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Lubyanka Building
Lubyanka (Russian: Лубянка, IPA: [lʊˈbʲankə]) is the popular name for the building which contains the headquarters of the FSB on Lubyanka Square in the Meshchansky District of Moscow, Russia. It is a large Neo-Baroque building with a facade of yellow brick designed by Alexander V. Ivanov in 1897 and augmented by Aleksey Shchusev from 1940 to 1947. It was previously the national headquarters of the KGB. Soviet hammer and sickles can still be seen on the building's facade.
The Lubyanka building is home to the Lubyanka prison, the headquarters of the Border Guard Service, a KGB museum and a subsection of the FSB. Part of the prison was turned into a prison museum, but a special authorization is required for visits.
The lower floors are made of granite with emblazoned Soviet crests.
The Lubyanka was originally built in 1898 as a revenue house by the All-Russia Insurance Company (Rossiya Insurance Company), on the spot where Catherine the Great had once headquartered her secret police. The building was designed by the architect Alexander V. Ivanov. It is noted for its parquet floors and pale green walls. Belying its massiveness, the edifice avoids an impression of heroic scale: isolated Palladian and Baroque details, such as the minute pediments over the corner bays and the central loggia, are lost in an endlessly repeating palace facade where three bands of cornices emphasize the horizontal lines. A clock is centered in the uppermost band of the facade.
A fountain used to stand in front of the building, at the center of Lubyanka Square.
Following the Bolshevik Revolution, in 1918 the structure was taken over by the government, for use as the headquarters of the secret police, then called the Cheka. The prison became operational in 1920. Its prisoners included Boris Savinkov, Osip Mandelstam, Gen. Władysław Anders, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In Soviet Russian jokes, it was referred to as "the tallest building in Moscow", since Siberia (a euphemism for the Gulag labour camp system) could be seen from its basement. The prison is on the top floor, but since there are no windows on that floor, most prisoners, and therefore popular conception, thought they were being detained in its basement.
During the Great Purge, the offices became increasingly cramped due to staff numbers. In 1940, Aleksey Shchusev was commissioned to enlarge the building. By 1947, his new design had doubled Lubyanka's size horizontally, with the original structure taking up the left half of the facade (as viewed from the street). He added another storey and extended the structure by incorporating backstreet buildings. Shchusev's design accentuated Neo-Renaissance detailing, but only the right part of the facade was constructed under his direction in the 1940s, due to the war and other hindrances.
Raoul Wallenberg was detained in the Lubyanka prison, where he reportedly died in 1947. According to the KGB, prisoners' interrogations stopped at Lubyanka in 1953 after the death of Stalin.
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Lubyanka Building
Lubyanka (Russian: Лубянка, IPA: [lʊˈbʲankə]) is the popular name for the building which contains the headquarters of the FSB on Lubyanka Square in the Meshchansky District of Moscow, Russia. It is a large Neo-Baroque building with a facade of yellow brick designed by Alexander V. Ivanov in 1897 and augmented by Aleksey Shchusev from 1940 to 1947. It was previously the national headquarters of the KGB. Soviet hammer and sickles can still be seen on the building's facade.
The Lubyanka building is home to the Lubyanka prison, the headquarters of the Border Guard Service, a KGB museum and a subsection of the FSB. Part of the prison was turned into a prison museum, but a special authorization is required for visits.
The lower floors are made of granite with emblazoned Soviet crests.
The Lubyanka was originally built in 1898 as a revenue house by the All-Russia Insurance Company (Rossiya Insurance Company), on the spot where Catherine the Great had once headquartered her secret police. The building was designed by the architect Alexander V. Ivanov. It is noted for its parquet floors and pale green walls. Belying its massiveness, the edifice avoids an impression of heroic scale: isolated Palladian and Baroque details, such as the minute pediments over the corner bays and the central loggia, are lost in an endlessly repeating palace facade where three bands of cornices emphasize the horizontal lines. A clock is centered in the uppermost band of the facade.
A fountain used to stand in front of the building, at the center of Lubyanka Square.
Following the Bolshevik Revolution, in 1918 the structure was taken over by the government, for use as the headquarters of the secret police, then called the Cheka. The prison became operational in 1920. Its prisoners included Boris Savinkov, Osip Mandelstam, Gen. Władysław Anders, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In Soviet Russian jokes, it was referred to as "the tallest building in Moscow", since Siberia (a euphemism for the Gulag labour camp system) could be seen from its basement. The prison is on the top floor, but since there are no windows on that floor, most prisoners, and therefore popular conception, thought they were being detained in its basement.
During the Great Purge, the offices became increasingly cramped due to staff numbers. In 1940, Aleksey Shchusev was commissioned to enlarge the building. By 1947, his new design had doubled Lubyanka's size horizontally, with the original structure taking up the left half of the facade (as viewed from the street). He added another storey and extended the structure by incorporating backstreet buildings. Shchusev's design accentuated Neo-Renaissance detailing, but only the right part of the facade was constructed under his direction in the 1940s, due to the war and other hindrances.
Raoul Wallenberg was detained in the Lubyanka prison, where he reportedly died in 1947. According to the KGB, prisoners' interrogations stopped at Lubyanka in 1953 after the death of Stalin.