21/01/2021
Near the Novodevichy Convent, on Pogodinskaya street there is an amazing beautiful small little blue house - Pogodinskaya izba. Surrounded by typical research institutes, the house looks like a toy and does not fit into the modern urban landscape. It seems that this house, like in the Emerald City fairy tale, was brought here by some unknown force.
Few people know of the existence of this building and of the fact that it is one of the oldest surviving wooden buildings in Moscow. Pogodinskaya izba is more than 150 years old. It was built in 1856 by architect Nikolai Nikitin and presented to Mikhail Pogodin (Professor of the Moscow State University, historian, journalist) by a major Russian businessman Vasily Kokorev as a tribute to the interest of the famous historian to folk architecture and art. It was one of the two wings of the main manor house. It is conceived as a program product of "Russian style" and is built in the forms of people’s wooden architecture. It is a tall log construction with the attic on the second floor, decorated with patterned sawed carving (all the small details of the outside of the Russian izba - shutters, "towels", "valances") made on the basis, presumably, of the drawings of Knyaz (Prince) G. Gagarin.
Izba served as an antique vault where Pogodin was keeping the historical relics. Slavophil gatherings were held here with participation of Samarin, Khomyakov, Chizhov. It was a prominent literary salon of Moscow: Nikolai Gogol (he wrote the first volume of the "Dead Souls" here, edited "Taras Bulba" and also celebrated the Nameday), A.Ostrovsky, F. Tyutchev, P.Chaadaev, M.Zagoskin, A.Pisemsky, E.Baratynsky, M. Schepkin, P. Vyazemsky, K. and S.Aksakov and other writers and artists visited the place permanently.
In 1941, during the Great Patriotic War, the main manor house was bombed and destroyed, and the izba was severely damaged. Only in 1972, the building was renovated by the All-Russian Society for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments, and then the izba housed the district office of Moscow VOOPIiK (All-Russian Society for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments) and lectures were held there. Before the reforms and privatization Moscovites were visiting the house to listen to an interesting lecture, or the sounds of an old piano. Then izba was closed for a few years, gradually collapsing. Now it looks quite decent, but has lost its cultural purpose - as most of the historic buildings of Moscow, izba was given to offices.