The cleverest of the sisters in engineering terms. It was built leaning on frozen ground, and the entrance hall of Krasnye Vorota metro station still works inside it.
Outside
The Red Gates skyscraper in summer © Никонико962, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Red Gates skyscraper from the square © Sergey Norin from Moscow, Russia, CC BY 2.0
The skyscraper tower between the side blocks © Sergey Norin from Moscow, Russia, CC BY 2.0
The spire of the Red Gates skyscraper © Doctor Digger Shrew …, CC BY 3.0
The metro entrance in the skyscraper © Никонико962, CC BY-SA 4.0
Metro
Krasnye Vorota metro station © Ludvig14, CC BY-SA 4.0
The building was founded on 7 September 1947 together with the other skyscrapers. It was conceived as an office and apartment building, with offices in the tower and apartments in the side blocks.
© Karl Fischer, Public domainThe main difficulty was the ground. Quicksand lay under the square, and a metro station entrance hall had to be built right under the future skyscraper. To work in such ground it was frozen.
The engineers knew that when the ground thawed it would settle unevenly. So the tower was deliberately built with a slight lean. Once the ground thawed, the building straightened up and stood level, just as calculated.
The skyscraper was completed in 1953. The new entrance hall of Krasnye Vorota station was built right into the base of the building, and it still works today.
The central tower rises in tiers to a spire with a star. The side blocks are lower and form a wide courtyard. The main metro entrance is an arch with granite trim set right into the base of the building.
It is the only one of the seven skyscrapers with a working metro entrance inside.
The offices and apartments are closed to outsiders, but anyone can enter one part of the building.
Open
Krasnye Vorota metro entrance hall © Ludvig14, CC BY-SA 4.0
Krasnye Vorota metro entrance hall © Никонико962, CC BY-SA 4.0
The station entrance is built right into the skyscraper. Go down and see the station itself, one of the first in the Moscow metro, which opened in 1935.
By booking
Engineers, staff of the Ministry of Railways, doctors and teachers settled in the residential wings. The corner apartments went to ministers and their deputies. Here are the best-known residents.
President of the USSR Academy of Sciences
A mathematician and engineer, one of the leading scientists of the space programme. He lived in one of the five-room corner apartments.
Architect of the building
Designer of the Mayakovskaya and Ploshchad Revolyutsii metro stations. He and his family received an apartment in the skyscraper he had designed himself.
Surgeon
One of the best-known surgeons of the twentieth century and chief surgeon of the Sklifosovsky Institute. He was the first in the world to transfuse blood from deceased donors.
Actor
People’s Artist of the USSR and star of the Maxim trilogy, one of the most popular films of the 1930s.
Cinematographer
He shot Vsevolod Pudovkin’s films Mother and Storm over Asia, which have gone down in the history of world cinema.
The composer Mikhail Chulaki, the theatre director Leonid Varpakhovsky and the art historian Alexei Fyodorov-Davydov also lived here.
The ground here is wet and unstable, so it was frozen, and the tower was built leaning by about 16 centimetres. The engineers calculated that after thawing the building would settle and straighten up. And so it did.
The skyscraper stands where General von Toll’s house once was, in which Mikhail Lermontov was born in 1814. Nearby stood the Church of the Three Hierarchs, where the poet was baptised. It was demolished too.
According to the design, sculptures were to decorate the facade, but they were never put up. All that remains of the plan is a huge Soviet coat of arms one and a half floors high and a base of red granite.
The skyscraper stands on the Garden Ring, so it is best photographed from the square and from the opposite side of the street.
View of the skyscraper. The square by the Lermontov monument © Никонико962, CC BY-SA 4.0
View of the skyscraper. The square by the Lermontov monument © Sergey Norin from Moscow, Russia, CC BY 2.0
From the garden with the poet’s monument you see the whole skyscraper, with the garden’s greenery in the frame.
If you stand in the courtyard and point the camera upwards, the blocks frame the tower and its spire.
The skyscraper stands at the highest point of the Garden Ring. If you walk along the ring towards Sukharevskaya, the tower rises above the whole street.
Between Krasnye Vorota and the three railway stations there are many hotels of every level.
The Garden Ring, the metro inside the skyscraper and 15 minutes to the Kremlin by metro.
A quiet boulevard with a pond, cafés and theatres, a 10 minute walk away.
A 15 minute walk away, handy if you arrive by train.
An old district with mansions, Bauman Garden and quiet lanes.
Walking times are from the skyscraper.
The map loads when you tap the button. This keeps the page fast.
Russia, Moscow, Sadovaya-Spasskaya Street 21/1
1Krasnye Vorota0 minutes
Metro line 1 (red).
Moscow State University Main Building
2
Hotel Ukraina
3
Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building
4
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Building
5
Kudrinskaya Square Building
7
Hotel Leningradskaya
Yes. The ground under the building was frozen so that the metro entrance hall could be built. The engineers calculated that it would settle after thawing, and built the tower with a slight lean in advance. When the ground thawed, the building straightened up.
You cannot enter the offices and apartments. But the entrance hall of Krasnye Vorota metro station is right inside the building, and anyone can go in.
138 metres including the spire, with 24 floors in the central tower.
Take the red line to Krasnye Vorota metro station. One of the exits is right inside the building.
The ground under the building was frozen, and after thawing it was expected to settle. So the tower was built leaning by about 16 centimetres, and over time it straightened up.
Staff of the Ministry of Railways, engineers, doctors and teachers, as well as the president of the Academy of Sciences Mstislav Keldysh, the surgeon Sergei Yudin and the actor Boris Chirkov.
