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Better homes and gardens publisher


Better Homes and Gardens | Encyclopedia.com

Taking on a snazzy new style, establishing its own website, and accentuating the acronym BH&G can not alter entirely the role that Better Homes and Gardens has played in constructing American ideals of domesticity, home life, and gender roles throughout the twentieth century. In 1913, Edwin T. Meredith introduced the idea of a new magazine within an advertisement contained in his magazine, Successful Farming. The small, discreet ad titled "Cash Prizes for Letters about Gardening" also made a simple request of readers: "Why not send fifty cents for a year's subscription to 'Garden, Fruit and Home' at the same time?" In truth no such magazine yet existed; nor would it be published until 1922. Meredith began publishing Fruit, Garden and Home before altering the name in 1924 to Better Homes and Gardens. By facilitating the dialogue that has constructed the ideal of housing, Better Homes and Garden helped to define exactly where home and life come together in the American experience.

The impermanence of American life, of course, befuddled many observers from the nation's outset. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in the 1830s that "in the United States a man builds a house in which to spend his old age and he sells it before the roof is on…." A great deal of interest and attention was paid by upper and upper-middle-class Americans in the later 1800s to create traditions for civility, taste, and permanence—literally, to construct cultural ideals. One of the earliest "taste makers," Andrew Jackson Downing, introduced many Americans to landscape architecture and gardening through his writings. The periodical that he edited, The Horticulturalist, helped to initiate an American tradition of popular magazines and journals helping to perfect designs of the prototypical American home.

Similarly, an entire genre of magazines would appeal directly to women of privilege, most of whom were not employed. From 1840 through the end of the nineteenth century, Godey's Lady's Book defined the habits, ideals, and aspirations of many Victorian women. Such general interest magazines helped to define the era, but had more to do with constructing femininity than with the American home. Magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens helped to merge the women's magazine with practical publications specifically concerned with home design. This bond, of course, would shape the role of the modern "housewife" into that of the domestic manager. The ideal that emerges from this union is referred to by many scholars as the "Cult of Domesticity," which helps make BH&G one of the most popular magazines in America throughout the twentieth century.

BH&G helped define a national dialogue on home life through a combination of informative articles, basic cooking techniques, and contests that helped to rally the interest of readers. The first home plan design contest was first published in 1923 and, most importantly, the "Cook's Round Table" that began in 1926 would become the longest-running reader-driven contest in publishing history. This would later become part of BH&G's test kitchen and what became known as "Prize Tested Recipes." BH&G experimentation is attributed with introducing the American palate to tossed salad (1938) and barbecue cooking (1941) among many innovations. Published throughout World War II, the magazine even altered its recipes to cope with shortages of eggs, butter, and other foods.

These contests and recipes, however, were only a portion of the new domestic stress that BH&G fostered in the American public. The ideal of home ownership that can be found in the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and others began in the pages of the magazine in 1932 with the introduction of the BH&G building plan service. The marketing of building plans had taken place since the late 1800s; however, BH&G's service grew out of new governmental initiatives. Following data that revealed that only 46 percent of Americans owned homes in the 1920s, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover's "Own Your Home" campaign combined with efforts by the Bureau of Standards to stimulate home building while also modernizing American building practices. Better Homes in America, Inc. fulfilled Hoover's goal of voluntary cooperation between government and private enterprise for the public good. Formed in 1922, the organization soon had branches in over 500 communities.

Such groups worked with BH&G to permanently alter American ideas of domesticity. By 1930 there were 7,279 Better Homes committees across the country. During national Better Homes Week (usually the last week in April), each local committee sponsored home-improvement contests, prizes for the most convenient kitchen, demonstrations of construction and remodeling techniques, and lectures on how good homes build character. The demonstration house was the highlight of the week. Most communities built a single model residence, with donated materials and labor. Obviously, a national institution had been created and the private sector, through Better Homes and Gardens, would be responsible for perpetuating the jump start that the federal government had offered to systematizing and organizing American home design and construction.

BH&G and the Better Homes movement in general provided the essential conduit through which the dynamic changes in building could be channeled. While much of this movement was intended for the homeowner who was building his own house, the organization would also be instrumental in the evolving business organization of home development. Specifically, land developers who were constructing vast housing tracts would work with Better Homes to establish the guidelines that would form the standard suburban home. Each constituency had a stake in establishing "Safe Guards Against Incongruity." At times the Better Homes forum would also be complicit in discussing the social organization of the evolving housing development, which would often restrict race and ethnicity through restrictive covenants and deed restrictions. BH&G would not be complicit in such restrictions, however, it would become active in the sales end of housing. After first considering a line of related restaurants, hotels, and insurance companies in 1965, Meredith launched Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Service in 1975. It has grown to be one of the nation's largest real estate services.

