The tourists who come to visit
Kostroma, are amazed by the abundance of architectural wonders in the city.
Tourists who enjoy seeing historical religious buildings, can visit the
Ipatiy monastery, The Epiphany Cathedral, The Church of St. Elijah and
the Church of the Ressurection on the Debra. For those who have more secular
interests there are such sites as the Fire WatchTower, the former Guards
House, and public buildings. The description of these famous objects can
be found in any guide book.
While the wooden houses of the city are not as significant
in historical terms, they are far more numerous. It is they, which give
particular coloration to this old Russian city. There are true masterpieces
of architectural and construction art among them. Wooden houses predominated
in Kostroma during the whole period of its history. At the beginning of
the 20th century there were about 3000 wooden structures but only 360 stone
buildings in the city.
Fortunately, time spared the wooden buildings.
Probably due to the fact that Kostroma was not the provincial capital of
the country, and thus, economic and building development was limited. The
modern industrial construction started only in the fifties and was primarily
carried out in the outskirts of the city.
Still, despite this late development, Kostroma has
lost many of its unique wooden buildings. In the latest edition of the
book Wooden Laces of Kostroma. (Yaroslavl, 1975) fifty house specimens
were presented; now twenty of them are lost to time.
Kostroma is surrounded by forests, making wood the
most accessible and inexpensive building material in this area. However,
wood, in general, has two disadvantages – it can burn and it is subjected
to rotting. That is why the majority of the wooden houses, in Kostroma,
are less than 150 years old. Only a few of them approach the age of 200
years.
As wooden house with small windows and without modern
conveniences become a thing of the past, they don not necessarily have
to disappear. It was the magnificent craftsmanship of Russian carpenters,
who gave individuality to each structure, by way of uniquely carved window
casing and cornices. It is the craftsmanship of those blacksmiths and white
smiths, who made the tracery lattices above front doors and windows, the
lacy chimney decorations and drain pipes, and along with their excellent
knowledge of wood qualities and construction techniques, which deserve
close attention.
On studying the materials of the Kostroma State
Archives it became possible to establish the time of construction of the
major part of the structures presented in the album. In many cases, the
age, of some of the houses, was only found out by way of questioning the
city’s older residents. The history of the oldest wooden structures could
be traced back to 1819 (Engels str. 29/21, Sverdlov str., 21).
The aim of this album is to show wooden fretwork
on these houses, along with the development of fretwork technique during
the 19th and the 20th Centuries as well as the development of wooden architecture
in general. The photographs in the album not only illustrate thesewooden
carvings, but it also presents the most interesting wooden structures,
from the architectural point of view. There are some specimens of house
wooden carving in the cities and villages of the Kostroma region to compare.
Classicism became the dominating style in the first
half of the 19th century. It reflected the ideology of the nobility classes
and centralized military bureaucratic state.
The geometric simplicity of city planning, lead
to austerity and lucidity, and building decorations reflected aesthetic
demands of that time. Aspiration to conformity led to a uniform development
in the planning of cities. The Code of Law of the Russian Empire, dictated
how buildings were to be constructed, and what style they would be designed
in. According to these laws, all private houses in the city were to be
built, with only those facades specially designed and approved for them.
A customer would not order original designs, but had to select a pre-approved
one, depending on the size, listed in the album supplement, of the Code
of Laws.
Anyway, these model facades were created without
considering the conditions of reality and did not always meet the requirements
of life. For example, the collection of facades published
in 1809-1812 was intended for stone buildings. However, in the northern
provinces of Russia, houses where generally constructed of wood. The requirements
of local merchants were not taken into account, and many designs left little
room for trading on the ground floor. There were no standards for those
buildings, that had to be placed on street corners , with acute or obtuse
angles. Deviations from the model designs occured every now and then, but
the general requirements were almost always strictly observed. The Code
of Laws had numerous requirements for almost every facet of the building
process. There were requirements concerning the size and number of windows,
which always had to be an odd number, the distance from the tops of the
windows to the roof, and the distance between windows. There were even
rules regarding the decorating of windows and of buildings in general,
including the color of their exteriors. It was prohibited to construct
two-storied wooden houses, but the attic level was not counted. |
