Lubyanka (Metro)
Lubyanka () is a station on the
Sokolnicheskaya Line of the
Moscow Metro, located under
Lubyanka Square. It opened in
1935 as part of the first stage of the Metro.
Construction work on the station began in December
1933, and the engineers were faced with extremely difficult soil conditions from the outset. The area under Lubyanka square is comprised of
Jurassic clay, beneath which are layers of
quicksand and
Carboniferous clay. The Metro station was planned to rest on top of the Carboniferous clay, which was thought to be firm enough to support its weight. It was quickly discovered, however, that the clay was much softer than anticipated due to the proximity of an underground channel of the
Neglinnaya River and also tended to swell greatly when exposed to air. This meant that the tunnels had to be built one section at a time, very quickly, in order to allow the
concrete to set before the pressure exerted by the expanding clay increased to the point where the wooden forms could no longer contain it.
N.A. Ladovskiy's initial design had to be significantly modified in order to cope with these problems. In order to minimize the amount of excavation required, the planned full-length central hall was abandoned in favour of a short passage at the end of the station connecting the two platform tubes, similar to many
London Underground stations. This simplified the construction of the station while still allowing the planned hall to be built in the future.
Even after the design change, the station's construction was plagued by difficulties. Quicksand from between the two layers of clay began to seep into the construction site almost immediately, and due to the unexpected softness of the Carboniferous clay the station began to slowly sink. Nevertheless, the builders of the station were able to surmount these problems and Lubyanka was opened as planned on
May 15, 1935. The heroic efforts of the Metro-builders are memorialized in a sculptural composition in the vestibule on Nikolskaya street.
Up to the
1960s few changes took place to the station, but when in 1965 it was revealed that the future
Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line would pass next to the station and a transfer point would be opened, the necessity to complete the station again became apparent. Technology had advanced to the point where the building of the central hall, which had been deemed impossible in the
1930s, could finally be accomplished, though this project still took more than seven years to complete. The first phase of the station's expansion was the construction of a second entrance at the northern end, which was completed in
1968.
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Old view of the vestibule |
The construction of the northern half of the central hall was simplified by using the new technique of soil freezing, but this could not be used on the southern half. Workers were forced to go back to the original method of quickly building one tunnel segment at a time before the expansion of the clay could crush them. Once the central hall was finished passages to the platforms were blown through using explosives. In
1972 the station was finally reopened.
The reconstruction of the station was an engineering triumph, but it was much less impressive aesthetically with blocky white
marble pylons and white tiled walls replacing the strikingly patterned dark marble used in the old station. Though the old section of the central hall still exists, the overall effect has been lost. The architects of the expansion were Nina Aleshina and A.F. Strelkov. In
1975,
escalators were added in the centre of the platform for the transfer to the new
Kuznetskiy Most station.
Lubyanka has two vestibules, at opposite ends of the station. The original one is built into the ground floor of a building on the south side of Lubyanka Square, opposite the infamous
KGB headquarters. The later vestibule is connected to a network of underground pathways at the north end of the square. An average of 40,800 passengers enter the station through the vestibules each day, with a much larger number using the transfer.
Up till
5 November,
1990 the station was called
Dzerzhinskaya after the name of the square it is under. However when the historic name, Lubyanka, was returned to the square, the station was also renamed. Although a bust of
Felix Dzerzhinsky is still located in the station vestibule.
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Description of the station on Metro.ru (in Russian)
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Description of the station on Mymetro.ru (in Russian)
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Description of the station on Metro.molot.ru (in Russian)