In order to make certain of this continued popularity, the magazine's logo was lent to popular instructional books for many home improvement tasks as well as to cookbooks as early as 1930. This, however, was only the beginning of the better home informational empire: by the late 1990s a television network and many hours of programming and videos would offer techniques and pointers on home design, repair, as well as on cooking and personal relations. The magazine's involvement in homemaking reminds one of aggressive, corporate expansion that attempts to dominate every facet of an endeavor. In this case, homemaking truly has become an industry of such massive scale and scope. BH&G continued to influence American home life from finding a home, redecorating it, maintaining it, and, finally, to selling it at the end of the twentieth century.

—Brian Black

Hayden, Dolores. Redesigning the American Dream: The Future of Housing, Work, and Family Life. New York, W.W. Norton, 1984.

Schuyler, David. Apostle of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815-1852. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Wright, Gwendolyn. Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America. Cambridge, MIT Press, 1992.

IAC to pay $2.7 billion for publisher of 'People' and 'Better Homes'

Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp. agreed to buy the magazine publishing operations of Meredith for $2.7 billion, obtaining a stable of well-known titles such as People and Better Homes & Gardens to bolster its own lineup. Meredith jumped on the news. 

Under the accord announced Wednesday, a unit of IAC will pay $42.18 a share cash for Meredith’s National Media Group, which includes its digital and print magazine businesses, and the corporate operations.

The purchase of Des Moines, Iowa-based Meredith bolsters a catalog of IAC digital content that includes Brides, Serious Eats and Investopedia. Meredith, a nearly 120-year-old publisher that got its start with a farming magazine, also owns titles such as Southern Living, Travel + Leisure and InStyle.  

The deal lets IAC bulk up again after shedding operations over the past two years. Though Meredith’s roots are in print media, IAC is mostly interested in the company’s digital assets, Cowen & Co. analyst John Blackledge said in a Sept. 24 note. The acquisition will “add significant scale to IAC’s already strong digital media biz,” he said.

The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year.

Meredith gained as much as 8.2% to $59 in after hours trading. Its shares also reflect the $16.99 a share the company expects to receive from Gray Television Inc. for its local media business. IAC rose 0.8% to $132.75 in extended trading. The stock gained less than 1% to $131.68 at the close in New York and has advanced 4.5% this year. 

Diller’s IAC slimmed down its holdings during the pandemic, spinning off Tinder and Hinge owner Match Group Inc. in 2020 and the video platform Vimeo in 2021. Meredith has been paring back its operations as well. The company agreed to sell its broadcast stations in June for $2. 8 billion to Gray Television Inc. 

Meredith, founded in 1902 when Edwin Thomas Meredith began selling a periodical called Successful Farming, went on to become the largest magazine publisher in U.S. 

The company acquired some of its highest-profile publications in 2018 when it bought Time Inc. for about $1.8 billion in cash, with financial help from the billionaire Koch brothers.

But it soon began shedding the news and sports brands it got from the purchase, concentrating on its more female-focused publications, like Better Homes & Gardens and the lucrative People magazine. 

It sold Time magazine to Salesforce.com Inc. founder Marc Benioff and his wife, Lynne, for $190 million. Fortune magazine and its related businesses was sold for $150 million. And Authentic Brands snapped up Sports Illustrated for $110 million.

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7 houses-communes • Arzamas

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History, Art

Amazing architectural experiences of the early 1930s: the tower house in Smolensk, the round house in Taganrog, the garden city in Ivanovo, the Narkomfin house in Moscow. In the new issue of a series of materials on the collapsing historical heritage - a guide to constructivist communal houses

Author Nikolai Vasiliev

The architecture of the USSR is a unique phenomenon that is just beginning to be studied. This also applies to the internationally recognized Soviet constructivism of the turn of the 1920s and 30s, the best examples of which are often in a tragic state. One of the brightest signs of this era and style is communal houses, which appeared as a result of amazing experiments in educating the "new man". A commune is a type of house with the maximum possible socialization of everyday life: it was assumed that the unit of society would not be a family, but a group united by a commonality of views, interests and, most importantly, a profession.

