The construction territory is essentially a city block delineated by the Pyatnitskaya and Valovaya Streets, and the 2nd and 3rd Monetchikovsky alleys, for the exception of the building standing on the corner of the Pyatnitskaya Street and the Garden Ring and the Lighthouse business center. Currently, this is the property of the “First Exemplary Printing Works”, the heir of the once-famous Sytin’s printing company. This very part of the Zamoskvorechye district is one of Moscow’s most “prayed-in” spots: suffice it to say that long before the printing house was built here, this was the place where the playwright Alexander Ostrovsky lived; as for the buildings themselves, they witnessed many historic moments, including the bloody ones – it was here that the Moscow strike of 1905 started, during which the place was almost burned down to the ground. Its role as a cultural heritage site is just as important: this printing house printed nearly a quarter of all the Russian publications, and was visited at one time or another by all the key figures of the Silver Age of the Russian literature. The complex that was supposed to be renovated into a premium class residential city block consists of three buildings erected at the brink of XIX-XX centuries, one building that was built in the 1930’s, and a few minor ones of no historical value, in whose stead new construction was going to take place. The main building – 71, Pyatnitskaya Street, with a gothic entrance and figured attics, an acclaimed masterpiece of Moscow’s Art Nouveau style, built in 1903 – was originally designed by the architect Adolph Erichson and the engineer Vladimir Shukhov; in the soviet time, its fourth floor got a buildup that significantly distorted the authors’ original idea. These two people also designed the red-brick Building 3 which stands inside the yard – it appeared in 1912 and housed the apartments of the employees of the company; the building that stands along the Valovaya Street was built by the architects Rybinsky and Voskresensky a little bit earlier, in 1888, and originally functioned as a tenement house. All the historical buildings were to be renovated with full reconstruction of their inside space into residential premises; the construction of mansards and penthouses was also planned. The building of soviet origin was to be renovated; its framework to be kept intact. All the later structures were to be replaced by new buildings.

Four Moscow-based architectural firms took part in the competition: Kleinewelt, ABV, DNK, and Wall. The competition was won by Kleinewelt Architekten. Then the construction was canceled.

Kleinewelt