Departure area

The Warsaw Station complex may lose another monument

At a time when the establishment of communications with Europe was perceived as a holiday, the station square - where trains connecting St. Petersburg with the cities of the Old World arrived - was sought to be decorated elegantly. Even such purely utilitarian buildings as the power plant were decorated with expressive details. Today, when the window to Europe is about to slam shut, the authorities can part with the signs of that holiday without regret: they are ready to sacrifice a historical building for the sake of opening a highway.

Monument, move over!

It would seem like a rare piece of luck - the building of the late 19th century is in good hands. Just look for an owner who will challenge the decision of the State Property Committee for State Property Protection (KGIOP) (which removed the object from protection in 2007) in order to restore the status of a monument. And he will achieve it: the historical and cultural examination carried out on his order was approved by the committee, and in the summer of 2013 the power plant was returned to the state register of cultural heritage sites.

“Everything seems to have turned out happily - the owner takes care of this building, it is in good condition, the facades have recently been renovated, life is seething inside: it’s beautiful. But the city administration is developing a strange and monstrous idea: to move the monument somewhere else,” said Alexander Kononov, deputy chairman of the St. Petersburg VOOPIiK, at a press conference convened in connection with the impending threat.

This story has its origins in the general plan of 1936, where the idea of ​​​​creating a backup of Moskovsky Prospekt was already reflected - by building Novoizmailovsky Prospekt to the Obvodny Canal embankment. Then it was generally planned to demolish the entire complex of Warsaw Station buildings. Thank God it didn’t work out. In 2001, this complex (including many auxiliary buildings, such as a water tower, a power plant, and a car repair depot) was recognized as an identified cultural heritage site.

After the former Mitrofanyevskoye Cemetery was given protective status, changes were made to the general plan to exclude penetration through the territory of the historical graveyard. But the layout and width of the corridor for the continuation of Izmailovsky Prospekt outside the cemetery remained the same. And the highway runs where this power plant stands, with the date “1898–1899” on the attic.

In this regard, deputy Alexey Kovalev addressed the leadership of the KGA with a number of questions. Why were alternative route options that did not affect protected sites rejected - when, for example, there is a free corridor on the eastern side of the station building? What is the point of preserving the section of the continuation of Izmailovsky Ave. from the Obvodny Canal to Malaya Mitrofanyevskaya in the parameters of the main city street?

According to the deputy, it is advisable to make such a short fragment of a street that has no continuation and runs through dense residential buildings a street of district or local significance. And the main line, already of urban significance, could pass at the alignment of Warsaw Street or along the Warsaw Railway route, bypassing the cemetery.

Kovalev believes that the issue of the parameters and layout of this fragment is also very relevant for the developer of the adjacent site: the concept for the development of these territories (developed by Studio-44) was rejected by the city council in 2013, including due to the fact that the main street separates schools from the residential area and impedes their pedestrian accessibility.

Last year, the parliamentarian recalls, proactive St. Petersburg resident Dmitry Baranov submitted an application to change the general plan regarding the alignment of the continuation of Izmailovsky Prospekt, which would eliminate the described problem. The deputy offers a choice: accept Baranov’s amendment and move the city highway according to the option he proposed, or change the status of the mentioned section to a street of district or local significance, which would ensure the inviolability of the “Power Plant Building” monument, and at the same time remove the problem of inaccessibility of social facilities.

In response, the KGA informed that the amendment submitted by Baranov in December last year was considered by the commission for amending the general plan. We decided to take into account the proposal by establishing zone U (street) within the boundaries proposed by the KGA. But the preservation of the parameters of the promising highway in the section from the Obvodny Canal to Malaya Mitrofanyevskaya as a city-wide highway is due to the decision of the second exit of the Baltiyskaya metro station with the redistribution of traffic flows and the laying of utilities.

The committee’s response also states that, in accordance with the minutes of the meeting with the participation of Vice-Governor Marat Oganesyan, held in September 2013, SSMO LenSpetsSMU CJSC prepared a conclusion on the technical feasibility of moving the monument building with a proposal for a new location - to the west of the existing site. The leadership of the KGA also refers to the conclusion of the KGIOP (dated November 11, 2013), according to which the relocation of a heritage object is possible if such an order is issued by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, to which the leadership of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation applies with a corresponding request “if there is a justified need.”

Displaced fracture

However, it is precisely the validity of such a need that raises serious doubts - given the availability of less painful alternatives. “On the opposite side of the station there is a completely empty area, why not build the route there? - Alexander Kononov asks a reasonable question and answers himself: “LenSpetsSMU plans to build a residential complex “Galaktika” on this site, but it is difficult to buy the land.” As far as Kononov knows, the city authorities do not intend to enter into negotiations with the developer. The clumsy solution, of course, is simpler - to build a highway through the territory of the monument.

