Mira Avenue

Prospect Mira (Russian: Проспект Мира, "Avenue of Peace" or "Avenue of the World") is a major arterial avenue in the north-east of Moscow. Until 1957, different sections of the avenue were named 1st Meschanskaya Street, Trinity Highway, Great Alekseevskaya Street, Great Rostokinskiy Street and Yaroslavl Highway. Today, it is one of the longest Moscow arteries, measuring 8.9 kilometres (5.5 mi) in length. It is located in the Sukharev area and is a continuation of Sretenka and Yenisei Streets, linking the Garden Ring near Sklifosovsky Hospital to the Moscow MKAD ring road extension of the M8 expressway.

In the 12th century the street was the main road to Yaroslavl, along which were the villages of Alekseevskoe, Rostokino and others. At the end of the 17th century a Polish settlement grew up around the area. The name of the settlement came from the Polish word «mieszczanie» (townspeople), (hence the former name of "Meschanskaya Street"). In 1706, at the initiative of Peter The Great, the nearby Pharmaceutical Garden (later the University Botanical Garden) was founded. In the 1740s the street was completed between the Krestovsky Gate and the Kamer-Kollezhsky Val (now Rizhskaya Square).

In the second half of the 19th century apartment houses and mansions were built along 1st Meschanskaya Street. At the end of the 19th century, number 5 was built for the tea merchant Perlov (architect Roman Klein) and the number 43a (architect Fyodor Schechtel), in 1885 - № 3 (architect V. Zagorski), in 1909 - № 30, which belonged to I.K. Baev (architect V.I. Chagin), where Valery Bryusov lived in 1910.

In 1930 the reconstruction of 1st Meshchanskaya Street, Trinity Highway, Great Alekseevskaya Street, and Great Rostokinskiy Street began. In 1931, 1st Meschanskaya Street was paved by the American firm "Seabrook" but after two years the surface crumbled, unable to withstand the extremes of temperature. In 1934, the roadway was expanded through the elimination of the tram tracks, fences and front gardens next to houses. By September 1935 all tramways had been moved to the neighboring 2nd Meschanskaya street. Active reconstruction of the street began in 1936, when it was decided to build the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition on the street, near Ostankino (originally it was planned to be located in the Koptevo area). The development plan for the reconstruction was developed by the 4th architectural and planning workshop (APU) of Moscow City Council, led by the architect G. B. Barkhin. The basis of the plan composed in 1933-1934 for Dzerzhinsky Street, Sretenka, and 1st Meshchanskaya included the demolition of all the old buildings on the 1st Meshchanskaya. The plan provided for building between Sukharevskaya and Rizhskaya stations 19 or 20 seven floor buildings, most of which would be apartment buildings. This required demolition of 102 (out of 172) older buildings on the 1st Meshchanskaya Street.

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Wikipedia