Appraising the restoration of an architectural delight
Published: 1 July 2021
Back in February 2020, I felt compelled to flag one of my favourite historical buildings in the Baltic resort of Svetlogorsk, the former German town of Rauschen. At the time of writing, this superb example of neo-Gothic architecture was exhibiting signs of year-on-year neglect, having stood empty for almost two decades, and whilst its shabbiness combined with the Romanticist style in which it is built and embellished lent it a more than passing air of Hitchcockianism, it was evident that unless remedial action was taken, and taken soon, catastrophe would ensue.
A Gothic favourite of Svetlogorsk revisited
Gratifying it was, therefore, to discover on a recent trip to Svetlogorsk that the initiative had been taken, money had been invested and this architectural icon had been rescued from extinction.
Admittedly, the sunny yellow paintwork, new roof and the homely inclusion of window boxes in full bloom have diminished the prospect of the Castle of Otranto, but since Svetlogorsk is prone to the odd thunderstorm or two, all that is needed are a few circling bats and one or two long flowing cloaks and imagination is back in business.
Even without these props, the Gothic allure shines through. Revivalist architecture of this period (c.1920s) demonstrates the extent to which it is possible to achieve ‘imposing’ without descending headlong into the unforgivable maelstrom of conspicuous consumption and glitz. Granted, the house is bold and arresting but not in a way that exposes it to accusations of show and pretentiousness. Even its salient feature, the striking square-section turret with ornamented pinnacle, evades such criticism, for whilst it embodies magnificence, the visual impression, as immediate and memorable as it is, is not, depending on the observer’s susceptibility, neither as lasting nor profound in its simpler evocation as the literary and folk-lore associations that cumulatively manifest when observing it from different angles, on different occasions throughout the year.
A Gothic favourite of Svetlogorsk revisited
When you are next in Svetlogorsk, stop a while to observe, engage and enjoy this venerable building. A few yards more and you will arrive at yet another Rauschen/Svetlogorsk gem, this being the Hartman Hotel, a sensitively restored hostelry whose delights you can savour over good food and a bevvy or two whilst relaxing on the hotel terrace.
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As noted in those previous posts, the block-paved thoroughfare runs parallel with the sea, but on walking it you reach a point where a series of low-level private flats, not so terribly old, obstruct you from making further progress. At this juncture, you have no option if you want to proceed but to continue your walk in land, a route that very soon brings you before a rather prosaic development residential in nature, most of whose flats which were up for sale last year are up for sale this year (2020). But as you turn to the right a most amazing visual thing happens, helped not a little, I suspect, by the mediocre tenor of the flats you passed a moment ago. In less than 18 months a new development has sprung from the ground, which, in its domineering height, prodigious bulk and latitude and by dint of its sheer proliferation in a relatively short space of time, really knocks you for six.
Completely out of scale with everything around it and consuming more ground than a migrant camp in Calais is the most enormous high-rise residential estate that I have ever encountered. With your senses still reeling from scale fright, the foreground flats and those behind them marching regimentally down the steep fall of the hill, grab you by the Gothics. If, like me, you are a Gothic freak, adore Gothic almost as much as drinking a pint of real ale in the company of Nigel Farage, then you will put aside any prejudices that you may have adopted against kitsch and lap what you see before you up like a Westernised Bela Lugosi on a boy’s night out in Butlins.
Gothic ~ get the point!
Here, there are more than enough perpendiculars, faceted angles, towers, turrets and pinnacles to give every Gothic addict the fix they crave and need. Yes, I know that these structures are modern, but I have personally consulted with Tom Cat Murr in whom, he has assured me, no catatonia has been induced by their 21st century origin.
Zelenogradsk Apartment Blocks with a touch of Gothic
I am not sure, however, that either he or I feel the same way about the estate’s alter ego, those just as massy structures that run in line with their Gothic neighbours along the unfinished roadside and which extend at right angles from them.
Zelenogradsk flats, Russia: two styles face off against each other ~Zelenogradsk New Sea View Apartment Blocks
The flip side to the Gothicised coin is a vast battery of impressive apartments built, correction embellished, in the Neo-Classical and Neo-Renaissance spirit. Designed with corners, angles and twists enough to thwart prescribed conformity, and assisted in this respect by the natural decline of the landscape, along whose downward curve this Goliath series of buildings march in the most dramatic manner, the stacking effect of shelves and ledges, inclusion of white panels, many adorned with relief motifs, and woven into the frieze a colonnade of arches strike a Kensington/Chelsea chord in me, chiming, whilst not exactly in tune but all the better for it, with a nuanced note in their juxtaposition against the light-brick infill. The icing on top of this pastiche cherry has to be the recessed oval, a final flaunting touch of extravagance clearly seen at the front and centre of the classic Dutch-styled gable.