City defenders fear that pressure will be put on the owner of the power plant building. In addition to elementary injustice in relation to a person who, for a number of years, has shown concern for the preservation of a historical object, such a turn of events will have more global sad consequences: the authorities will discourage other businessmen from following his example.

“As always in our country, we are following an original path,” Kononov sums up. “We are going to build a residential area from scratch, and where there are historical buildings, we are clearing the area and laying a highway.”

The territory of the Warsaw Station turned out to be divided between different owners: one part was used for commercial housing, the other is used by tenants for different purposes, some ancient buildings are actually abandoned. An examination for inclusion in the state register of monuments was carried out by VOOPIiK in relation to twelve objects of the complex, but so far only six have been agreed upon; the issue is still being resolved for the remaining half.

The author of the examination that justified the inclusion of the power plant in the register of monuments, Professor Margarita Stieglitz, fears that it will not be possible to move the historical building without damaging it. And this idea itself, in principle, seems absurd: “This is one of the first power plants in Russia, which has survived to this day in terms of architectural and structural elements (the Siemens-Halske equipment located inside, unfortunately, has not been preserved there). In combination with the water tower behind it, the power plant forms a single composition. And this is a very important urban planning accent - by removing it, we will destroy the historical environment, which cannot be allowed. The building closes the western square of the Warsaw Station complex - this is a full-fledged part of the Obvodny Canal panorama, which will fall apart if you start removing certain components from it.

The author of the construction, civil engineer Lyadov, approached the design of the facade with great reverence, because the power plant participated in the presentation of the arrival area, which was considered necessary to be designed quite expressively: after all, the Warsaw Station served as a window to Europe. So even such a purely utilitarian building was expressive, well-designed artistically - with such characteristic brick details, “crackers”, with beamed window lintels, a carefully detailed cornice and attic with natural dating. This is a fine example of the late brick style of utilitarian architecture - and is well preserved. Of course, its relocation will not be without loss and damage to architectural value.”

The expert also draws attention to the fact that the location of the power plant is included in the protection of this monument, which by law cannot be changed.

Not everything is decided yet

Urban defenders hope that the authorities will still have enough political will to develop an alternative that does not threaten the monument. In a similar situation with the Mitrofanyevsky cemetery, recalls the chairman of the Mitrofanyevsky Union, Ilya Popov, they managed to find a gentle solution: the layout of the necropolis, the historical foundations there were taken under protection, and the process of gradual release of plots occupied by tenants or owned by them is underway - albeit not easy. And Vice-Governor Oganesyan supported the idea of ​​​​creating a recreational area there.

Returning to the problems of the Warsaw Station complex, the participants of the press conference spoke about how the struggle for the status of warehouse No. 2 is developing - the same one, the process of dismantling which did not happen without clashes with the police and provocations that cost the freedom of Denis Levkin, who happened to be here. After dismantling, KGIOP included the warehouse in the state register, which obligated the owner to restore the destroyed facility. But he undertook to challenge the committee’s order in court and won the case in the first instance.

“The process took place last summer, we did not immediately find out about it, which is why we were able to file an appeal only as persons whose rights were violated,” explained Alexander Kononov. – But the 13th Arbitration Court of Appeal left our complaint without consideration. We appealed this ruling to the North-Western Arbitration Court, which agreed with our arguments and returned the complaint for consideration on the merits.”

The fate of another object included in the Warsaw Station complex - a wooden residential building on the Obvodny Canal embankment - has a chance to turn out happily if paperwork does not swallow it up too. As Valery Klyuka, the head of the coordination center for helping the homeless operating under the St. Petersburg diocese, said, they want to locate a center for helping people who find themselves in difficult life situations. In fact, we are talking about a social hotel, where one hundred people can receive support at a time - with a medical office, round-the-clock distribution of food and things. While the initiators of the good deed are waiting for KUGI to approve documents on the gratuitous transfer of the object into the ownership of the diocese, volunteers visit Obvodny twice a day - to look after a long-settled house, where homeless people who have not yet been cared for try to make fires.

The two-story wooden building of the late 19th century was provided to the diocese for a social project at the end of October, and at the same time was given responsibility for the preservation of the cultural heritage site. Now, according to Valery Klyuka, only the Life Line charity organization is helping the project financially. The priority repair work that had begun had to be stopped for the winter due to problems with connecting communications.

“Wooden architecture is a disappearing phenomenon for the center of St. Petersburg. And if the bureaucratic procedures drag on, we risk losing this house too,” warns Alexander Kononov.

