Stylistic features of the development of Muravyov-Amursky Street in Khabarovsk in the pre-revolutionary period

Vakhonin Maksim Sergeevich Graduate Student, Higher School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Pacific National University 136 Pacific Street, Khabarovsk, Khabarovsk Territory, 680035, Russia 2017100513@pnu.edu.ru

Bazilevich Mikhail Evgenevich ORCID: 0000-0002-9912-805X PhD in Architecture Professor of the Higher School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Pacific National University 136 Pacific Street, Khabarovsk, Khabarovsk Territory, 680035, Russia mikhailbazilevich@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Introduction. The architectural and urban design of the Pacific borders of the Russian Empire, in the second half of the XIX - early XX century. associated with the construction of new cities and settlements and the creation of transport infrastructure, took place in the general course of the development of Russian architecture, but at the same time had its own distinctive features due to the remoteness of the region and the specifics of its administrative–territorial and socio-economic development individual cities. The architectural landscape of the Russian Far East of the pre-revolutionary period can be briefly described in several major stylistic systems: Russian style, retrospectivism, "brick" style and Art Nouveau. The city of Khabarovsk is no exception, where each of these directions in different interpretations is reflected in the architecture of buildings for various purposes. The status of the city as the administrative center of the region and, as a result, the placement of a large number of civil and military departmental institutions within its borders largely determined the nature of the development of its architecture, which was most clearly manifested in the formation of the ensemble of the central highway of the city – Muravyov-Amursky.

Research work on the history of architecture of cities in the Russian Far East, including Khabarovsk, was actively launched in the 1990s. During this time, a wide range of issues related to the history of the development of the first cities in the region, the construction of individual architectural monuments and the work of local architects were considered ^[1-8]. At the same time, they lack a holistic view of the process of evolutionary development of the ensemble of the central street of Khabarovsk – Muravyov-Amursky, the analysis and understanding of stylistic features of which is important for understanding the general processes of forming the image of the city.

Within the framework of this publication, in accordance with the stated topic, we will consider the stylistic features of the architectural ensemble of the central street of Khabarovsk – Muravyov-Amursky.

The first buildings

Founded in 1858 as a military post in Khabarovsk, the settlement developed on the left bank of the shallow Buri River (Plyusninka), gradually rising along the slope of the hill running along the main channel of the Amur River. His first plan, drawn up in 1864 by the military topographer M. M. Lyubensky, determined the structure of the planning framework of the future city, which was based on the through main streets Ussuriyskaya, Khabarovsk and Amur, laid along the crests of three hills and stretching from the high steep bank of the Amur in a northeasterly direction. Khabarovsk Street (now Muravyov-Amursky) was assigned the role of a social and business center, while the other two highways concentrated buildings of the Military Department and other facilities. Initially, the entire building was made of wood and had a functional and utilitarian character. The bulk of the buildings consisted of barracks, warehouses and single-storey residential buildings for soldiers and officers, made of log cabins. The main means of facade decoration was wood carving, which was placed on structurally significant elements. By 1865, there were 140 private houses, 59 state-owned ones, 14 retail shops and one church in Khabarovsk ^[2]. In the 1870s, due to the development of fur trade and trade with nearby settlements, financial assets began to flow to Khabarovsk, which gave impetus to the further transformation of a small military post into a large commercial and industrial center of the region.

In 1880, Khabarovsk received the status of a city and was renamed Khabarovsk, and since 1884, with the establishment of the Amur General Government, it began to serve as the administrative center of the region.  By this time, the appearance of the first stone buildings, erected along the red line of the central highway of the city, and gradually replaced the one-story wooden buildings. In 1889, Khabarovsk Street was renamed and began to bear the name of the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, Count N. N. Muravyov-Amursky ^[8]. During the same period, due to rapid urban development, the city cemetery located at the end of Khabarovsk Street was closed and work was carried out to transfer the graves to a new location. The vacated territory was converted into a square, which soon became known as Nikolaevskaya.

Russian style

In the construction of Khabarovsk, this trend is reflected in the architecture of the most important objects for the city, concentrated along its central street. First of all, they include the monumental Assumption Cathedral, built in 1884-1886. designed by S. O. Bera. The structure, built in the forms of the Russian style, served as the urban planning and visual dominant of the street ensemble and was included in the structure of the city panorama from the river (Fig. 1a). On the opposite side of Cathedral Square, near the intersection of Muravyov-Amursky and Alekseevskaya (Shevchenko) streets, there was a wooden Triumphal arch in Russian style motifs installed by the city administration in 1891 in honor of the arrival of Tsarevich Nicholas II in the city, the second similar structure was located at the foot of the western slope of the central hill at the beginning of Alekseevskaya Street.

