The village of Aleksandrovo-Shchapovo
The settlement of Shchapovo in the Troitsky District is located 27 km from the Moscow Ring Road along the Varshavskoye Highway. Aleksandrovo-Shchapovo is a unique place. This is a museum (a former estate), an agricultural enterprise with a long history, an organ hall where concerts are held, and a wonderful cozy place for walking.
The village of Aleksandrovo has changed its owners over the centuries (Morozovs, Grushetskys, Arsenievs). The modern layout of the estate is associated with the lieutenant-general and senator Vasily Vladimirovich Grushetsky, who in 1779 built a stone church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary instead of the old wooden one and re-equipped the estate in the style of his time.
V.V. Grushetsky dammed the streams, arranging 4 ponds in a cascade, a linden park with alleys was also planted, bridges were made, the bottom of one of the streams was lined with white stone. The construction and improvement of the 18th century manor was only partially preserved. At the beginning of the 20th century, the foundations of a manor house were found near the “manager’s house”. Subsequent owners of the estate built their houses in other places.
The history of the estate
The estate, which bears the name of Shchapovo in our time, is associated with the activities of a Moscow entrepreneur, co-owner of the factory and trading house “Brothers Peter and Ilya Shchapov” – Ilya Vasilyevich. I.V. Shchapov (1846-1896) bought this estate from the heir Arsenyev. Ilya Vasilievich was a certified businessman. He graduated from the Moscow Practical Academy of Commercial Sciences. This was the first “landowner” not a nobleman. At 42, with considerable funds, he decided to leave the family firm and settled in the new Aleksandrovo estate.
In the village of Aleksandrovo, Ilya Vasilyevich got married to his illiterate housekeeper Olga Makarovna, with whom he lived in his parents’ house. Soon he built a 2-storey Russian-style house in Aleksandrovo for himself and his wife. House without columns, but with a wooden turret topped with a hipped roof. It has carved platbands and the same roof finish. Under the turret there is a staircase with a stone staircase from the park to the 2nd floor.
Master’s house in Russian style
The master’s house is interestingly designed. Inside it there is no staircase from the 1st floor to the 2nd, the connection between the floors was only outside. On the 2nd floor, the walls and ceiling are painted in antique style (Pompeian painting). The detached stone kitchen is connected to the house by a passage. The kitchen and the house look like a single residential and architectural complex thanks to the wide horizontal rustication. The architect of the building is unknown, but there is an assumption that the project was done by A.S. Kaminsky and F.O. Shekhtel (famous builders of the “Russian style”), tk. the house in Moscow for brother Shchapovo was designed by F.O. Shekhtel.
Ilya Vasilyevich built in his estate: a stable with a carriage shed, a smithy, a glacier, a dairy (where cream and butter were made) and other buildings. The estate had orchards and greenhouses, pedigree cattle were raised.
Opposite the manor house there are centuries-old trees – a 300-year-old oak and a 250-year-old maple (planted back in the times of the Grushetskys).
I was very pleased that the manor house was not allowed to perish thanks to the recent restoration of the external facade.
