A Place for A Patriarch

Green in summer, white in winter. The Patriarch’s Ponds area is for many a haven in the center of the city. “The green and shady pond area was a great refuge in the hot, dry summer, and a great attraction in winter too, with skating on the frozen pond,” said Neil Cooper, a Moscow expat until last summer.

With upward of 15 years in Moscow, the Cooper family has lived in areas across the city. After spells on Prospekt Mira and Serpukhovsky Val, the family home on Michurinsky Prospekt ranked top among their abodes — but the suburban calm was offset by transport difficulties. “We were quite far from the metro, so we always had to use a car and going anywhere on public transport took ages,” said Nathalie Cooper, his daughter. “If you’re going to live in the center, Patriarshiye Prudy is one of the best places to be.”

Although plural in name, since the Fire of Moscow in 1812 — a stimulus of much reconstruction and redesigning in Moscow — there has only been one pond. The three original fishponds, as the name of one of the surrounding side streets, Tryokhprudny Pereulok, suggests, were created from the Goat’s Marsh in the 17th century for the Patriarch and his household.

The Pond and the District

While the four roads around the pond itself are some of the most sought after, the area realtors term Patriarch’s Pond runs from Tverksaya Ulitsa to Bolshaya Nikitskaya Ulitsa, bounded north and south by the Garden and Boulevard rings respectively: This area is staked out at four corners by the Barrikadnaya residential skyscraper, the Tchaikovsky concert hall, the Old English Club, now the modern history museum, and the site of the city’s Nikitsky Gates. From the Soviet to the pre-revolution, these buildings themselves provide a clue to part of the area’s charm.

“Most of all the area exudes atmosphere and history, lacking in many other areas,” said Neil Cooper. “It’s like a bit of Old Moscow,” added Nathalie. The historical feel of the area and the high-ceilinged elite Soviet apartments give living on The Prud, as residents affectionately call it, a certain classical feel. “We had a wonderful seventh, top, floor apartment in an old Soviet-style block for the old nomenklatura,” explained Neil Cooper, while many other apartments in the area are converted kommunalki, Soviet communal apartments.

Nevertheless, it is not history alone that pulls tenants to the area. The pond itself is a key attraction, with the open space it creates and the greenery around it. “It is like an open-air café-theater in the summer and a great ice-rink in the winter,” said Michael Pugh, whose apartment overlooks the activity.

A Social Mix

The area is one of the most popular in the city, particularly among foreigners, said Galina Tkach, head of the elite rental department at IntermarkSavills.  This popularity has meant that rental prices in the area have not been significantly affected by recent economic events. In its end-of-year report, the estate agent demonstrated that the average budget of renters in the area has changed little from December 2008 to December 2009, remaining around $7,500 per month — in most other areas in the city there was a substantial drop.

“Largely untouched by the crisis, the area has been one of the first to react to the rise in prices,” said Tkach. This is unsurprising given the limits of development in the area. The company’s report places Patriarch’s Ponds as the third most popular area among its high-end rental clients, after the Arbat-Kropotkinskaya and Tversakaya-Kremlin districts. However, the Patriarch’s Ponds area does not dominate in terms of supply of elite properties, unlike the two other areas mentioned, which also lead in the company’s supply rankings. The area “as before, demonstrates a substantial deficit of free properties,” the report said.

There is no particular typical profile of an expat looking for accommodation in this area, explained Tkach. Individuals, couples and families look for properties around the pond. This is characteristic of the eclectic mix  of people in the area. “The Prud is a real mix of many different groups of Russians — artists, doctors, intellectuals and post-office workers — and expats,” said Pugh. The Moscow-based lawyer has lived in the area on and off for seven years, and remembers it well from his time as a student in the city in the early 1990s. “It’s a friendly place with a lot of long-term residents.”

This mix of people has built up over time. Known as a student area prior to the revolution, Patriarch’s Ponds is now associated with numerous luminaries of Russian literature: Anton Chekhov, Alexander Pushkin, Maxim Gorky and Alexei Tolstoi all spent part of their life living around the pond, and now the district boasts house museums dedicated to them all. Perhaps one of the former residents most closely associated with the area is Mikhail Bulgakov, whose novel, The Master and Margarita, sets much of its action here.