Another example of Russian-style architecture is the building of the apartment house of merchants Plyusnins, built in 1900. next to the Assumption Cathedral and the beginning of a solid building front on the odd side of Muravyov-Amursky Street (Fig. 1a). In the same year, construction of a Vocational school began on the north side of Mykolaiv Square, which fixed the central compositional axis of Muravyov-Amursky Street (Fig. 1b). The building was erected in eclectic forms, however, the motifs of the Russian style are manifested in the drawing of elements of its facade decor.

a. b.

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Fig. 1. Examples of Russian style architecture in Khabarovsk. a) Panorama of Muravyov-Amursky Street with the Assumption Cathedral (https://todaykhv.ru/news/culture/33035 /); b) The building of the Apartment house of the Plyusnins, 1902, Architect Y. Z. Kolmachevsky. Photo by M. E. Bazilevich; c) The building of the Vocational School, 1900-1903. (https://natpopova.livejournal.com/372472.html )

In 1909, the building of the City House was built on the odd side of the street, which, due to its complex silhouette and various details of the plastic walls, became one of the most spectacular and memorable objects of the historical part of the city (Fig. 2). Structurally, the house is a three-story brick building with plastered facades and stands out vividly due to the specifics of the tent roof the background of nearby buildings of the Soviet and modern periods. The courtyard facades are made of red face brick, without decorative decoration, except for the crowning cornice belt. It should be noted that despite the general retrospective orientation of this trend, innovative features can be traced in the compositional solution of the City House, associated with the desire to identify the constructive basis of the building and the freedom of the planning scheme, indicating the influence of the ideas of modernity, which was established in the architecture of the region at the beginning of the XX century.

Fig. 2. The building of the City House, 1909, Architect P. V. Bartoshevich, B. A. Malinovsky. Photo by M. E. Bazilevich

Brick eclecticism and retrospectivism

Eclecticism in architecture, which arose largely as a reaction to the monotony of classicism, was characterized by a new approach to the structure of buildings. Innovations were manifested at the level of the functional design method, which followed the principle of "inside – out", when the planning scheme was first developed, and only after that attention was paid to the external appearance of the object. In the construction of Khabarovsk, this trend became widespread mainly in the forms of "brick" architecture, which made up the most numerous group of buildings. This circumstance was obviously connected with the peculiarities of the development of the construction industry in the city, in which by the beginning of the XX century there were three categories of customers: civil administration, military department and large merchants, each of which determined the nature and functional content of newly erected buildings. At the level of spatial planning solutions, it should be noted a general departure from the symmetry and enfilade layout of the interior, the spread of open-plan layout and the desire to separate individual elements of the composition into independent volumes. A characteristic feature of the "brick" architecture of Khabarovsk was the use of red burnt and gray unbaked (Manchurian) bricks in the front masonry, which were produced only at local factories and, due to the complexity of logistics, were not widespread in other cities of the region. At the same time, it should be noted that this technique gave Khabarovsk buildings additional expressiveness and a special flavor that distinguishes the historical buildings of the city center and its main street.

The most characteristic in this context is the commercial and business quarter, formed at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries from the north–eastern side of the Cathedral Square, and represented by two-three-storey stone buildings. The beginning of its creation was laid in 1891 by the merchants Khlebnikov, who built a one-story building with retail and office premises on the corner of Muravyov-Amursky and Engineering (Turgenev) streets, which later received an extension in the form of a two-story building. In 1900-1902, the building front continued with the buildings of the public assembly and the N. R. apartment building. Krovyakova (Fig. 3), while on the opposite side of the street the buildings of the Tartsevs and Pyankovs apartment buildings were erected (Fig. 4). All structures are built in eclectic forms with elements of Gothic and neoclassicism in elements of two-tone front brickwork. In the 1910s, the development of the quarter was enriched by two more buildings, built, however, in a new Art Nouveau style for the city, which gradually replaced the chaos of eclecticism.

