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GlavUpDK under the MFA of Russia has finished a comprehensive restoration project for Lomakina’s Residential Building at 20/bldg. 2 Gilyarovsky Street. Managed by GlavUpDK, this identified cultural heritage site is one of the few buildings from the early 20th century in Moscow’s Meshchansky District as before the 1980 Olympics authorities demolished whole blocks of wooden buildings in order to make way for Olympic Sports Complex.
In the early 19th century, the land belonged to an praporshchik’s wife Anna Lomakina. Its southern part had two residential wooden buildings and a one-story house in the post-fire Empire style, and the northern part was occupied by a garden.
Later, the property was inherited by Anna’s grandson, Nikolay Lomakin who expended the site to add two one-story mezzanine houses and, two decades later, a chicken coop, a barn and a well appeared. In 1908, his wife, hereditary noblewoman Ekaterina Lomakina, née Finikova, built a revenue house on this site.
She hired architect Vitaly Maslennikov (1880–1959), who had lots of projects for revenue houses that featured a combination of Art Nouveau elements and national motifs.
Built in 1915, the stone building with a semi-basement was in fact designed in the Northern Art Nouveau style with elements of ancient Russian “terem” architecture. In the Russian Empire, the style, which arose in Scandinavia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, was characteristic primarily of Saint Petersburg, while Muscovites did not like its abundance of massive and “rocky” shapes, so such buildings are quite rare in the capital.
As a result of the restoration project started by GlavUpDK’s Major Projects Department in 2023, the unique building regained its historical appearance —not only its original color scheme as the ochre color was replaced by olive, but also its historic window and door openings, which had been blocked up and altered during the Soviet era.
Its façade is once again decorated with Falconnier glass bricks that had previously been painted over. Invented by Swiss architect and engineer Gustave Falconnier in the 1880s, they were really innovative at that time, but by the 1930s they had fallen out of use as they were too labor-intensive to produce. By order of GlavUpDK, a specialized workshop manufactured 408 blocks of such glass bricks to fill 11 window openings.
The restorers paid special attention to two avant-corps framing the façade on the northern and southern sides. Above the corner bay window (southern avant-corps), they recreated the lost tented roof according to surviving historical photographs; the space beneath the tented roof is glazed to protect it against precipitation. The plaster decor and enameled tiles on the bay window were recreated, too.
The rectangular avant-corps with a terem pediment (north side) is again decorated with elegant windows with four-part glazing at the top, and workers also uncovered and restored the Falconnier glass blocks above the third floor.
The interiors were renovated as well as architects carefully restored two historic staircases that have survived and have also recreated and partially restored the Mettlach tiles of the landings.
Lomakina’s building got adapted to contemporary uses to be quite comfortable for a long time, indeed, as specialists remodeled the sophisticated roof and replaced engineering systems and elevator equipment. Furthermore, it will now be accessible to people with reduced mobility thanks to the very well designed porch, ramp and lifting device.
