Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
It's a set of eight stamps, but for reasons I haven't found out yet, one of these buildings never got beyond the foundation stage. They were all begun in the years of post-war euphoria and rebuilding, when the Soviets, victorious in the war, sought to match anything the USA had achieved hitherto, not least in the area of architectural grandiloquence. They took around seven years to complete, and they still tower over the capital, now as hotels, government offices or residential buildings. Depending on your taste, they are either magnificent, or magnificently dreadful.
The stamps, issued in December 1950, i.e. roughly midway between foundation and topping out, are necessarily based on architectural designs, all the work of different architects. The odd one out is the red stamp, intended for the Zaryadye area of Moscow. In the 1960s they built a hotel on the same site, but that suffered a devastating fire ten years later and was closed in 2006. It's now a park and cultural centre.
Why did the '32-storey Administrative Building, Zaryadye' literally never get off the ground? Why did they include an eighth stamp? That one will take a bit of research.
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interesting set Guthrum! 
Here's a little from Wikipedia about the "eighth sister":
"The Eighth Sister is the unbuilt project for the Zaryadye skyscraper in Moscow.
It would have been eighth sister to the group of seven postwar Stalinist skyscrapers in Moscow, Russia.
The architect was Dmitry Chechulin.
Original 1947 plans included an eighth tower, which would have been among the tallest buildings in the world.
Following Joseph Stalin's death, it was decided that the projected structure would overshadow the Moscow Kremlin and Chechulin's 1967 Rossiya Hotel was erected on the spot.
In 1955, the unused plans were revised and used to build the still tallest skyscraper in Poland, the Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw.
Acknowledging this connection, the Palace of Culture is informally referred to as the Eighth Sister."
(My emphasis above).
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I've arrived at last at one of my favourite post-war Stalinist sets - and, perhaps not coincidentally, the most expensive one: a set of eight (well, actually seven, see below) mighty Moscow buildings designed to the greater glory of the Motherland and of course to the Great Leader, who lived to see not a single one of them completed. Who knows how much the working men and women of Moscow were made to contribute to these spectacular edifices, almost certainly inaccessible to the majority of them?
It's a set of eight stamps, but for reasons I haven't found out yet, one of these buildings never got beyond the foundation stage. They were all begun in the years of post-war euphoria and rebuilding, when the Soviets, victorious in the war, sought to match anything the USA had achieved hitherto, not least in the area of architectural grandiloquence. They took around seven years to complete, and they still tower over the capital, now as hotels, government offices or residential buildings. Depending on your taste, they are either magnificent, or magnificently dreadful.
The stamps, issued in December 1950, i.e. roughly midway between foundation and topping out, are necessarily based on architectural designs, all the work of different architects. The odd one out is the red stamp, intended for the Zaryadye area of Moscow. In the 1960s they built a hotel on the same site, but that suffered a devastating fire ten years later and was closed in 2006. It's now a park and cultural centre.
Why did the '32-storey Administrative Building, Zaryadye' literally never get off the ground? Why did they include an eighth stamp? That one will take a bit of research.
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re: The 'Seven Sisters' of Moscow
interesting set Guthrum!
Here's a little from Wikipedia about the "eighth sister":
"The Eighth Sister is the unbuilt project for the Zaryadye skyscraper in Moscow.
It would have been eighth sister to the group of seven postwar Stalinist skyscrapers in Moscow, Russia.
The architect was Dmitry Chechulin.
Original 1947 plans included an eighth tower, which would have been among the tallest buildings in the world.
Following Joseph Stalin's death, it was decided that the projected structure would overshadow the Moscow Kremlin and Chechulin's 1967 Rossiya Hotel was erected on the spot.
In 1955, the unused plans were revised and used to build the still tallest skyscraper in Poland, the Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw.
Acknowledging this connection, the Palace of Culture is informally referred to as the Eighth Sister."
(My emphasis above).
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