Fig. 3. Building on the even side of Muravyov-Amursky street. On the left is the Apartment building of N. R. Krovyakov, on the right is the building of the Public Assembly, 1901 by Architect V. A. Rassushin. Photo by M. E. Bazilevich

Fig. 4. Construction of the odd side of Muravyov-Amursky street. From left to right: Tartsevs' apartment buildings (1908); Pyankovs (1900); I. Takeuchi (1912). Photo by M. E. Bazilevich

Modern

In the architecture of Khabarovsk, this trend, unlike a number of other cities of the Russian Far East and neighboring Manchuria, has spread mainly in its oriental form, with its characteristic movement towards "decoration" and deliberate "facade" architecture. Modern elements in the form of compositions in the form of pendants consisting of rings and straight lines descending from them, wavy outlines of attics and characteristic window frames are found in the design of a number of buildings along the red line of Muravyov-Amursky Street (reconstruction of the Khlebnikov apartment building, the Esplanade hotel, the Korovyakovs apartment building, the Russian-Asian Bank, etc. (Fig. 5).

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Fig. 5. Art Nouveau style in the buildings of Muravyov-Amursky Street. Photo by M. E. Bazilevich  

a) The building of the Khlebnikov apartment building after the reconstruction of 1912-1913; b) The building of the Esplanade Hotel, 1913;

c) The Krovyakovs' Apartment Building, 1911; d) The building of the Russian-Asian Bank, 1908.

The rational line of Art Nouveau, characterized by work with large volumes and the identification of structural and functional features of the structure in external forms, includes the building of the house of the pharmacist V. F. Zandau (Fig. 6). The authorship of the object and the date of its construction are controversial. According to one source, it was built in 1913, presumably according to the project of academician A. I. von Gauguin ^[9]. This version is supported by the strong external similarity of the object to the mansion of M. F. Kshesinskaya, built by an architect in St. Petersburg in 1904-1906. The project itself and photos of its implementation were published on the pages of the magazine "Architect". Other sources date the object to 1906 without attribution ^[8]. Nevertheless, due to its complex multi-storey silhouette and a triangular bay window with a dome accentuating the central entrance, the structure dominated the structure of the surrounding development. In the 1930s, a five-story hotel was added to its southwestern facade, as a result of which the building of the house of the pharmacist V. F. Zandau lost its dominant role in the structure of the quarter.

Fig. 6. The building of the house of the pharmacist V. F. Zandau. The current state. Photo by M. E. Bazilevich

Further transformation of the ensemble

During the years of Soviet power, the ensemble of the central street of Khabarovsk was replenished with expressive buildings in the spirit of constructivism and neoclassicism, which completed the formation of a solid line of its predominantly firewall buildings. A number of buildings from the pre-revolutionary period underwent interior redevelopment and adaptation to new functions, which led to a change in the organization of space and the loss of some elements of authentic stucco decoration. A significant loss was the demolition of the Assumption Cathedral in 1930, part of the granite blocks of which were used in the construction of the foundation of the Amur River Shipping Company building.   

In the 1990s, work began in the city to put buildings of the pre-revolutionary period under state protection, the facades and interiors of many objects that were already in a pre-emergency state were restored, and in 2001, the City-Khabarovsk Cathedral of the Assumption of the Mother of God was erected on the site of the demolished Assumption Cathedral according to the Khabarovsk Civil Project.

Due to the absence of free building sites along the red line, the ensemble of Muravyov-Amursky Street has changed slightly in recent years. The renovation takes place at the level of comprehensive landscaping and placement of advertising signs and information stands. At the same time, the holistic perception of the ensemble is significantly influenced by the point high-rise buildings of blocks within the boundaries of secondary streets crossing Muravyov-Amursky Street and descending to the city boulevards along the slopes of the central hill. The verticals of multi-storey residential buildings "break up" the organic silhouette of historical buildings, overlap visual corridors and change the already established historical and cultural landscape.

Conclusion

The historical ensemble of Muravyov-Amursky Street in Khabarovsk is of great interest from the point of view of studying the history of regional architecture of the pre-revolutionary period. The structure of its building reflects the motives of all stylistic trends that prevailed in Russian architecture at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries, which, due to the geographical and socio-cultural characteristics of the region, underwent a certain semantic and formative transformation, thereby defining the unique flavor of the central part of the city.

The building of Muravyov-Amursky Street, which was formed almost in a continuous front, concentrated along its central compositional axis, laid along the crest of the middle hill within the boundaries of two city squares – Komsomolskaya (Sobornaya) and Lenin (Nikolaevskaya) reflects the main milestones in the development of the city, which for many years was the administrative center of the region. Time has preserved here examples of architecture of functionalism, Soviet neoclassicism, constructivism, but, nevertheless, it is the buildings of the pre-revolutionary period that form the basis of the historical and cultural landscape of Khabarovsk, which needs to be preserved and has significant potential for expanding the tourism sector in the region.