History of the House

The site of Narkomfin has been important to Muscovites since the early 15th century, when it was the site of Novinsky Monastery, dissolved in 1764. Due to its connection to the former monastery it became the site of the annual Novinsky Fête, that took place during Holy Week. Before the first real railway was built in Moscow, a steam train was tested out here during the 1841 fête when the public could ride a few metres to the sound of a military band. Over the years, the fête was attended by Pushkin, Griboedov, Herzen, Dostoevsky and Glinka among others.

Thus the site has long been a place of communality and experimentation, qualities that were to be born again in the Narkomfin project.

The fête stopped being held on the site in the 1870s when Novinsky Boulevard was constructed over part of it.

The site for Narkomfin was chosen in conjunction with the Soviet Commissar for Finance, Nikolai Milyutin, for the greenness of the area. At that time, it was on the edge of the city centre: the outside perimeter of the Garden Ring. Also, because it is on a slope, and the area to the west was largely low-rise, it offered uninterrupted views of the Moskva River at sunset. The building is on an east-west axis allowing the view and the light to fill the windows of all the apartments in the evening. Milyutin wrote in his book “Sotsgorod” of the importance of setting housing in lines so people could see nature from their windows, rather than other houses.

Although the development of their theoretical thinking for Narkomfin started much earlier, Ginzburg and Milinis began work on the actual project in 1928 and were given the plot of land on Novinsky Boulevard on 2nd April 1929. Despite a lack of confirmation from the Administration of Construction Drawings Control, the first cement was poured for the foundations of Narkomfin, and on 12th July 1929 construction began. (Prokhorov, the engineer was even fined 100 roubles for starting work without permission!)

Three different plans were developed for the site, which entailed clearing the site entirely of the houses and the courtyards that existed on them (including the wings and courtyard of Feodor Shalyapin’s house that backed on to the site). This is where a park, kindergarten and laundry were to be created. In the end nothing was demolished to make way for the Narkomfin complex. The kindergarten was never built; only a laundry block.

The apartment block was completed in the middle of 1930, soon followed by the utilities block, which was built without confirmed construction drawings.

Narkomfin was handed over to its client at a time of crisis within the architectural profession in the 1930s. In April 1932 all architectural groups were banned and a single Union of Soviet architects was created with the task of defining a new Soviet architecture. Constructivism and rationalism were given the negative label of ‘formalism’ and were condemned as ‘foreign imports,’ and not indigenously Russian. A new policy, calling for the ‘mastery of classical heritage’ was announced in architecture, marking a return to Neoclassicism.

The fact that Narkomfin failed in its function as a transitional communal housing block also explains why it has been neglected over the years. The building never achieved the communality that Ginzburg intended for it, meaning that on a certain level it was rejected by its own inhabitants. The balcony on the first floor intended for conversation quickly became storage space; the roof garden was never completed and the communal dining room barely used. In his book, 'Housing', Ginzburg called the utilities block 'before its time.' Although people were happy to buy their meals from the canteen, they chose not to eat together, but to take their food back to their apartments and eat separately. The only successful communal facilities were the laundry and the kindergarten.

By the mid thirties the canteen was being little used and was closed. People used their small kitchen niches in their own apartments. The increasing paranoia of Stalin's Russia affected the inhabitants of Narkomfin, after all they worked together and lived together. The Finance Commisariat was one of the more dangerous places to work in the 1930s and there were denuciations which led to arrests in Narkomfin. In such a climate, people strived for privacy.This left the building vulnerable to clumsy additions and changes of function, like the filling in of the ground floor and the addition of another floor on the utilities block.

Ginzburg had a studio in Narkomfin during the period of its construction. Nikolai Milyutin lived in his 'penthouse' apartment with his family until his death in 1941. His daughter, Kathy Rapoport-Milyutina lived in the apartment with her husband until they emigrated to the United States in 1980. Approximately half of the building's apartments are still inhabited.

Narkomfin: Historical Chronicle

Clementine Cecil