringing the doorbell, introduced himself as Mosgaz and hacked old women and children to death with a tourist hatchet.

Later it turned out that the criminal was a certain Ionesyan, who lived in these houses. The parents were happy about this circumstance, because the killer never operates in the places where he lives. However, for example, Akhmatova did not believe in Ionesyan’s guilt, just as she did not believe in any judicial decision of the Soviet government.

And for some reason I am more inclined to believe Akhmatova than the Soviet regime.

Excursions around Moscow. From 4th Meshchanskaya Street to Bolnichny Lane