The Red Gate Building is one of

seven 7 is a number, numeral, and glyph. 7 or seven may also refer to: * AD 7, the seventh year of the AD era * 7 BC, the seventh year before the AD era * The month of July Music Artists * Seven (Swiss singer) (born 1978), a Swiss recording artist ...

Stalinist Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory ...

skyscrapers, designed by

Alexey Dushkin Alexey Nikolayevich Dushkin (24 December 1904 – 8 October 1977) was a Soviet architect, best known for his 1930s designs of the Kropotkinskaya and Mayakovskaya stations of the Moscow Metro. He worked primarily for subway and railroads and ...

. Its name comes from the

Red Gate The Red Gate (Russian: Красные ворота, ''Krasnye vorota'') was a set of triumphal arches built in an exuberantly baroque design in Moscow. Gates and arches of this type were common in 18th century Moscow. However, the Red Gate was th ...

square.

Features

The 138-metre building consists of a central 24-storey building and two side buildings with a variable number of storeys ranging from 11 to 15. The exterior walls of the skyscraper are clad in natural

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms wh ...

, while the ground floors are clad in red granite. The interiors of the building are more modest than in other Stalinist skyscrapers. For example, stainless steel was used in the front lobby and there are no expensive materials or picturesque panels. The central building on the courtyard side had an assembly hall (on the ground floor) and an exhibition hall (on the basement). A tunnel was created along the perimeter of the basement with an entrance from the side of Komsomolskaya Square. It was intended for trucks serving the services of the building. The building was originally built for the needs of the Ministry of Railways. However, by 1951, when the works were completed, a new union agency Mintransstroi existed and it got the offices in the central block of the skyscraper. All flats had refrigerators, built-in-furniture and sinks with a crusher to destroy large waste in the kitchens. The kitchens also had access to a rubbish chute. In addition to the traditional ventilation system, the house had central air conditioning. For this purpose, outdoor air was filtered and passed through a humidification system before reaching a temperature of +15°C. Then, depending on the season, the air was heated to the right temperature. All high-rise buildings were equipped with a centralised dust extraction system, which consisted of a system of brushes and hoses located in each flat, a system of pipes running along with the building and dust extraction stations installed in the basement. The collected dust was filtered and discharged into the sewage system, and the purified air from the system was discharged into the street.

Boilers A boiler is a closed vessel in which fluid (generally water) is heated. The fluid does not necessarily boil. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications, including water heating, central ...

were installed in the basement to provide heating for the skyscraper.

History

The skyscraper was laid down in 1947 and completed in 1953. The construction of the tower was complicated by its location near the

Moscow Metro The Moscow Metro) is a metro system serving the Russian capital of Moscow as well as the neighbouring cities of Krasnogorsk, Reutov, Lyubertsy and Kotelniki in Moscow Oblast. Opened in 1935 with one line and 13 stations, it was the first und ...

tunnels and the Krasnye Vorota station. Dushkin built a second entrance to the station into the ground floor of the tower, which opened on 31 July 1954. After being the headquarter of the

Ministry of Construction of Heavy Industry The Ministry of Construction of Heavy Industry of the USSR (Mintyazhstroy; russian: Министерство строительства предприятий тяжелой промышленности СССР) was a central government instituti ...

the administrative part of the skyscraper also hosted the ''Ministry of Transport Construction''. The building is also known as ''Lermontov Tower'' from

Mikhail Lermontov Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (; russian: Михаи́л Ю́рьевич Ле́рмонтов, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ˈjurʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈlʲɛrməntəf; – ) was a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasu ...

, who was born on its place, and the ''Lermontovskaya Square'', the name assigned to the

square between 1962 and 1986.

Notes

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External links

Building data at emporis.com

Building data at skyscraperpage.com
Buildings and structures built in the Soviet Union Residential buildings completed in 1953 Government buildings completed in 1953 Stalinist architecture Seven Sisters (Moscow) Skyscraper office buildings in Moscow Residential skyscrapers in Moscow Cultural heritage monuments of regional significance in Moscow