page_title: Ivan Zholtovsky
section_title: War and postwar years, 1945-1959
hierarchical_section_title: Ivan Zholtovsky / War and postwar years, 1945-1959
caption_attribution_description: Yermolayevsky Lane, Zholtovsky's Lions House Moscow
context_page_description: Ivan Vladislavovich Zholtovsky was a Russian-Soviet architect and educator. He worked primarily in Moscow from 1898 until his death. An accomplished master of Renaissance Revival before the Russian Revolution of 1917, later he became a key figure of Stalinist architecture.
context_section_description: In 1940, already 73 years old, Zholtovsky accepts the chair of Moscow Architectural Institute (MArchI). Zholtovsky stayed in Moscow throughout World War II, managing MArchI and engaged in various consultancies; when time came to repair the damage of war, he was too old to take serious out-of-town jobs. He bid for expansion of Mossovet headquarters, making 18 proposals (1939–1945,); all failed, and the job was awarded to Dmitry Chechulin. In summer 1945, the state instituted Zholtovsky School and Workshop, where he would work till his death.
  In the same 1945, Zholtovsky workshop  completed a controversial House of Lions, in Yermolayevsky lane - a luxurious downtown residence for Red Army Marshals, styled as an early 19th-century estate. Reverence to top brass backfired very soon. Zholtovsky issued his students an exercise to design Country residence of a Marshal of Soviet Union. Immediately, political accusations poured in; November 2, 1945 Zholtovsky received a formal order to discard completed student projects, reverse their grades, and issue a new, politically correct, assignment.
  After 1945, Zholtovsky personally designed only three apartment houses in Moscow (including an expansion of his 1935 NKVD building on Smolenskaya Square). The best known, a 1949  Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya building is an interesting illustration of Zholtovsky’s shift from elite to the masses, an attempt to bring mass construction to the levels of quality expected of Stalinist architecture and his own Renaissance style. All apartments in this building are relatively small, with two rooms yet with plenty storage space. Floor plans deliberately discouraged conversion of small-family units to overcrowded multi-family kommunalki (kitchen is accessible only through the family rooms). Zholtovsky's favorite flat walls (no bay windows, no setbacks) and modest application of Florentine canon fit the purpose quite well.
  In 1948, 80-year-old Zholtovsky became the subject of a witch-hunt once again. With no apparent reason, small-time critics slammed his works and his role in education. Zholtovsky lost the chair of MArchI. In February 1949, a "professional round table" branded his Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya House as formalist, condemned Zholtovsky’s educational efforts, and virtually excommunicated him from practice for a year. Suddenly, fortune turned around, and in March, 1950 Zholtovsky was awarded Stalin Prize, second class – for the same building that was ostracized a year before.Khmelnizky, ch.9</ref> By 1952, critics praised it as the way to build.
caption: House of Lions, 1945, grand entrance Patriarshy Ponds, Moscow
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP.", "Image Model": "E-410", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "314", "Image YResolution": "314", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2008:06:16 12:28:34", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 37, 0, 1, 0, 20, 0, ... ]", "Image ExifOffset": "824", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1530", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6144", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/800", "EXIF FNumber": "5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:06:15 11:04:32", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:06:15 11:04:32", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "-17/10", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "761/256", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "24", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1200", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1608", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1404", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Soft", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Soft"}