Buyuk Ipak Yuli Metro Station (Maxim Gorky)

Of the three stations opened in 1980, this is the most picturesque, and it is made almost entirely using two techniques: domes at the top and stone patterns at the bottom. The vault of the platform hall is pierced by eight domes, each five meters in diameter, with lighting fixtures framed around the perimeter. That means the light comes in rings: eight glowing rims along the entire hall. The domes themselves and the cornices of the track walls are covered with carved ganch ornamentation, crafted by the team of folk master M. Usmanov - the same man who three years earlier carved the ganch domes at the Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya station. The track walls are faced with Pushtulin marble, chosen specifically for its pattern. The authors described the effect as follows: the marble pattern resembles a churning ocean, and combined with the stern, cliff-like inserts of Yemelyanovo red granite, it gives the track walls dynamism. This comparison is no accident, and a second review explains where the ocean came from. The floor of the platform and vestibules is made of polished grey and light-brown granite, while the walls and columns of the vestibule are faced with Gazgan, Burovshchina and other marbles in white and warm tones. The station is vaulted, with two underground vestibules combined with pedestrian subways. The theme set by the name was formulated in a magazine in one line: Gorky is the storm petrel of the revolution. It is revealed in two multi-figure bronze reliefs depicting scenes from the writer's works - they are installed at the ends of the platform hall. Hence the ocean on the walls: The Song of the Stormy Petrel begins with the sea, and the marble with its wavy pattern is not just decoration here, but a continuation of the same theme. The station is literally built around a single prose poem.

Until August 18, 1980, the Tashkent metro ended in the city center at Oktyabrskoy Revolyutsii station. The second section extended the line to the northeast, toward Maxim Gorky Square, and this station became the new terminus. The location was chosen at the intersection of major transport arteries, and surface transport was immediately reorganized around the station: by decision of the city executive committee, bus and trolleybus routes were changed so that residential areas - referred to in the article as Karasu and the tractor builders' settlement - gained a short, direct connection to the metro. The scheme was the same as in 1977, when the entire bus network was redrawn around the stations of the first section: the metro became the axis to which everything else was pulled. Construction of the second section itself took three years and proved more difficult than the first. The most challenging part was the stretch leading right here: the left tunnel between Pushkin Square and Maxim Gorky Square, measuring 997 meters long, was excavated by Boris Mukhin's crew from the third department of Tashmetrostroy for an entire year, until June 1979. In January 1979, the newspaper wrote about 593 meters completed as if counting every single one. The launch was held on August 18, 1980, a rally took place at Hamid Alimjan station, and the line became twelve stations long, with a total length of 16.5 kilometers. Meanwhile, a 1982 magazine reports that Tashmetroproekt was already completing documentation for the first section of the second line - Navoi, Uzbekistanskaya, Prospekt Kosmonavtov, Aybek, and Tashkent - and construction work there was proceeding ahead of schedule. This station remained the terminus for long - the line was later extended further to the northeast. And in 1997, it changed its name: instead of the petrel of the revolution, it became the Great Silk Road, "Buyuk Ipak Yuli". The bronze reliefs depicting Gorky's themes and the marble chosen for its resemblance to a churning sea remained: the Tashkent metro was almost never rebuilt.