1. Wooden village of Shaturskaya GRES

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Shaturskaya GRES. 1920s Energostrana.ru

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Temporary power station building in Shatura. 2015 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Worker camp at Shaturskaya GRES. 2015 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Worker camp at Shaturskaya GRES. 2015 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Work settlement of Shaturskaya GRES. 2015 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Worker camp at Shaturskaya GRES. 2015 © Nikolay Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Worker's camp at Shaturskaya GRES. 2015 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Worker's settlement at Shaturskaya GRES. 2015 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Work settlement of Shaturskaya GRES. 2015 © Nikolay Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Worker's settlement at Shaturskaya GRES. 2015 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Worker's camp at Shaturskaya GRES. 2015 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Worker's camp at Shaturskaya GRES. 2015 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2. 0

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Work settlement of Shaturskaya GRES. 2015 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Worker's camp at Shaturskaya GRES. 2015 © Nikolai Vasilyev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Worker's camp at Shaturskaya GRES. 2015 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Worker camp at Shaturskaya GRES. 2015 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Shaturskaya power plant is one of the first implemented according to the GOELRO plan State Commission for Electrification of Russia. The GOELRO plan is the state plan for the electrification of Soviet Russia after the 1917 revolution. It was developed by the State Commission for Electrification on the instructions and under the leadership of Lenin and adopted on December 21, 1920. . The decision to build it on the peat bogs near Moscow was made back in 1914, and construction began in 1918. The GRES was built in stages: in 1920, 1925 and 1933. At the same time, a village was built - if yesterday's peasants could work on peat harvesting, for whom temporary barracks were set up, then the units were serviced by engineers who needed to create conditions for work and life. Thus, one of the first exemplary settlements arose in Shatura - it was built according to the general plan of the future leaders of constructivism, the Vesnin brothers.

Reading for 15 minutes: "On Art and Art Science"

Art critic Elena Murina - about her meetings with Alexander Vesnin and Alexander Matveev

In addition to several two-story houses reminiscent of the brick architecture of England or Holland, there is a whole street of houses in the village for one or two families. These are not huts, not towers, not cottages, but strange hybrids: log cabins with colored carved columns and architraves, somewhere with classic plank rustication  Rust, rustication (from Latin rustic - rough, rural) - a type of decorative facade decoration, usually in stone or plaster, depicting a large masonry wall. Russian architecture of the XV-XVII centuries. Fachwerk (from the German Fachwerk - box work) is a frame structure typical of peasant architecture in many countries of Central and Northern Europe. Another name is the Prussian wall. brackets of pre-revolutionary modernity. There is a whole reserve of mature constructivism around: a club, schools, a hospital and apartment buildings.

The village feels surprisingly well: traditional building materials and the absence of attempts to reduce the cost of construction or to overcrowd people are having an effect. But, oddly enough, this unique complex has not yet been described by researchers and is not under state protection. Multi-storey new buildings are approaching the village, and any amateur repair can result in big losses.

2. Garden city and collective house in Ivanovo

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The first workers' settlement. Ivanovo-Voznesensk, 1925–1926 Red Thread. Ivanovo-Voznesensk

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The first workers' settlement. Ivanovo-Voznesensk, 1925-1926 Red Thread. Ivanovo-Voznesensk

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Residential complex House of the Collective. Ivanovo-Voznesensk, 1929-1930 Red Thread. Ivanovo-Voznesensk

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The first workers' settlement in Ivanovo. 2012 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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"Collective House" in Ivanovo. 2013 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Collective House in Ivanovo. 2017 © Nikolay Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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The first workers' settlement in Ivanovo. 2014 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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The first workers' settlement in Ivanovo. 2012 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Collective House in Ivanovo. 2017 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Collective House in Ivanovo. 2014 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

In the 1920s, the industrial center of Ivanovo became a testing ground for new architecture, including experiments on the introduction of mass housing from affordable materials. It was built by the workers themselves. First came the First Workers' Settlement - a garden city of two-story frame houses, no more than eight apartments each. In 1929–19For 31 years, "dreams scattered", and on the territory of the village - on Krasnye Zor Street - the famous architect Ilya Golosov built a complex of several buildings with four to six floors. This hulk was called the "House of the Collective" and had a partially socialized way of life. For smaller apartments, kitchens and bathrooms were combined in pairs, a shop, a dining room, a kindergarten and a club were arranged on the ground floors. The laundry occupied a separate building in the yard. In the process of implementation, the plan of the commune became less radical - from the idea of ​​a corridor hostel. Most buildings for temporary residence (hotels and hostels), as well as houses with the socialization of life, have a corridor layout, which for a number of reasons is inconvenient for full-fledged individual apartments. The corridor is obviously needed to connect common areas (baths, showers, laundry rooms, kitchens, dining rooms, etc.) and the actual living rooms / cells / blocks. and transitions between buildings decided to refuse. At the same time, the complex remained extremely expressive thanks to the stepped silhouette, loggias at the ends of the buildings, floor-to-ceiling showcases Showcase - window of the first, public floor. at the public part.

audio!

