Church of Ioakim and Anna(Gus- Krustalny)

Church of Ioakim and Anna (Церковь Иоакима и Анны) (Gus- Krustalny)

 

Description of the Church of Ioakim and Anna

Luxemburgskaya st., 3

Church of Ioakim and Anna (Церковь Иоакима и Анны) is a Russian Orthodox Church constructed in 1816 in Gus- Krustalny in Russia. It was dedicated to parents of Holy Mary, mother of Jesus Christ.

 

History

The Church of Joachim and Anna was built in 1810-1816 at the expense of Sergei Yakimovich Maltsev. The Godfather Joachim and Anna was consecrated in the name of the saints and righteous.

In 1848-1851, at the expense of I.S. Maltsov, a warm refectory was attached to the temple: "covered with iron, the wooden floors are finished, the stoves are perverted, the carving (on the iconostasis) is gilded." The chapel in the refectory was consecrated on May 28, 1851 in the name of the Life-Giving Trinity.

In 1856, the bell tower at the temple was mentioned for the first time.

In 1871, an oven was made under the cold part of the temple.

At the turn of 1871-72, when visiting the city of Gus-Khrustalny, Bishop of Murom Jacob (Krotkov) noted:

“The church is wonderful, spacious and well maintained. The left aisle of the warm church has not yet been consecrated by almost the prejudice that the builders hold on to, fearing an imminent death if the church is completely finished. I explained to the manager of the factory how unfounded this superstition was. The sacristy is not rich, the library is very poor…”.
In 1895, a free parish library was opened at the church.

By 1901, the Joakiman Church was surrounded by a quadrangular stone fence with cast-iron gratings. The fence had a central gate.

By 1922, the authorities had already twice seized church valuables.

The temple was closed no earlier than 1938.

In 1941, the temple building was occupied by the mechanical workshops of the Glass College.

From 1946 to 1948 it was occupied by the city trade for a warehouse.

Then it housed the fire department. In this regard, the domed vault of the main volume was covered with a flat ceiling, the northern third of the refectory was separated by a plank wall, and in it, as well as in the side wings of the main temple and in the tents of the bell tower, two floors of living quarters were arranged, for which additional rectangular windows were pierced on the walls. The floor of metlakh tiles was partially destroyed, and heavy fire trucks stood in the refectory.

The tiled stoves and the iconostasis were not preserved, the floor made of Metlakh tiles was partially destroyed, and heavy fire engines stood in the refectory. The heads with crosses on the building were destroyed.

Later, the department of private security was located in the temple.

In 1983, the church was taken under local protection as an architectural monument (No. 373 p/9 of May 6).

In 1989, the temple was returned to the community of believers and began to be restored. Both domes were designed again - for the main volume and for the completion of the bell tower (architect Dvoeglazova T.P., engineer Shchelokov O.O.).

The restored temple was consecrated in honor of the Life-Giving Trinity.

 

Abbots

John of Kazan (mentioned 1895)
Alexander Sokolov (September 28, 1937 - January 25, 1939?)

 

Architecture

The church stands on the left bank of the city, on the left bank of the Gus River, not far from the Paper Spinning Factory (from the south) and the Crystal Factory (from the west), which is located on the river itself. The church is the compositional center of the planning structure of the left-bank part of the city, which is the original part of its historical development.

After the construction of the church, a rectangular area is formed around it from one-way streets. A regular grid of other streets is built according to this rectangle.

The church is built of brick with lime mortar.

On the facades of the refectory there are three arched large high windows. The vertical articulation of the facades is also emphasized by paneled inter-window blades, which correspond to the pilasters placed inside the temple on the side walls.

Stucco rods are missing along the window openings. The drum is covered with iron. The drum windows are round and rectangular (laid). The side and western doorways (the original doors have not been preserved) are framed by a decorative portico with fluted pilasters and a semicircular ending.

In the interior of the main volume, eight pairs of Ionic columns enclose the central space in a circle (up to the wings) and carry a light drum with a domed blind vault (now covered by a flat ceiling). The capitals of the columns and the frieze along the perimeter of the drum (made of croutons with rosettes) are molded and gilded. Background, i.e. the planes of the walls themselves are painted with dark blue paint, the columns are plastered and whitewashed. Below the frieze, above the capitals, there is a strip of painting: a frieze of stylized floral ornament.

The columns are concentrated in fours at the corners, and between them there are openings (on four sides) in rectangular wings, which are covered with flat beamed ceilings. In the refectory in the middle of a spacious high, square room, in the longitudinal direction there are two rows of the same paired Ionic columns as in the main volume (only eight pieces in each row). Opposite the columns, on the side walls of the refectory, there are pilasters with Ionic capitals. The walls are currently plastered and whitewashed, and the beams above the columns are painted with Art Nouveau motifs. Wide window openings are recessed, framed with a plaster profile.

The floors in all volumes are lined with Metlakh polychrome tiles of various ornaments, made in Germany (the stamp is embossed on the reverse side of each of the tiles).

The ceilings in the refectory and in the side wings of the main volume are wooden beams, above the main volume there is a brick domed vault. Roofing iron on a wooden crate. Brick walls outside are painted with pink adhesive paint over plastering, inside are plastered and whitewashed.

The plan of the church, in general, has the shape of a rectangle elongated from east to west, from which a small rectangle of the apse protrudes from the east.

The three-dimensional structure of the church consists of the main volume with an apse, a refectory and a bell tower. The main volume on the outside has a cruciform shape, in which the eastern wing is an apse. On the middle of the cross there is a small cylindrical light drum, topped with a high dome (the dome was destroyed in Soviet times). The eastern rectangular wing, oriented transversely to the axis, and the side wings of the same shape, oriented longitudinally, are covered with gable roofs over triangular pediments. The large rectangle of the refectory, elongated longitudinally, is expanded to the level of the side porches of the main volume and has the same height as theirs. Covered with a double pitched roof.

The three-tiered bell tower is lined with rectangular tents on the sides. The tiers are shaped like quadruples. The ringing tier is cut by four arches. The hipped roof of the bell tower with dormer windows and kokoshniks at the base belongs to a later time (the head was destroyed in Soviet times).

The facades of the temple itself, the tents of the bell tower and the apse are designed along two horizontal axes and several vertical ones. The horizontal axes that encircle the entire building, except for the refectory, give two tiers of windows, the lower of which are large rectangular, and the upper semicircular. There is one vertical axis along which the windows of the first and second windows are located, on the facades of the main volume - one, on all three facades of the apse - also one each, on the facades of the tents of the bell tower - two.