What we collect!

 

Stamporama Discussion Board Logo
For People Who Love To Talk About Stamps
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Stamporama Discussion Board Logo
For People Who Love To Talk About Stamps
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Stamporama Discussion Board Logo
For People Who Love To Talk About Stamps



What we collect!
What we collect!


Europe/Russia : 90% of People Couldn't Identify This Building!!

 

Author
Postings
Guthrum
Members Picture


03 Feb 2018
02:02:15pm
Image Not Found

Well, an exaggeration, perhaps. But Stanley Gibbons, Colnect and Wikipedia Commons all identify it differently. Can you do better?

The stamp comes from the 1937 set generally known as "Architecture of the New Moscow" (Gibbons helpfully reminds us that it was issued on the occasion of the 1st Soviet Architectural Congress.)

The five buildings depicted, with the exception of Boris Iofan's well-documented and ultimately doomed Palace of the Soviets, took me some time to track down on the internet. They are all fantastical, skyscraperish constructions, often never finished, or long since demolished, and only one (the former Red Army Theatre) apparently still standing.

Gibbons states that this one is "G.P.O.".

Colnect has "Building - TASS".

Wikipedia has "Telegraph Agency House".

(Stampworld catalogue has nothing.)

Has anyone any better information, perhaps from other catalogues?

Like
Login to Like
this post
CF1957

03 Feb 2018
04:29:09pm
re: 90% of People Couldn't Identify This Building!!

Victor Lyapin Catalog 1856-1991

Image Not Found

Like 
2 Members
like this post.
Login to Like.
Guthrum
Members Picture


04 Feb 2018
05:43:27am
re: 90% of People Couldn't Identify This Building!!

Thanks for posting that, Charles. It would seem that Colnect and Wikipedia share the Lyapin attribution, which leaves Gibbons slightly out on a limb.

Nevertheless, it is clear that the building depicted on the stamp was either never completed, or since reconstructed, or demolished, as the current TASS building bears no resemblance to it. Sadly the TASS website (while showing its current HQ as 'historic TASS headquarters in Moscow') has no information on the 1937 version (if it ever existed other than as an artist's impression) at all. It remains the only depiction in that set about which I can find no information.

Like
Login to Like
this post
doomboy
Members Picture


04 Feb 2018
08:54:06am
re: 90% of People Couldn't Identify This Building!!

As Guthrum pointed out, most of these buildings were never built. Stalin had an ambitious building program of monumental structures which never got off the drawing board, or if they did, were curtailed in their construction.

Some of them would have been spectacular:

https://www.rbth.com/multimedia/pictures/2013/04/01/never_built_projects_of_soviet_moscow_24495

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/mar/08/imagine-moscow-city-new-soviets-design-museum-in-pictures

Like 
1 Member
likes this post.
Login to Like.
Guthrum
Members Picture


04 Feb 2018
10:05:17am
re: 90% of People Couldn't Identify This Building!!

And there, in your first link, is the supposed "Telegraph Office"!

Image Not Found

This is clearly the one featured on the 5k. and 15k. stamp in the 1937 set, shown on my original post, only now, according to the "Russia Beyond" website, it is the "Dom Knigi", or "Home of the Book".

It is good to have an alternative (and rather better) illustration of this building, and even the name of the architect, Ilya Golosov. His Wikipedia page lists this as an "unrealized draft" of the "OGIZ publishing building, 1932". OGIZ was the Soviet state book and magazine publisher. This is some way away from the philatelic attributions I have already mentioned!

The current Moscow Dom Knigi is nothing like this one, an expansive, low-rise building, and evidently a bookshop rather than a publishing HQ.

Thanks, doomboy, for helping to solve this one - I envisage yet another fruitless missive to Stanley Gibbons' Russian catalogue compilers! (As well as a redesign of my album page...)

(Did we ever establish how Scott describes the building? Maybe they got it right!)

Like 
2 Members
like this post.
Login to Like.
Philatarium
Members Picture


APS #187980

04 Feb 2018
10:36:33am
re: 90% of People Couldn't Identify This Building!!

A fascinating topic!

Scott identifies the stamps as follows:

- 3k & 10k: Tchaikovsky Concert Hall
- 5k & 15k: Telegraph Agency House
- 20k & 50k: Red Army Theater
- 30k: Hotel Moscow
- 40k: Palace of the Soviets


(Scott 597-604)

Like
Login to Like
this post

"You gotta put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone. (Hoots the Owl -- Sesame Street)"

www.hipstamp.com/store/the-philatarium
Guthrum
Members Picture


04 Feb 2018
11:03:45am
re: 90% of People Couldn't Identify This Building!!

For the benefit of collectors who use Scott, the appellation "Tchaikovsky Concert Hall" actually refers to the building subsequently established in 1940, using some of the interiors but not the exterior of the Meyerhold Theatre - a project planned by the great director himself and drawn up by the architects Shchusev, Barkhin and Vakhtangov. Work ceased on this project when Vsevelov Meyerhold was arrested and murdered in 1940, a late victim of Stalin's purges.

Like 
1 Member
likes this post.
Login to Like.
nigelc
Members Picture


04 Feb 2018
11:38:35am
re: 90% of People Couldn't Identify This Building!!

Hi Guthrum,

Here's another link, this time to an archived Russian blog:

https://archive.li/20121130093611/http://19-35.blogspot.de/2012/02/blog-post_02.html

This shows images of the OGIZ House of Books and the TASS building.

