Ploshchad Lenina
- This object in Internet: Wiki, Wikimapia, карта Yandex
- Opened: June 1, 1958
- Station depth: 67m
- Project title: Finland Railway Station
- Popular names: Finban
- Type of station: pylon
- Entrance to the station: one entrance from the ground pavilion and one from the Finland Station building
- Traffic: total about 1965 thousand people per month
One of the very few non-transfer stations in Saint-Petersburg with two exits. The name of the station is associated with the location of its first exit - to the Finland Station and to Lenin in an armored car.
In Soviet times, the full name of the station was - the station "Lenin Square" of Leningradsky, the Order of Lenin, the subway named after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
Accordingly, even today this station is one of the ends of the famous route "a trip in the city of Lenin on the subway named after Lenin of the Order of Lenin from the station Leninsky Prospect to the Lenin Square station.
A striking example of a "tiled station". There used to be a lot of them in the city, but almost all the tiles on the track walls were eventually replaced with marble. And here it is still preserved in an authentic state. Individual tiles glued into place during repairs are clearly visible.
Doors in the track walls - in the style of the first stage of the metro, carry the year the station was built.
At the opening of the station, the central hall was illuminated by chandeliers, but traces of them have long been lost. Now the central hall is like a drum inside, empty and white. The feeling is further enhanced by the fact that the diameter of the station tunnels here is one meter larger than usual - 9.5 meters.
Lighting at the station changed: from the original mercury in 2006 they switched to poisonous sodium. Just gouge out your eyes. At the same time, in the passages between the pylons, the lighting remained white, which created a bright color difference.
In the absence of chandeliers, all of the station's lighting became completely overhead. The plafonds of the lamps correspond in style to the First Line of the Metro.
And only at the end of 2020, the poisonous yellow light was finally replaced back to LED white. Feel the difference.
Also earlier, the floor on the station platforms was asphalt, with a faded security line and a worn chain of tiles marking the same line. Archive photos:
The station has two exits and, accordingly, the central hall is surrounded by hermetic doors on both sides. However, they are of different types. Three escalators are installed at both ends of the station. These are the same escalators as at the station There is no such page! - the height of the lift is 65.8 meters, the length of the inclined part is 131.6 meters, 755 steps, each handrail is a loop 290 meters long. At the time of installation, these were the longest escalators in the world.
Let's start with the second exit. The second exit from the station, to the square on Botkinskaya Street, was opened on August 4, 1962. Previously, both escalators had lamps in the original style of the First Stage, but today these lamps have survived only at the second exit. The hermetic door here is of a vertical type - "guillotine".
Lamps in the old Stalinist style are pleasing to the eye.
The vestibule of the second exit is undecorated, semi-oval in plan, with large panoramic windows.
By the way, a third exit from the station to the underpass at the Finland Railway Station was planned, but not built. Yes.
Let's walk along the surface above the station to the first exit. It is built into the Finland Station building.
This lobby is much more interesting. Here you can see original beautiful lamps on the walls.
But the main thing is that here on the wall you can see a huge mosaic with Lenin. Moreover, it is visible only at the entrance, because. when you exit the escalator, it turns out to be directly above your head, and in order to see it from there, you have to lift your head strongly. The panel is dedicated to Lenin's speech to the workers and soldiers of Petrograd on April 3, 1917.
Let's go back underground.
On these escalators, unfortunately, the original lamps have already been replaced by typical stupid "torches".
On this escalator, the hermetic door is lifting, like a "toilet lid".
In general, the station is a vivid example of the transition from Stalinist prestige to Khrushchev's wretched economy. Contrasts between style and minimalism at every turn.
The ferry to the station Chernyshevskaya was the first in Leningrad, passed under the Neva. The tunneling was carried out using a shield method, while the surrounding soils were not isolated from the tunnel. To squeeze out the water seeping under the river bed, the tunneling was carried out using a caisson, which creates excess pressure in the tunnel during the construction period.
The haul to the station Vyborgskaya has several unfinished branches turned into pantries. Officially, they appeared because the haul route changed 3 times right during the tunneling.
Also on the same side there are turnaround dead ends with a train maintenance station and Special object. A separate tunnel leads to it from the reverse dead ends of the station - a special-purpose path - with lattice gates. The traffic light behind the gate looks in the opposite direction - to the special object.
Here is the train going in that direction.
For seventeen years, from 1958 to 1975, the station was the terminal.
With the construction of this station, all Leningrad stations were finally connected by one metro line. The situation changed only with the construction of the Ladoga railway station in the 21st century.
At least Lenin and lamps can be seen here.