Discovering Russia: Ivanovo

Who came up with the idea to draw the Volga and why there are so many constructivist masterpieces in Ivanovo

Art historians call this place one of the brightest city attractions and talk about its more than terrible state. The houses have not been repaired for a long time, but they have been subjected to many minor alterations, the balconies are crumbling, the basements are regularly flooded by poor sewage.

3. Round house in Taganrog

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Sketch of a round house in Taganrog. 1920s PastVu.com

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Round house in Taganrog. 2019 © Wikimapia.org

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Round house in Taganrog. 2018 © Wikimapia.org

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Round house in Taganrog. 2019 © Wikimapia.org

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Round house in Taganrog. 2017 © Wikimapia.org

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Round house in Taganrog. 2019 © TripAdvisor

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Round house in Taganrog. 2016 © Roman Timokhin / TripAdvisor

A monument to several architectural ideas from the early years of Soviet rule, the three-story 36-apartment building is built in the form of an open circle, with a small but ringing courtyard. At first, it was going to be used as an amphitheater for general meetings, but then they changed their minds, surrounding it with solid balconies, on which the doors of the apartments open. The house was built for the workers of the Krasny Kotelshchik plant in 1929–1932, designed by the young architect Ivan Taranov, who later designed dozens of Moscow metro stations.

audio!

Stalin's metro: luxury and ideology

How traditionalist architects defeated the constructivists and when the Moscow metro turned into palaces

This experiment is not only formal, but also typological. Life here turned out to be partially socialized, bathrooms were made at the ends of the galleries, and the house itself, despite its constructivist appearance (smooth walls, thin horizontal parapets), continued the local tradition of a gallery house  Gallery house - the layout of living quarters along an open balcony-gallery, distributed mainly in warm regions and cities (Italy, Spain, southern France, Latin America, the Danube basin, the Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus, up to the Chinese province of Fujian with its "gallery villages"). The advantage over sectional and corridor houses is in savings - there is no need to build an external wall and heat it .. In terms of plan, the house resembles the letter C - the local legend, of course, is looking for the word "USSR" here, just as they are looking for in the round houses of Moscow Setun and Ramenok ( but do not find) the Olympic rings.

The dilapidated house was renovated in 2012 and is now in decent condition. The history of the collective request of the residents to withdraw the application for the assignment of a protected status is indicative: this would impose unbearable burdens on them - from the need to draw up a separate project for any repair work at their own expense to a ban on the installation of plastic windows.

4. "Cultural Revolution" in Nizhny Novgorod

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Assembling the elevator shaft at the construction of the "Cultural Revolution" communal house. 191920s © Tatlin Publishing House

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Elevator at the construction site of the Cultural Revolution commune. 1920s © Tatlin Publishing House

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Wall masonry. In the foreground is the third building, made of different materials. Early 1930s © Tatlin Publishing House

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House-commune "Cultural Revolution". 2018 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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House-commune "Cultural Revolution". 2013 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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House-commune "Cultural Revolution". 2013 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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House-commune "Cultural Revolution". 2013 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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House-commune "Cultural Revolution". 2013 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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House-commune "Cultural Revolution". 2013 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

During the first five-year plan, not only one of the first giants of Soviet industry, the GAZ plant, but also many other remarkable buildings were built in Nizhny Novgorod. The most unusual is the cultural revolution house-commune, built in 1929–1932 by a young architect Vladimir Medvedev, a block away from the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin. This is a public block and several six-story residential buildings connected by wonderful wooden bridges. In addition to the obvious social experiments, the construction was indicative from the point of view of the introduction of peculiar rationalization proposals in construction technology (for example, the role of the foreman at the construction site was played by the architect himself). Only two elevators were made out of savings, and this is one of the justifications for the appearance of hanging passages. In addition, lime was diluted with clay, bricks were saved by thinning walls, windows were made smaller, and cavities were filled with moss and sawdust. For new settlers, these changes were not very noticeable, but for the Stroykontora budget they were noticeable.

