The Ministry of Culture will think about the transfer of the Shukhov tower

The Ministry of Culture in accordance with the issue of transferring the Shukhov tower from Shabolovka to another place. Among the proposed options for VDNH, Kaluga Square and Gorky Park.

This was reported by Izvestia with reference to the head of the Department of Control, Supervision and Licensing in the field of cultural heritage of Vladimir Tsvenov.

“We must clearly understand why the object of cultural heritage cannot be preserved in the usual place (the tower on Shabolovka was erected in 1922) and how reasonable the need to move the monument is,” Tsvetnov said.

“Before the decision on the transfer of the Shukhov tower, the Ministry of Communications is obliged to prepare the design documentation for the maintenance of the facility containing sections on the movement of the OKN, with the mark of the Moscow Cultural Heritage Department on coordination. In addition, we must receive a copy of the decision on the allocation of a land plot with a certain targeted landmark for the further placement of the tower, ”the head of the department explained.

He also recalled that the initiative to transfer the tower did not come from the Ministry of Culture, whose tasks include “compliance with the requirements of the legislation on cultural heritage sites”.

Despite the willingness to consider the issue of transferring the tower, Tsvetnov emphasized, the Ministry of Culture is still opposed to its dismantling -in early February 2014, the Ministry of Communications, on the balance of which the tower is located, proposed to dismantle it in connection with an emergency state.

The great-grandson of the author of the project of the tower, engineer and architect Vladimir Shukhov (1853–1939), president of the Shukhov Tower Foundation Vladimir Shukhov claims that they want to transfer the tower because of interest in the lands under it.

We are talking about an area of ​​about 5 hectares in the center of Moscow. The descendant of the engineer fears that the tower will be disassembled under the pretext of reconstruction, and the land under it will be quickly mastered. The tower is unlikely to be collected back, Shukhov believes, because it will lose the status of an object of cultural heritage.