🚶 The first khrushchyovka and the 9th experimental block

ул. Гримау, 14–16

A late-1950s block where the first prefab panel five-story buildings were tried out: building No. 16 is considered Moscow's first khrushchyovka.

Buildings No. 14 and 16 belong to the experimental 9th block of Novye Cheryomushki, built in 1956–1959.
The block's project was led by the young architect Natan Osterman.
Exhibitions were held right in the apartments of the new buildings — by 1959 more than 40,000 people had visited them.
A few apartments got a "polibán" — a bathtub, shower, sink, bidet and laundry tank in a single fixture; the experiment was judged a failure.
Through traffic was excluded from the block, and each courtyard got shallow splash pools for children.
Until 1963 the street was called 2nd Cheryomushkinsky Proyezd; the new name honors the Spanish communist Julián Grimau.
The lives of the Cheryomushki newcomers were satirized in Shostakovich's operetta "Moscow, Cheryomushki", first staged in January 1959.
In 2008 Moscow historians asked for the block to be recognized as a monument but were refused: the buildings were judged to be mass-produced.