Strategic business

The entire complex tangle of problems that the defenders of the Warsaw Station complex now have to unravel is a consequence, to put it mildly, of dubious decisions of previous years. Vast adjacent territories were once given to the railway department for nothing - under the pretext of ensuring the operation of rail traffic, for strategic and social needs. Then JSC Russian Railways, through its structure Zheldoripoteka, released the lion's share of the gigantic areas for commercial development. According to this scheme, more than 20 hectares near Moskovskaya-Tovarnaya went under the project of the Etalon group of companies (which includes LenSpetsSMU), about 1 hectare - to the Aquarius Constellation holding, the investor in most of the territory of almost 40 hectares was Rosregionproekt Development LLC (according to some sources, acting in the interests of RAO Russian Railways).

A large-scale construction project called “Izmailovskaya Perspective” was presented by Zheldoripoteka to then-governor Valentina Matvienko back in 2007. Almost 55 hectares were proposed to be developed with residential and commercial real estate. It was planned to build a business quarter directly next to the Warsaw Station (on a 17-hectare plot owned by Russian Railways). But the 2008 crisis made its own adjustments.

Over the past time, the Russian Railways lands near the Warsaw Station have been distributed among many new owners, tenants and so-called investors. And historical buildings that interfere with construction plans are under threat of liquidation or forced relocation. Dozens of ancient buildings stand without any supervision - leaving the territory, Russian Railways did not provide either security or basic conservation. The expected consequences are fires and destruction. This is beneficial: in order to sell the plots more profitably, it is necessary to free them from such encumbrances as protective status. And even better, having reduced it to a ruined state, remove it from the cadastral register altogether - as happened with one of the warehouses, which was carefully deprived of the title of a heritage site under Vera Dementieva, in 2007, in company with four other historical buildings.

These are the business consequences from the chief trustee of the National Glory Fund.

Lost Highway

By the way, the peculiar disappointing results of the activities of JSC Russian Railways in relation to historical depot buildings, stations, water towers over more than ten years of the corporation’s existence were presented in St. Petersburg at the exhibition “Lost Highway. Russian Railways 2003–2013”, which opened in the Atrium cafe (71 Nevsky Prospekt, Nevsky Atrium shopping center, 5th floor).

A unique project was created through the efforts of experts from the Moscow Archnadzor a year and a half ago, during which time the exhibition was seen not only in the capital, but also in Ufa, Chelyabinsk, and Yekaterinburg. In the northern capital, it is held jointly with the St. Petersburg VOOPIiK.

“Unfortunately, instead of demonstrating the existing unique buildings of outstanding Russian architects, the exhibition became a kind of martyrology to historically valuable buildings - stations, pavilions, barracks, houses for the families of railway workers. The exhibition presents more than fifty objects from all over Russia, from Arkhangelsk to Irkutsk, and after describing the history of the object there is a sad conclusion: “burnt down,” “demolished,” “reconstructed,” “changed beyond recognition,” says one of the curators of the project, Yuri Egorov (Arkhnadzor). – The saddest thing is that mostly unique small railway stations, service and technical buildings, which are much less known than large stations in big cities, are being lost. At the same time, the wooden tower station at the Sukhona station, it turns out, was created by the hand of the famous Art Nouveau master L. Kekushev, commissioned by the no less famous S. Mamontov, the magnificent design of the station for the modest Sergievo platform near St. Petersburg belongs to the court architect N. L. Benois, and the small post-war stations of the Riga direction were designed by the famous Soviet architect M. Minkus. But unlike the “central” stations, these buildings are known only to local residents.

What is most striking is the senselessness of demolishing these objects: the sites of old train stations are now often vacant lots. This happened, for example, with the station in Voyskovitsy, Leningrad region, which Nicholas II visited and mentioned in his diaries, and this is how the last country station in Russia, the pavilion of the Ilyinskoye platform near Moscow, perished.

Projects of even standard railway buildings from the late 19th – early 20th centuries. were created by the best Russian architects and engineers. The railway was a matter of national importance in Tsarist Russia, and a strategic object in the Soviet Union. However, today this wealth of the entire country and each of its citizens is managed by a single company with the only ultimate goal - making a profit.

Fortunately, not all objects are lost forever; many stations, after restoration or even simple repairs, can again accept passengers. In recent years, several small stations have been closed, but not yet demolished, which, however, without use or at least proper conservation, will inevitably begin to collapse and will soon also be lost.

The great Le Corbusier said: “The history of a country is written on the roads and in the architecture.” We risk being left without history. This means losing your main highway.

Today’s exhibition is not only an accusation, but also an invitation to dialogue between Russian Railways, the state and society. That is why it also includes positive examples from the practice of Russian Railways themselves and European countries, which demonstrate: there is a civilized solution to the problem, you just need to do it.”

The exhibition will run in our city until mid-May.