Pushkinskaya (Moscow Metro)

Pushkinskaya ( _ru. Пушкинская) is a station on Moscow Metro's Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line. Opened on December 17, 1975, along with Kuznetsky Most as the segment which linked the Zhdanovskaya and Krasnopresnenskaya Lines into one. Like with its neighbour, the station was a trivault collumn type, which was not seen in Moscow since the 1950s. Arguably the most beautiful station on the Line, the architects Vdovin and Bazhenov took every effort to make it appear as a 'classical' 19th century setting. The central hall lighting is done by styalised 19th century chandeliers with two rows of plafonds appearing like candles, the side platforms have candlesticks with similar plafonds. The columns, covered with 'Koelga' white marble are decorated with palm leaf reliefs and the grey marble walls are decorated with brass measured insertions based on the works of the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, the grey granite floor compleate the masterpiece. Architecturally the station put the final stop to the functionality economy design of the 1960s and backslashes Nikita Khrushchev's policy of struggle with decorative 'extras', which left the stations of 1958–59 greatly altered in their design.

The station's original vestibule, with its magnificent cessoned ceiling from anodized aluminium (architects Demchinskiy and Kollesnikov) is situated under the Pushkin Square of the Boulevard ring, the centre of Moscow's nightlife, and is linked with subways to the square and to the Tverskaya avenue. In 1979 it was combined with the Gorkovskaya (now Tverskaya station of the Zamoskvoretskaya Line. The opposite end was decorated by a bust of the great poet himself (architect — Shumakov), however in 1987 a pathway was opened to the underground vestibule of the two escalator cascades of the Chekhovskaya station of the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line. The bust was moved into a combined vestibule built into the office building of the newspaper Izvestia on the Strastnoi Boulevard of the Boulevard ring. Transfer to the stations is possible to bypass the vestibule via the lyre fenced ladders leading from the middle of the columns.

The transfer point, known originally for the three writers and poets (Alexander Pushkin, Maxim Gorky, Anton Chekhov) until 1991 following the original streets' Ulitsa Gorkova renaming to Tverskaya and hence the station, is one of the busiest in Moscow. The Pushkinskaya receives a daily load of 46,770 via the vestibules, 170,000 to the Tverskaya and 212,000 to the Chekhovskaya station.

External links

* [http://news.metro.ru/f710.html Yuriy Gridchin's site]
* [http://www.mymetro.ru/cgi-bin/list.pl?lng=ru&a=1&b=7&c=11 mymetro.ru]
* [http://www.kartametro.info/?hl=EN&ms=Pushkinskaya&z=17&t=k KartaMetro.info] — Station location and exits on Moscow map (English/Russian)