Miraculous rescue of the wooden tower

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Near Kostroma, a businessman with his own money saved an architectural treasure of the pre-revolutionary era.

It was like in a fairy tale: the age-old pines parted and a tower appeared in the middle of a dense forest. And there is not a soul around for tens of kilometers! This pearl of Russian architecture was saved by Moscow businessman Andrey Pavlyuchenkov. I could have bought a yacht or a villa on the French Riviera. But you will not find such beauty either in Nice, or even on Rublevka.

Chukhloma is not an oriental dish. A tiny town in the very heart of the Kostroma region. 5, 5 thousand inhabitants. But a century ago, merchant life was in full swing here. The famous golden crucians from the Chukhloma lake were served on the table to the emperor himself. One of the local wealthy people was Martyan Sazonov. Himself a serf, he had a construction workshop in St. Petersburg. In a simple way, he was the foreman of the finishers. I have saved up a lot of capital. According to one version, he worked with his team on the construction of the Russian pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris. There he met the architect Ropet. How the tower project came to Sazonov is a mystery shrouded in darkness. Did you buy, spied, borrowed out of friendship? We will never know this again.

After the death of his wife in 1895, he returned to his native village Astashovo, near Chukhloma. He married the deacon's daughter again and decided to surprise his wife, and the whole Chukhloma district. The construction of the miracle tower began.

The author of the tower is the famous architect Ropet (real name Ivan Petrov. Then, as now in pop music, it was fashionable to distort names in a foreign way). Ropet-Petrov was the founder of the “pseudo-Russian style” in architecture. The whole world admired his Russian pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris. The Nizhny Novgorod fair also did not go without his project. And the Chukhloma tower is a hunting lodge for Alexander III in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The house was never built. But the project was not lost.

… 35 workers were dragging a giant 37-meter pine tree to the building site. Behind him was a barrel of beer to quench his thirst. Friends of Martyan came to the bookmark. They put the cap in a circle. It was instantly filled with gold pieces. They were laid in the foundation - for good luck.

Terem was unique not only for its time. What is the heating system worth! Seven "Dutch women" with tiles let heat through ingenious chimneys. They say that the chimney began to smoke only two hours after kindling - the house was heated so intricately.

The priests scolded Martyan for nothing. The golden spire played in the sun and was visible seven miles away. The worshipers put crosses on it, confusing it with a temple. They prayed to God, but in fact to Martyan …

Martyan lived with his huge family really happily and died in September 14th year. True, local historians cannot find his grave. But that there is a grave! We lost a whole tower in Soviet times!

And it was like that. Collectivization in a spacious mansion housed the collective farm board with a cinema booth and a post office. Visiting commissars lodged. And then, when the course went to the consolidation of farms, the Astashovo village ceased to exist. The peasants dismantled their houses and moved closer to the main estate. They forgot about the tower for half a century.

And he stood alone in a pine forest. Overgrown with birches. The tower lopsided. And only in this century, tireless jippers occasionally stumbled upon him and, to everyone's amazement, posted pictures on Instagram. One of these posts was read by a young Moscow businessman, Andrei Pavlyuchenkov. He himself is terribly fond of travel and adventure. So I went to Chukhloma.

- Terem amazed me, - says Andrey. - The volunteers organized themselves on the Internet. For three years we drove and tried to put the building in order. In Galich, a crane was hired to strengthen the tower. But it became clear that serious restoration was indispensable. They were looking for oligarchs to buy and take this dying treasure to their place in Rublevka. There were none. Then I bought the land with the tower and started restoration. I will say so, if not for the enthusiasm of the volunteers, the deal would not have taken place. The local leadership went forward. We were just lucky.

First of all, the mansion itself was lucky. Andrei paved a road through the dense forest. Provided electricity. I disassembled the tower by logs and took it out for restoration. Now the tower is as good as new. Finishing work is underway inside. This year Andrei will open a guest house and a museum in his terem. For the exposition, Pavlyuchenkov travels around local villages and obtains exhibits - spinning wheels, benches, chests of drawers and samovars.