The icing on the top ~ Zelenogradsk New Sea View Apartment Blocks
Whatever your feelings towards these 21st century additions to Zelenogradsk’s built and natural environment, you have to admit they are a big improvement on the experimental, rectangular-limited, mass-housing pre-fab models constructed during Stalin’s reign and the clunky pre-cast concrete jobbies, known as the Khrushchyovka, that went up at an alarming rate in the late 1940s and 50s.
Nevertheless, for all their ubiquitous uniformity and quick-assembly triumph over the lauded principles of aesthetic finesse, they, these seemingly once drab predecessors, have, with the re-evaluation that typically comes with the passing of time and hindsight, acquired, especially in recent years, an era-defining nostalgic status similar in intrinsic import to the cult of personality.
However, whether today’s apartments that are changing Zelenogradsk’s shoreline profile into a high-density urbanised landscape will be accepted so sympathetically by tomorrow’s generations depends on values we cannot predict. As with everything in our immediate lives ~ only time will tell.
Although I am still prone to headlining this series of articles as the Diary of a Self-isolator, I have begun to wonder whether the relaxation of coronavirus restrictions warrants a change of name, say, for example, the Diary of a Social Distancer, but have come to the conclusion that in the interests of continuity the original appellation should persist.
You can see the etymological crux of the issue in the revelation that recently, whilst self-isolating, I accepted the invitation to emerge from the homestead to stay for a couple of days at a friend’s dacha in the heart of Zelenogradsk.
Zelenogradsk is considered to be the second principal seaside resort in the Kaliningrad region, the number-one slot invariably reserved for Svetlogorsk. Whilst it is widely accepted that Svetlogorsk wears the crown, in recent years that crown has been tarnished by a controversial extension of the coastlines promenade in preparation for an extensive building programme that has decimated the resort of what little beach it had.
Zelenogradsk, on the other hand, has a beach par excellence; acres of white and golden sand stretching across the curving coastline for as far as the eye can see. On a good day, that is under a bright blue sky with plenty of sun to boot, the Zelenogradsk coastline is a beach-lovers paradise and the rolling waves and surf from the sea a scintillating superlative for all that is loved about swimming and sailing about on the briny.
Natural sandy coastline: Zelenogradsk, Russia (July 2020)
Today (3 June 2020), the weather conditions could not have been better. And for reclusive comfort combined with close proximity to the front, the old German house in which we were lodging could not have been more inviting or better located.
Before heading off to the beach, we decided ~ my wife, our friend and I ~ to buy a pizza and a few edible accessories from one of the seafront bars. This was the first time since coronavirus began that I had eaten in a restaurant or been to a restaurant to buy food, and although we were sat outside on the decking and the waitresses were bemasked, the entire experience seemed strangely illicit and fraught with a sense of risk.
On paying for our order there was a poignant moment when one of the girls who had served us, possibly the manager, not only thanked us for our custom but almost begged us to return again, such is the devastation that coronavirus has wrought upon the café, bar and restaurant business.
We did not eat in the restaurant’s outside seating area, choosing instead the comparative safety of limited social numbers in the conservatory of our temporary German home.
Before eating the food we had bought we of course observed all of the risk-decreasing procedures handed down to us from the world’s health industry, which is to say that we washed our mitts and swabbed the polystyrene packaging with antiseptic wipes before opening it and then used cutlery to eat with.
I have to admit that it was good to sample fast food again, even though the preliminaries had knocked it down a gear or two.
Social Distancing in Zelenogradsk
Victually resuscitated, plus a bottle of white wine later, our friend departed, leaving Olga and myself to make our way to the sea.
I wondered, as I walked towards the beach, if the low numbers of people present was a coronavirus consequence. If so, it was the perfect tragedy, but the volumetric increase in visitors on the following day, which was a Saturday, assured me that the comparatively low turnout had been the product of a working day.