Despite this, the house turned out to be strong enough to retain its function in our time. The balconies are crumbling in places, the roofs are leaking, but due to the unusual location and central location, the house is now quite in demand: people continue to live here and tours are conducted. In 1993, it received the status of a monument, but future restoration, of course, will require very non-standard and subtle solutions.

5. House of Uraloblsovnarkhoz in Yekaterinburg

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House of Uraloblsovnarkhoz in Yekaterinburg. 1930s Tatlin Publishing House

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House of Uraloblsovnarkhoz in Yekaterinburg. The 1930s Ministry of State Property Management of the Sverdlovsk Region

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Ural Blobsnarkhoz House in Yekaterinburg Ministry of State Property of the Sverdlovsk Region

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House of Uraloblax-Armkhoz in Yekaterinburg Department of State Security Objects of Objects heritage of the Sverdlovsk region

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House of Ural Blobesnarkhoz in Yekaterinburg Office of the State Protection of Cultural Heritage Service of the Sverdlovsk Region

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House Uraloblnovarkhoz in Yekaterinburg photography was provided by Nikita Schukov

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9000 YASHEKA LAWS FAMS. Development of the typing section of the Stroykom of the RSFSR. 1928 Gosizdat

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Houses of the Uraloblsovnarkhoz in Yekaterinburg. 2014 © Nikolay Vasiliev

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Houses of Uraloblsovnarkhoz in Yekaterinburg. 2014 © Nikolai Vasiliev

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House of Uraloblsovnarkhoz in Yekaterinburg. 2014 © Nikolai Vasilyev

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Balcony - transition from the first building to the second in the houses of the Uraloblsovnarkhoz in Yekaterinburg. 2014 © Nikolai Vasiliev

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House of Uraloblsovnarkhoz in Yekaterinburg. 2015 © Nikolai Vasiliev

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Corridor in the house of the Uraloblsovnarkhoz in Yekaterinburg. 2015 © Nikolai Vasilyev

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Apartment in the building of the Uraloblsovnarkhoz in Yekaterinburg. 2015 © Nikolai Vasiliev

Not even a house, but a whole block of houses in the center of Yekaterinburg. Four buildings have an ordinary sectional layout: three or four entrances, five floors, ten apartments per entrance. One of the buildings is special, the brother of the famous Moscow house of Narkomfin. The whole complex was designed by the constructivist leader Moses Ginzburg, his colleague Alexander Pasternak (Boris's brother) and design engineer Sergei Prokhorov. In the building, intended for the resettlement of singles and small families, everything was unusual even for Sverdlovsk, which was rapidly developing in the first five years. Two corridors serve four levels of small cell apartments, each of which is located on two or even three levels, has a place for a shower and toilet (unlike the apartments in the Nakromfin house, they were never equipped), one bedroom, one living room and kitchen cabinet. A solarium terrace was made on the roof and a bridge was thrown over the flat roof of the neighboring building.

Ordinary apartment blocks are still occupied, but the experimental one was moved out in 1986. The cells now contain either random offices or workshops of Ural artists, and in one of them a museum of constructivism was opened two years ago.

What is constructivism

Five principles of constructivism — on the example of five buildings

6. Residential tower in Smolensk

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House-tower named after the Paris Commune. Smolensk, 1930s The Constructivist Project

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Paris Commune tower house. Smolensk TripAdvisor

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House-tower named after the Paris Commune. Smolensk, 2011 © Sergey Semenov / CC BY-SA 3.0

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North facade of the tower house named after the Paris Commune. Smolensk, 2018 © TripAdvisor

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Tower house named after the Paris Commune. Smolensk, 2018 © TripAdvisor

Smolensk is famous not only for the largest Russian fortress and pre-Mongolian temples, but also for the architecture of the interwar period. The seven-story residential constructivist tower stands out in particular. The commune house was built in 1929-1930 by the architect Oleg (Otto) Wutke, who proposed not a sprawling corridor building, as workers' hostels were usually made, but an unprecedentedly high brick tower. He rhymed it with the towers of the fortress wall, at the same time showing a high class of work with brick, which many progressive architects were ashamed of. The tower has an almost square plan, rounded corners, geometric ornaments on the walls - stylistically it is rather expressionism.