The area also found favor with senior state and party officials during the Soviet period. Many of the residential buildings in the area that date from the Soviet era are of the older, grander Stalinist style. Built at the end of World War II for the Marshals of the Red Army and other senior Soviet military figures, The Generals’ House or House with Lions overlooks the northern bank of the pond on Yermolayevsky Pereulok. Its ornate decoration caught the attention of Nikita Khrushchev, who used this building as an example in his criticism of architectural excesses and call for simplicity in construction.

While the area has a proportion of regular inhabitants, the association with the elite continues into the post-Soviet era. A more recent addition to the pond’s architecture, the 12-story Patriarch House, has 28 apartments ranging in size from 139 to 223 square meters. Built in 2002, the pastel yellow building on the corner of Yermolayevsky Pereulok and Malaya Bronnaya Ulitsa has already built up a barrage of rumour around it. Russia’s diva-in-chief, Alla Pugachyova, is reported to have been refused an apartment here by owners wary of the paparazzi interest she would undoubtedly bring with her. More extravagant rumours talk of the former president and current prime minister, Vladimir Putin, having looked at a residence here before being persuaded against it by his security team.

Whatever the truth, or lack of, behind the rumours, the area has maintained a pull on the wealthy in Russian society since the end of communism. A guidebook to Moscow written in the early nineties described how the properties in the area, usually rented out to foreigners, were “often owned by Mafiosi, which keeps the neighborhood looking respectable, if not exactly safe”.

Nowadays, this is not quite how residents describe the area. Jeff Browne, a lawyer who has lived around Patriarch’s Ponds for approximately a year, described the atmosphere as quite cosmopolitan. “The neighborhood has an ever-so-slightly family feel,” he said. “However, there are some ‘cool’ venues where wealthy Muscovites go to be seen.”  Since working in the area during the Soviet era, Neil Cooper has noticed the area change from nomenklatura-dominated to being populated by New Russians and Western businessmen. “Though, as in most parts of Moscow, rich and poor seem to coexist in remarkably close proximity,” he added. The mixture of groups around the area ensures an eclectic environment. “The nightly gatherings of leather-clad university students around the pond add a great deal of atmosphere to the area,” said Browne.

Within Walking Distance

One of the key benefits of the area — lauded by residents and estate agents alike — is the ease of getting to many areas within central Moscow. “[The area] has the advantage of being very central, you can get everywhere on foot,” explained Nathalie Cooper, listing her office, choir rehearsals, city-center shopping and concerts at the Tchaikovsky Hall or Conservatoire as accessible on foot.

“Being able to walk is a premium in Moscow,” said Tom Blackwell, a relatively recent arrival in the area. Having lived in a number of other areas in the city, Blackwell was driven by location when looking to move from his previous home on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. “Kutuzovsky is considered a reasonably sought-after area, and priced accordingly, but it’s terrible for access. You definitely have nothing you can walk to, so you are always tied to a car — and traffic in that area is bad — or the metro.”

However, for those who prefer to use a car regularly the Patriarch’s Pond area can also pose problems. “Parking may not be easy, as the area is densely populated and traffic is very congested,” said Neil Cooper.

The advantage of the location is not only the accessibility of what central Moscow has to offer: the area itself has a wide range of amenities, meaning residents need not venture out of it for everything. “For the first time I have my ‘local places’, which I go to on a regular basis,” said Blackwell. As a Londoner, he explained, this is something that he values in his home city and that he had not found in Moscow until his move to the area.

There have been gradual changes in Patriarch’s Pond in the last few years, as the area has been ‘spruced up’. “Quite a few decrepit buildings have been refurbished, of which Pavilion is a good example,” said Pugh. This has also meant numerous premises have closed down. It is “a great shame to see the gradual disappearance of the smaller, Soviet-style grocery stores, a famous old open-air market and others, such as a pet shop and hairdressers, to make way for absurdly expensive designer boutiques, cafés and beauty salons, which mostly remain empty,” said Neil Cooper.

Despite these changes, for those foreigners passing through Moscow or making the city a more permanent home, the Prud remains a top choice. “It has the perfect balance between feeling like a quiet residential area, but at the same time you are right in the thick of things,” said Blackwell.