By 12 noon on Saturday the numbers of people in Zelenogradsk had swelled enormously, but not to such an extent as to render social distancing ridiculous, as it had in England when people had flocked to Brighton beach in such appalling numbers that it was all they could do to find enough room in which to stab each other.
As we walked along the widened footpath with its pedestrian section on one side and its mini-road on the other, along which whizzed all kinds of two- and four-wheeled mini traffic, and with its astonishing eclecticism of man-made buildings on one side and the rolling sea and sand on the other, I hoped for their own sake that there were no representatives of a certain American media organisation lurking around in the undergrowth. From what I have read recently the western media seems to have a neurosis regarding ‘ethnic Russian families’, ‘smiling Slavic couples with children’ and ‘traditional family values’, all of which was refreshingly evident today. It is a peculiar point to ponder on, is it not, that what matters to some is of no matter to others.
Take the preferences of my wife and I, if you will: My wife swims; I drink.
Under the Old Normal, we would find a spot that was mutually suitable. An outside drinking area for me to relax in; a section of beach close to the sea for her to get sand in her toes and completely drenched in salt water.
Under the New Normal, however, this was not to be. Although the seating areas outside the bars were reassuringly patronised, the interiors being off-base, I had decided aforethought not to frequent them but carry on social distancing. So, whilst my wife dunked herself, I simply went for a stroll, and when I had strolled enough waited for her on a bench like the perfect husband I am.
Example of brand new old: Neoclassical building on the coastal path, Zelenogradsk, Russia (July 2020)
My fascination along this particular pedestrian thoroughfare is with the architectural anomaly. It is so outrageously ~ in an entrancing sort of way ~ diverse, with no two buildings the same either in scale or point of style. It is not visually unheard of, for example, to have a brand-spanking new hotel ~ all curvilinear, porticoed, sleek and slick in metal and glass and conspicuously erect ~ rubbing shoulders, I should say, with a great, grey giant of a building, a sad and sorry-looking concrete block of flats, neglected, uninhabited, windows open and vacant like the proverbial eyes in skulls and next to it, abstrusely, a red-brick castle pastiche, festooned with mini-turrets, or a vast building in magnolia-coloured stone boasting all the attributes of neoclassical architecture in its most defining form standing next to a humble shack, a distressed-brick and weathered wooden domicile with its roots in Eastern Prussia but with the added Soviet enhancements of an asbestos roof, steel railings and bulwarking metal sheets. I could walk up and down this road all day marvelling at these sites, which are far more interesting, and infinitely more imaginative, than anything you would see today on the fashion-circuit catwalks.
This lovely old building overlooks the sea along the Zelenogradsk coastline. Its much sought after location almost certainly means it will be demolished to make way for a palatial new residence, or, more likely, hotel. Myself, I would go for renovation. There is nothing like restoring heritage and making it your home.
Our excursion to the beach tomorrow would take me even further along this road, to a place of architectural extravagance the likes of which I have never beheld before, but more of this in a later post.
The sea and my wife having been reacquainted, it was now time to walk into town and purchase some bottles of ale from a well-stocked shop on Zelenogradsk’s high street. I would like to include these delights in my bottled beers of Kaliningrad appraisal, which I started compiling last week, but notwithstanding that they were not bought in the city itself, a minor point that could be overlooked, I have limited my bottled beer review to include brands that are generally available in supermarkets, so I will possibly leave the ones I tried today for a future specialist category on craft and imported beers.
Social Distancing in Zelenogradsk
Now, coronavirus has brought about a number of changes both in attitudes and lifestyle, some seemingly seismic, others more subtle. Like Nigel Farage, who on his Facebook page posted ‘103 days since I last drank a pint in a pub’, it has been 106 days-plus since I drank a beer in a bar or restaurant. Drinking at home is not my cup of tea, although that is what I drink there, and I have to say that sitting on a park bench and drinking ~drinking alcohol that is ~ is one of those dubious pleasures in life which up until now has passed me by. Today, however, as my wife wanted to go swimming again, and as I would rather be outdoors than in, whilst she got ready to swim this evening I packed up my beer in my old kit bag ready to find that bench.
To be honest it was not as bad as I had anticipated. All in life is relative and when you have been cooped up for the greater proportion of 106 days, a park bench and a bottle of beer is paradise. As the song goes, ‘the bare necessities of life will come to you!’
Mick Hart, in the company of a bottle of beer, happy to be on a bench on Zelenogradsk beach (July 2020)
