Podolsk is located at the intersection of the Pakhra River and the Moscow-Simferopol highway. On October 5, 1781, by decree of Empress Catherine II, during the division of the Moscow province into districts, the Podolsk district was formed, and the village of Podol became the district center – the city of Podolsk. By 1781 there were 106 houses in Podil, 14 trade shops, 2 drinking houses, a wine and salt shop. Every week on Saturdays there were auctions, where merchants traded in kumach, silk and other textile goods brought from Moscow. The peasants of the county brought bread, hay, livestock, and home-made products.
Art embankment in Podolsk, history
Many residents of Podolsk kept inns, were engaged in a carriage trade, some of the townspeople have long been engaged in the extraction of white stone and buta. The peasant reform of 1861 created a decisive turn in the history of Russian cities. The location of Podolsk and the district was very successful, and the presence of highways (Varshavskoe highway) and railways allowed the city to quickly turn into an industrial one. An excellent bridge was built across the Pakhra River.
Podolsk was formed as a merchant city. The merchants were the backbone of society and left a noticeable mark in the history of the city – the construction of churches, almshouses, educational institutions, a cinema. It is known that since 1848 on the right bank of the Pakhra river there were Vasily Sinegubov’s baths, which were located on the street. Embankment near the bridge. Now it is Khudozhestvennaya embankment or st. Fedorov. The baths served for half a century, but due to dilapidation they were closed. The merchant of the II guild – Peter Yegorievich Tolkushev moved to Podolsk from the Tula province after the abolition of serfdom. In the shopping malls of the church, Pyotr Tolkushev and his sons had a grocery store.
The Tolkushevs’ house at 138 Lenin Avenue has survived to this day.
This street was still called Serpukhovskaya. On the site of Vasily Sinegub’s baths, Pyotr Tolkushev in 1894 built two-story stone baths, which could serve up to 3 thousand people a day. The baths were of 2 classes and were very popular with the townspeople. At that time, there were no entertainment establishments in Podolsk. City life was monotonous and Peter Tolkushev decided to build a cinema in this backwater.
The history of the creation of the first cinema in the city
At the beginning of 1914, on the banks of the Pakhra River, next to the baths, Pyotr Tolkushev built a beautiful large building, in which the first cinema in the city called “Khudozhestvenny” was opened. The ticket cost 8 kopecks. The townspeople came not only to watch a movie, but also to admire the building and the interior decorations.
The central entrance of the building with a colonnade was decorated with tubs with palm trees, a spacious foyer with a balcony, stucco moldings on the ceiling, Venetian glass mirrors, a huge crystal chandelier, parquet polished to a shine – there was nothing like this in Podolsk.
The cinema showed films that were rented in Moscow at the Khanzhonkov cinema. Moscow artists were invited to give concerts, staged operettas and vaudeville. There is information that the pianist V.F. Vershinsky, who played before the start of the show, also hosted dances here.
After 1917 the cinema was renamed “Soviet”. Now the building has been completely rebuilt and the Green Hotel is located here. The cinema has not been used for a long time. Nearby on the embankment, opposite the hotel building, there is a monument to the Golden Fish.
