This building is not a cultural heritage site. Although it is a city formation object of historical value
Photo: Alisa TITKO. Go to Photobank KP
Moscow’s main street will soon be transformed: the legendary Central Telegraph and Filippova bakery are being restored. Both facilities are promised to be completed by 2025. We tell you how the historic revival is happening.
Transformation of the main street
Tverskaya has become a tourist street in Moscow in recent years. This is where tourists from all over the world come. The first thing they do, of course, is Red Square. As a rule, this path runs along Tverskaya Street.
Today, the street has a fairly standard offering: grocery stores, banks, cafes, jewelry stores. Although Muscovites remember how fashionable Tverskaya was in the 90s, the only comfortable place in Moscow. Rich women came here because there were expensive boutiques here: they brought the clothes from the United States and they had to pay in dollars. Nearby is the Intourist Hotel, where foreigners and businessmen stayed. Ordinary Muscovites wanted a glimpse of how luxurious their life was. Restaurants “Meeting Place”, “Etazh”, “Pyramid” attracted artists and stars of show business. So there was nowhere to go to walk. Now in Moscow there are parks and embankments in good condition. And then everyone ran to elegant Tverskaya.
Then the brand’s stores were moved to Stoleshnikov, on Bolshaya Dmitrovka, as the Tverskaya parking lots were moved to the nearest side streets. And fashionistas moved to elegant Ostozhenka: expensive housing had just been built there and pretentious restaurants began to open. Later it became fashionable to hang out in the art space “Strelka” on Bersenevskaya embankment, now in Patriki. And they forgot about Tverskaya.
– Several legendary places have recently left Tverskaya: the Mumiy Troll musical bar-restaurant, Eliseevsky, has closed, although the same store operates in St. Petersburg. And Tverskaya became a simple street; Muscovites rarely come here for walks. Cafes do not take root here, tenants often change due to high prices, there are practically no historical places left on Tverskaya, so the revival of Telegraph and Filippov bakery could revitalize the main street,” Irina Rozova, specialist in restaurant public relations. , she told KP.RU.
How the legend went
There have been many attempts to restore Filippov’s bakery with the Lux hotel, but so far no investor has been able to complete the work. The building number 10 on Tverskaya Street has been behind scaffolding for more than fifteen years.
The new investor took on the project immediately after the pandemic and wanted to open the bakery in 2024, but has already pushed back the deadline to 2025. The building is planned to be rebuilt: it will now be a hotel complex with apartments, keeping the bakery on the ground floor.
– This building is not a cultural heritage site. Although it is a city-forming object of historical value. The main façade helps shape the appearance of Tverskaya Street, the Moscow City Heritage Department told KP.RU.
But tour guides still stop near the abandoned building and describe the aroma of raisin buns, rolls and saits emanating from Ivan Filippov’s bakery.
“In fact, the new owner will not disturb the history, because in this building there has been a bakery since 1837 and in 1911 the Lux hotel with 550 beds was added,” says private guide Yulia Mirova.
Will it be possible to revive Filippov’s bakery, where Muscovites bought pies with Voronezh apples and Vyatka cranberries? I want to believe.
– By 1905, the bakery had become a popular place where people would line up in the morning to buy bread, bagels and pastries. There were both rich and poor. Only for the governor’s table they baked separately. In the bakery itself there were several tables, here people prepared dates and invited the ladies to eat pies, small businessmen from the stock market gathered and came from the hippodrome to eat fried pies with mushrooms and meat, says Yulia Mirova.
The Tverskaya bakery survived until 2000. Of course, there is no trace of Ivan Filippov’s legendary bakery there, but the truth is that here you could buy a bagel with poppy seeds, raisins or a loaf of bread. In 2007, the building was declared unsafe and was covered with scaffolding. Today, few people even remember what the historic building looks like.
– On the left side of the building, in addition to the bakery, there was also a hotel, which after nationalization in 1917 was renamed “Lux”. Foreign delegations and leaders of the communist party lived here. Fans of Sergei Yesenin know that the poet also stayed here in 1919. After 15 years, the building was made taller, floors were added, and in 1954 the hotel was named “Central,” says Yulia Mirova.
The new investor aims to partially preserve the appearance of the historic building and selects the colors of the facade. The building itself will have 116 apartments and 53 hotel rooms, a bakery and a cafe with an entrance from Tverskaya Street. All work is planned to be completed in the second quarter of 2025.
