Hotel Metropol Moscow

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Hotel Metropol Moscow
Southern facade, 2018
General information
Architectural style	Art nouveau
Town or city	Moscow
Country	Russia
Construction started	1899
Completed	1907
Client	Petersburg Insurance, Savva Mamontov
Technical details
Structural system	Reinforced concrete
Design and construction
Architect	William Walcot, Lev Kekushev, Vladimir Shukhov

The Hotel Metropol Moscow^[1] (Russian: Метропо́ль, IPA: [mʲɪtrɐˈpolʲ]) is a historic hotel in the center of Moscow, Russia, built in 1899–1905 in Art Nouveau style. It is notable as the largest extant Moscow hotel built before the Russian Revolution of 1917, and for the unique collaboration of architects (William Walcot, Lev Kekushev, Vladimir Shukhov) and artists (Mikhail Vrubel, Alexander Golovin, Nikolai Andreev).

Since 2012, the hotel has been owned by Alexander Klyachin, who also is proprietor of the Moscow-based Azimut Hotels chain.^[2][3]

History[]

In 1898, Savva Mamontov and Petersburg Insurance consolidated a large lot of land around the former Chelyshev Hotel. Mamontov, manager and sponsor of Private Opera, intended to redevelop the area into a large cultural center built around an opera hall. In 1898, the professional jury of an open contest awarded the job to Lev Kekushev; however, Mamontov intervened and assigned it to English architect William Walcot, who proposed a refined Art Nouveau draft codenamed A Lady's Head (implying the female head ornament repeating in keystones over arched windows). Mamontov eventually hired Kekushev as a construction manager. Soon, Savva Mamontov was jailed for fraud and the project was taken over by Petersburg Insurance, omitting the original plans for opera hall.^{[citation needed]}

In 1901, the topped-out shell burnt down and had to be rebuilt from scratch in reinforced concrete. Kekushev and Walcot hired a constellation of first-rate artists, notably Mikhail Vrubel for the Princess of Dreams mosaic panel, Alexander Golovin for smaller ceramic panels and sculptor Nikolay Andreyev for plaster friezes. The hotel was completed in 1907. However, it is nowhere near Walcot's original design (Brumfiels, fig.56, compare to actual, fig.59-60).

A notable feature of Metropol is "its lack of any reference to the orders of architecture ... a structural mass shaped without reference to illusionistic systems of support" (Brumfield). The rectangular bulk of Metropol is self-sufficient; it needs no supporting columns. Instead, "Texture and material played a dominant expressive role, exemplified at the Metropole by the progression from an arcade with stone facing on the ground floor to inset windows without decorative frames on the upper floors" (Brumfield).

In 1918, the hotel was nationalized by Bolshevik administration, renamed Second House of Soviets and housed living quarters and offices of growing Soviet bureaucracy. Eventually, in 1930s it was converted to its original hotel function and went through a major restoration in 1986-1991 by Finnish companies as part of Soviet-Finnish bilateral trade.^[4]

Today, Metropol has 365 rooms, and each is different in shape or decoration.^{[citation needed][when?]}

Apocrypha[]

The Canadian businessman Aggie Kukulowicz was at one point in time a hotel resident, while he brokered hockey's 1972 Summit Series between the Red Machine team and the first Team Canada.^[5]

The hotel is the setting of Amor Towles's 2016 novel, A Gentleman in Moscow.^[6]

Gallery[]

• 

  Princess of Dreams

• 

  Southern corner

• 

  Western corner

• 

  Grand Hall of the restaurant

• 

  Northern facade (Teatral`nyy proyezd), 2011

References[]

• William Craft Brumfield, The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture, University of California Press, 1991 chapter 3, fig.56-60

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hotel Metropol (Moscow).

• Official website

Coordinates: 55°45′30″N 37°37′17″E / 55.75833°N 37.62139°E / 55.75833; 37.62139