Moscow Metro Tour: Red Line
A Tour of the Russian Capitol's Oldest Metro Stations
The Red Line of Moscow's extensive public transport network, encompassing many of the city's interesting stations, is a museum of excellent art and architecture.
The Red Line, line 1, was the inaugural line of the Metro. Formerly named “Kirovskaya,” and now called “Sokolnicheskaya,” the line cuts across Moscow in a line from the Northeast to the Southeast, with 19 stations, and carrying about 1 million passengers a day. The first part of the line, from Sokolniki to Park Kultury, was opened on the 15th of May, with Sokolniki opening its doors first to passengers.
The Sokolniki station, the first station to open its doors on the 15th of May, 1935, with 350,000 riders showing up to ride the Red Line to its terminus at park Kultury on the first day. Sokolniki was designed not to feel underground at all. Its architecture is intended to give the rider a sense of limitlessness and space, with Italianate ceilings and two rows of square columns clad in gray and cream marble from the Ural mountains.
Later lines would be deeper, and built using more ambitious methods, and with more ambitious decoration, but the inaugural line of the Metro is striking in its classic simplicity and its relative modesty in comparison with the stations of some of the other lines. The ceilings of many of the stations are Italianate, the columns stately and reserved, the Soviet decoration (hammers and sickles and sheaves of wheat, red stars) often muted in comparison with the later stations.
Krasnoselskaya, the next station on the line, is an excellent example. This station, predicted to have less traffic than the others, was built with a narrow platform and a single row of columns, ten in all, down the platform, faced in red and yellow Crimean marble. The tile floor in the vestibule at the western end was replaced later with a marble floor matching the rest of the station. If the restorations going on at other stations are any indication, the tile along the walls of the station may eventually be replaced as well.
Komsomolskaya is relatively modest, with columns bearing the seal of the Komsomol at their top, wheat sheaves decorating the railings along the upper galleries overlooking the main platform. The columns and decoration are muted in design, neo-classical and Italianate, with a slight modern bent, but without the extravagance to be found in later lines (such as the Ring Line station of the same name). It is from this station that the first test train of the Moscow Metro left, traveling to Sokolniki on October 1st, 1934.
Another Grand Prix winner at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair is the Krasniye Vorota station, one of the first two stations to employ the triple-arched design, with the outer two arches, through which the trains run, cut off from the center of the platform by a series of heavy Pylons faced in red Georgian marble. The name from this station comes from the monumental Red Gates, a baroque triumphal arch dating from the 18th century that the Mossovet demolished under protest in 1928.
Next along the line is Chistiye Prudy, built in London Underground style (or the Soviet interpretation of the same) and clad in grey Ural marble and granite. Two passageways connected the separate platforms, although the pylons along the platforms were finished to give the impression that a central hall exists. Most of the arches along the center were, in fact, blind. The station was originally Kirovskaya, and there is still a bust of Kirov at the end of the platform, although the name was changed in 1990.
A heroic sculpture in the vestibule on Nikolskaya steet commemorates the builders of the Lubyanka station, who had to contend with quicksand, a sinking station, and an underground river that undermined their efforts in order to build this station, which, like Chistiye Prudy, was also built originally in the London Underground style, with short passageways at the end of the platforms connecting the two tunnels, and then later expanded to serve as a transfer point to the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line.
Okhotniy Ryad was a major construction challenge, being wedged between the Hotel Moskva and the State Duma at a depth of only 8 meters. Lazar Kaganovich, in charge of the Metro Project at the time, insisted on a three-vault design for the station. Imported Italian marble is used on the station pylons, the only imported marble on the Moscow Metro. The finishing of the station, involving thousands of tons of plaster and square feet of marble, was done in just two weeks to meet the opening date of the Metropolitan.
Biblioteka Imini Lenina is located just two meters below ground level, but it was excavated underground rather than using the cut-and-cover method, so as not to disrupt traffic above. This gracefully arched single-vault station is the only one on the first line of the Moscow Metro, and gives the impression, nearly, of being above ground, with a limitless-looking horizon.
Ideal soil conditions and the planning of a massive Palace of Soviets on the grounds of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (then demolished) led Kropotkinskaya to become one of the grandest stations on the Moscow Metro line, with flared, torch-like columns along the length of its platform and a soaring ceiling. But the palace of Soviets, and the ridership it would entail, never materialized, and now Kropotkinskaya is used mostly by tourists visiting the Pushkin Museum or the rebuilt cathedral.
Park Kultury is decorated in Greek style and with its pillars faced with Crimean marble. This station was one of the more difficult to build, as it occupied a major intersection and was so close to the Moscow River that water constantly threatened to flood the pit during construction. One of the original vestibules, leading down to the southernmost end of the platform, is worth a look, as it has survived almost unchanged since 1935. On your way to the surface, take a look at the beautiful, precise marble mosaic of Maxim Gorky.
There's much more to Moscow's Metro. Here's a tour of the stations of the Green Line. And if that isn't enough for you, try this tour, or the Dark Blue Line.