Like 
1 Member
likes this post.
Login to Like.
        

 

Author/Postings
Members Picture
Guthrum

03 Feb 2018
02:02:15pm

Image Not Found

Well, an exaggeration, perhaps. But Stanley Gibbons, Colnect and Wikipedia Commons all identify it differently. Can you do better?

The stamp comes from the 1937 set generally known as "Architecture of the New Moscow" (Gibbons helpfully reminds us that it was issued on the occasion of the 1st Soviet Architectural Congress.)

The five buildings depicted, with the exception of Boris Iofan's well-documented and ultimately doomed Palace of the Soviets, took me some time to track down on the internet. They are all fantastical, skyscraperish constructions, often never finished, or long since demolished, and only one (the former Red Army Theatre) apparently still standing.

Gibbons states that this one is "G.P.O.".

Colnect has "Building - TASS".

Wikipedia has "Telegraph Agency House".

(Stampworld catalogue has nothing.)

Has anyone any better information, perhaps from other catalogues?

Like
Login to Like
this post
CF1957

03 Feb 2018
04:29:09pm

re: 90% of People Couldn't Identify This Building!!

Victor Lyapin Catalog 1856-1991

Image Not Found

Like 
2 Members
like this post.
Login to Like.
Members Picture
Guthrum

04 Feb 2018
05:43:27am

re: 90% of People Couldn't Identify This Building!!

Thanks for posting that, Charles. It would seem that Colnect and Wikipedia share the Lyapin attribution, which leaves Gibbons slightly out on a limb.

Nevertheless, it is clear that the building depicted on the stamp was either never completed, or since reconstructed, or demolished, as the current TASS building bears no resemblance to it. Sadly the TASS website (while showing its current HQ as 'historic TASS headquarters in Moscow') has no information on the 1937 version (if it ever existed other than as an artist's impression) at all. It remains the only depiction in that set about which I can find no information.

Like
Login to Like
this post
Members Picture
doomboy

04 Feb 2018
08:54:06am

re: 90% of People Couldn't Identify This Building!!

As Guthrum pointed out, most of these buildings were never built. Stalin had an ambitious building program of monumental structures which never got off the drawing board, or if they did, were curtailed in their construction.

Some of them would have been spectacular:

https://www.rbth.com/multimedia/pictures/2013/04/01/never_built_projects_of_soviet_moscow_24495

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/mar/08/imagine-moscow-city-new-soviets-design-museum-in-pictures

Like 
1 Member
likes this post.
Login to Like.
Members Picture
Guthrum

04 Feb 2018
10:05:17am

re: 90% of People Couldn't Identify This Building!!

And there, in your first link, is the supposed "Telegraph Office"!

Image Not Found

This is clearly the one featured on the 5k. and 15k. stamp in the 1937 set, shown on my original post, only now, according to the "Russia Beyond" website, it is the "Dom Knigi", or "Home of the Book".

It is good to have an alternative (and rather better) illustration of this building, and even the name of the architect, Ilya Golosov. His Wikipedia page lists this as an "unrealized draft" of the "OGIZ publishing building, 1932". OGIZ was the Soviet state book and magazine publisher. This is some way away from the philatelic attributions I have already mentioned!

The current Moscow Dom Knigi is nothing like this one, an expansive, low-rise building, and evidently a bookshop rather than a publishing HQ.

Thanks, doomboy, for helping to solve this one - I envisage yet another fruitless missive to Stanley Gibbons' Russian catalogue compilers! (As well as a redesign of my album page...)

(Did we ever establish how Scott describes the building? Maybe they got it right!)

Like 
2 Members
like this post.
Login to Like.
Members Picture
Philatarium

APS #187980
04 Feb 2018
10:36:33am

re: 90% of People Couldn't Identify This Building!!

A fascinating topic!

Scott identifies the stamps as follows:

- 3k & 10k: Tchaikovsky Concert Hall
- 5k & 15k: Telegraph Agency House
- 20k & 50k: Red Army Theater
- 30k: Hotel Moscow
- 40k: Palace of the Soviets


(Scott 597-604)

Like
Login to Like
this post

"You gotta put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone. (Hoots the Owl -- Sesame Street)"

www.hipstamp.com/sto ...
Members Picture
Guthrum

04 Feb 2018
11:03:45am

re: 90% of People Couldn't Identify This Building!!

For the benefit of collectors who use Scott, the appellation "Tchaikovsky Concert Hall" actually refers to the building subsequently established in 1940, using some of the interiors but not the exterior of the Meyerhold Theatre - a project planned by the great director himself and drawn up by the architects Shchusev, Barkhin and Vakhtangov. Work ceased on this project when Vsevelov Meyerhold was arrested and murdered in 1940, a late victim of Stalin's purges.

Like 
1 Member
likes this post.
Login to Like.
Members Picture
nigelc

04 Feb 2018
11:38:35am

re: 90% of People Couldn't Identify This Building!!

Hi Guthrum,

Here's another link, this time to an archived Russian blog:

https://archive.li/20121130093611/http://19-35.blogspot.de/2012/02/blog-post_02.html

This shows images of the OGIZ House of Books and the TASS building.

Like 
1 Member
likes this post.
Login to Like.
        

Contact Webmaster | Visitors Online | Unsubscribe Emails | Facebook


User Agreement

Copyright © 2024 Stamporama.com