Design

Molly Cule · 61194. Tue Mar 21, 2006 8:44 am

This info could go under drinking but Designs, designers could be a good topic so here goes a thread.

On the label of Stolichnaya vodka is the Hotel Moskva designed by Alexei Shchusev (also built Lenin's Mausoleum). The story goes that Stalin asked Shchusev to draw up plans for the hotel, having looked over various ideas Stalin signed his name to two of the designs. The architect was afraid to ask Stalin which of the two he preferred so he made the building from a combination of the two.

This might not be true of course, but its certainly the story that is put about to explain the different styles of the hotel.

(Most sources say two designs were used, but WKP says four designs were presented, Stalin wrote approved on the front sheet and all four designs were incorporated into four different facades.)

The hotel has been pulled down, but Stolichnaya bottles won't need to change as the plan is to rebuilt the hotel as a replica. Only with less rooms, more luxury. .

When the Hotel was built the KGB insisted that none of the rooms were to look over the Kremlin.

Diplomats, spies, Communist party members were regular clientele. Stalin celebrated birthdays here. Other guests were Pablo Neruda, Robert De Niro, spy Guy Burgess.. Yuri Gagarin stayed after his first space flight in 1961.

Beep · 189358. Mon Jul 09, 2007 7:19 am

Stalin's own dacha was scaled down to his height, as he was a mighty 5'4.