Park Kultury-Radialnaya

Park Kultury ( _ru. Парк Культу́ры, lit. "Park of Culture") is a station on Moscow Metro's Sokolnicheskaya Line. Named after the nearby Maxim Gorky Park of Culture and Leisure located across the Moskva River, the station was opened along with the first stage of the metro on May 15, 1935.

The construction of the station began in the spring of 1933. From the very start it was clear that construction of this final station would not be an easy task. Being only several hundred metres from the bank of the Moskva river, the soil was particularly damp with the level of subterranean waters being higher than the future ceiling of the station.

Even more important was the fact that the station is situated under the Crimean Square (Krymskaya Ploshchad) of the Sadovoye Koltso's intersection with the southwestern Ostozhenka Street/Komsomolsky Avenue and thus being an important traffic hub. Before the pit of the station was excavated along its future perimeter, metallic casts reinforced by solid logs with caulked slits between them were forced into the ground, and abyssal water lowering was employed as the pit was slowly excavated to its required depth. All of this was necessary to prevent the flooding of the pit, which would also fraught with subsidence and even destruction of nearby houses. As soon as this was completed, a wooden bridge was erected on street level to prevent traffic disruption. Moreover, most of the works were carried out at nighttime, as the loud steamy machinery would have certainly made chaos to the residents nearby. Nevertheless, despite all these difficulties the station was completed in eleven months during which time 100,000 cubic metres of soil was removed from the pit and replaced with 25,000 cubic metres of concrete. The station is a bilevel pillar-trispan with four footbridges above the platforms. Architects Krutikov and Popov chose a decoration inspired by ancient Greek elements. Along the platform two rows of 22 pilars are faced with Crimean marble "Kadykovka" and are topped with moulded сapitals. Along the walls a set of dark rose-coloured mosaic pilasters, repeat the step of the pillars (every seven metres) blending very well with the porcelain tiles that the rest of the wall area is faced with. Also, a dark brown mosaic socle runs below the platform level along both walls. A total of 1500 and 200 square metres of marble and porcelain tiles respectively were used in the decorations

The footbridges, which lead to the vestibules, are separately decorated with red metaloplastic tiles and moulded white balustrade with marbled railings. The walls of the corridors leading to the vestbules are reveted with white uralian "koelga" marble. The station originally had two vestibules, one of which, a distinctive rotunda building still stands on the corner between Ostozhenka street and Novokrymskiy side-street. The second vestibule used to stand on the corner of Komsmolskiy Avenue and Sadovoye Koltso. The ticket hall was faced with brown ural "ufaley" marble and had four welded octagonal columns faced with white "koelga" marble. The ticket offices themselves were built out of polished oak. This vestibule was pulled down in 1949 when a newer, larger vestibule was erected in its place and the old corridors were integrated into it. The vestibule also offers a transfer to the Koltsevaya Line which was opened in 1950. This station is one of the few surviving of the first stage that remained more or less unchanged since opening (compared with Lubyanka or Chistiye Prudy), except for resurfacing the platform with granite (instead of original asphalt) and lighting. The latter consisted of very beautiful chandeliers in the central span and semi-circular lamps made of milk-white glass in side naves. However, with the introduction of luminescent lamps, the chandeliers and the lamps in the naves completely removed. However, the new lighting instruments managed to organically fit in with the architectural composition and do not appear out of place like on Kievskaya (Filyovskaya) which had an analogous makeover.

When the station opened in 1935, it was also the terminus of the Frunze Branch of the first stage (and from 1938 - Kirovsko-Furnzenskaya Line. Although the plans did call for the station to have a four-track reversal siding, this was not finished until 1937, and a temporary piston junction was instead installed before the platform to allow reversal of the trains. The station ceased to be the terminus in 1957 upon the extension of the Frunzenskiy radius southwestward to Sportivnaya.

When the station was opened, it had quite a long name: Tsentralnyi Park Kultury i Otdykha imeni Gorkovo (The Maxim Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure). However, even on schematics it was abbreviated as TsPKiO and only in voice announcements called in the full name. In 1980, with the coming of the Olympic games in Moscow, the name was shortened to avoid the would-be lengthy trilingual station callings, although some signs still bear the original long version of the name.

Presently the station is receiving quite a high passenger traffic with 107,700 people from the Park Kultury on the Ring Line, although only 9,650 via the surface vestibule daily.

External links

* [http://www.metro.ru/stations/sokolnicheskaya/park_kultury/ Description of the station on Metro.ru] (in Russian)
* [http://www.mymetro.ru/cgi-bin/list.pl?lng=ru&a=1&b=1&c=13 Description of the station on Mymetro.ru] (in Russian)
* [http://metro.molot.ru/st_sl_park_kultury.shtml Description on Metro.molot.ru] (in Russian)
* [http://www.kartametro.info/?hl=EN&ms=ParkKultury&z=17&t=k KartaMetro.info] — Station location and exits on Moscow map (English/Russian)