Inside, there were living rooms with washbasins and communal kitchens and living rooms. A specific layout of what is worth and what is not worth socializing was made by the future residents themselves (they decided to leave the children in families  Many projects of communal houses involved the joint upbringing of children, a kind of boarding school within the framework of the entire complex, when for sleep, food, leisure and education rooms were allocated. The child visited the family a couple of days a week, or parents visited him after work. So in the 1930s and 50s, many kindergartens, the so-called six-day schools, were arranged.). Water was supplied to the house only at 1949th. In 1970, a fire broke out in the house, and its resettlement began, at the same time the building was given the status of an architectural monument. Nevertheless, the abandoned tower stands without a roof for fifty years.

7. Narkomfin House in Moscow

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Children play in the courtyard of the Narkomfin House. 1931-1932

Photograph by Robert Byron.

Wikimedia Commons

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Narkomfin House. 1931-1932

Photograph by Robert Byron.

The Charnel-House

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A fragment of the southern facade of the Narkomfin building. 1930s PastVu.com

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Communal block of the Narkomfin building. 1928

Photo by Vladimir Gruntal.

The Charnel-House

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Communal block of the Narkomfin building. 1931-1932

Photograph by Robert Byron.

The Charnel House

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House of Narkomfin. 1931-1932

Photograph by Robert Byron.

The Charnel-House

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The corridor in the Narkomfin building. 1930s The Charnel-House

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Commissar Milyutin's penthouse in the Narkomfin Building. 1930s

Photo by Vladimir Gruntal.

The Charnel-House

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Commissar Milyutin's penthouse in the Narkomfin building. 1930s

Photo by Vladimir Gruntal.

PastVu.com

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The kitchen in the former penthouse of Commissar Milyutin in the Narkomfin building. 1960s PastVu.com

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Narkomfin House. 2009 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Communal block of the Narkomfin building. 2013 Wikimedia Commons

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Narkomfin House. 2017 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Narkomfin House. 2017 Wikimedia Commons

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Narkomfin House. 2017 Wikimedia Commons

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Narkomfin House. 2014 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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The roof of the Narkomfin building. 2010 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Corridor in the Narkomfin building. 2009 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Narkomfin House. 2009 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Narkomfin building interior. 2010 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Apartment in the Narkomfin building. 2009 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Apartment in the Narkomfin building. 2009 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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A kitchen in an apartment in the Narkomfin building. 2009 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Narkomfin House. 2019 © Nikolay Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Narkomfin House. 2020 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Narkomfin House. 2020 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Narkomfin House. 2020 © Nikolay Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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The roof of the Narkomfin building. 2016 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Interior in the Narkomfin building. 2017 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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The staircase in the Narkomfin building. 2020 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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A kitchen in an apartment in the Narkomfin building. 2020 © Nikolai Vasiliev / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The most famous monument of residential architecture of Soviet constructivism, also indicative of the struggle for its preservation. At 1928, architects Moses Ginzburg, Ignatius Milinis and engineer Sergei Prokhorov begin to design a new type of house. This is not a communal house, as it is often erroneously called, but a transitional type of house: instead of individual apartments of the "philistine life" - collective housing. According to Ginzburg, such a house was needed for the gradual adaptation of the residents. In addition to a wide range of apartments (eleven types, including the penthouse built on for Nikolai Milyutin, People's Commissar for Finance, who participated in the development of the plan), residents were offered a service system that still looks very modern. A rooftop solarium terrace, a dining room, a clubhouse, a laundry room, a kindergarten, a hostel and even your own car sharing. House of Narkomfin, inhabited at the very beginning of 1932 years old, has become a manifesto of new architecture: multi-level apartments with excellent insolation and through ventilation, ribbon windows, a monolithic load-bearing frame and light cinder block walls, multi-colored painting of walls and ceilings.

The Narkomfin House, which was put up for eviction in 1979 and never settled until the collapse of the USSR, throughout the post-Soviet years was a place of pilgrimage for foreign architects and an exemplary shame of the monument protection system. Five years ago, it seemed that a catastrophe was inevitable, but the restoration is coming to an end - and we can already say that the Narkomfin building has become a unique positive example. The restoration project was carried out by Alexei Ginzburg, the grandson of the architect.

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Samokat is one of the most respected publishers of children's literature in Russia. It appeared on the book market in 2003 and has been introducing Russian readers to the world's best children's books ever since. During its work, Samokat has received many professional awards - in Russia and abroad. For example, it was nominated in 2018 for the title of the best children's book publisher in Europe at the Bologna Book Fair.

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