Amir Temur Xiyoboni Metro Station (October Revolution)

In 1977, the Tashkent metro ended here. The first section of the first line ran for 12.17 kilometers from Sabir Rakhimov station on the southwestern outskirts to this station in the center - that was how Georgy Oganesov, chief engineer of Tashmetroproekt, measured its length. Further on, the tracks hit a dead end, and a 1977 magazine noted this directly: temporarily, it is a dead end on this line. The location was not chosen by chance. The station lies beneath Pushkin Street, where it adjoins Revolution Square, next to the Uzbekistan Hotel. This is the very center of the city, a hub where everything converges, and even then it was assumed that the line would go further to the northeast - which happened in 1980, when the section to Maxim Gorky station was opened. 喜びThe last stretch proved the most difficult. In August 1976, Pravda Vostoka wrote that out of the nine kilometers of running tunnels of the first section, about six hundred meters remained to be driven by closed-face mining, mainly between V.I. Lenin Square station and October Revolution station. Open-cut excavation was impossible in this place: central streets were above. A year earlier, in June 1976, station decoration had not yet begun - only artistic finishing was underway, the longest part of the work. And then an episode occurred that clearly shows what the metro was in a Soviet city. On November 5, 1977, the newspaper published the metro schedule for November 7: trains ran from six in the morning to two at night, but Pakhtakor and October Revolution stations worked only for exit from eight to two in the afternoon, while V.I. Lenin Square station was closed altogether at that time. The reason is clear without explanation: a demonstration was taking place above, and the metro that day functioned as its infrastructure - you could bring people in, but you couldn't take them out. A day after the holiday, the newspaper published a new diagram of bus routes. Route 21 "Central Market - 26th Chilanzar Quarter" was closed as duplicating the metro line, route 35 was extended to the bus station "Pakhtakor Metro Station", and a new circular route from the 50th Anniversary of the USSR Metro bus station was opened. The city was being rebuilt before our eyes to accommodate the metro: some routes disappeared, others started from the stations.

The theme of the station was set by its name: the portrayal of revolutionary events in Central Asia. The question was how to tell this story in an underground hall without turning it into a museum display case. The solution turned out to be two-layered. Below are the columns and walls, designed strictly and almost classically. The rectangular columns are faced with white plates of polished Nurata marble, and in the middle of each, vertical strips of red Kurdai granite are embedded - meaning flutes, the most ancient technique of a column, assembled here from stone of a different color. In the upper part, the columns are framed by belts of the same granite with ornamentation. The track walls are faced with reddish Gazgan marble, and the plinth with dark red Tokovo granite. Above is the ceiling, and this is where the East begins. The ribbed slabs are hemmed with a flat ceiling with lights hidden in the crossbeams, but in the middle span, matching the column pitch, domes with national carved ornamentation in ganch and with backlighting are arranged. The carving was done by folk master M. Usmanov. Backlit ganch gives what this material exists for - the play of light and shadow: the relief works only with side lighting, and the ceiling comes alive. Actually, the story of the revolution is placed on the track walls: thematic panels made of embossed copper depicting the participation of the people and leaders in the revolutionary events of Central Asia. The authors are artists V. Lunyov and L. Ryabtsev. The entrance part to the platform is designed as a group of banners, and a bas-relief of Lenin was installed in one of the lobbies. A year after the opening, the station was reviewed by Vladimir Burmakin, a monumentalist and chairman of the monumental section of the Union of Artists of Uzbekistan. He spoke briefly and to the point about this station: the reliefs are well fitted into the plane of the wall, and the softness of the lighting together with the clarity of the architectural design gives the hall a special solemnity. The praise from a fellow artist concerned precisely the fact that the embossing does not protrude from the wall, but lies within it. The station was designed by the TashZNIIEP institute: architects Ilya Merport, M. Akramov, and S. Shappo, with the participation of V. Narubansky. Merport's name is worth remembering: he was also the chief architect of the Uzbekistan Hotel, which stands directly above this hall. The same person made the building on the surface and the hall beneath it. Since 1992, the station has been called Amir Temur Khiyoboni - after the square that changed its name along with it. The names above changed, but the hall below remained: the Tashkent metro was almost never rebuilt, and the ganch domes, granite flutes, and embossing on the track walls have been standing since 1977. Of the noticeable changes, the light changed - on some stations, warm lamps were replaced by cold ones.