Bove, Osip

Born Oct. 24 (Nov. 4), 1784, in St. Petersburg; died June 16 (28), 1834, in Moscow. Russian architect; representative of the Empire style.

Bove was born into an artist’s family and was of Italian descent. He studied in Moscow at the architectural school associated with the Kremlin Construction Department (1802–07). Beginning in 1807, Bove worked as an assistant to M. F. Kazakov and K. I. Rossi in Moscow and Tver’ (now the city of Kalinin).

After 1812 he was the chief architect of the facade department of the Moscow Committee for Construction, where he advocated the creation of integral urban complexes that would correspond to the scale and planned construction of the city. Bove participated directly in the reconstruction of Red Square and the Shopping Arcade (1815, later pulled down). He took part in creating Theater Square (now Sverdlov Square), with the Bol’shoi Theater (1821—24) and other buildings (later replaced), as well as Aleksandrovskii Park. He also designed the architectural trim of the Manege. The theme of patriotism, which was especially widespread at the beginning of the 19th century, determined the architectural form of the Triumphal Gate. It was erected according to Bove’s design as a monument to the Fatherland War of 1812 at the entrance to Moscow from the direction of St. Petersburg (1827–34; pulled down in 1932 and restored in 1968 on Kutuzov Boulevard).

The large public buildings (the First Municipal Hospital, 1828–32) and homes (the Gagarins’ private home, later the Book Chamber, on Novinskii Boulevard, 1817; destroyed in a fascist German air raid in 1941) built according to Bove’s plans were also subordinated to the urban complex and the street plan. In addition to their traditional country estate composition and the Empire style of their facades, these buildings were characterized by the intimacy, simplicity, and comfort that were characteristic of Moscow architecture at the beginning of the 19th century. Among Bove’s well-known church buildings are the domed rotunda for the Vsekh Skoriabshchikh Radosti Church on the Bol’shaia Ordynka in Moscow (1833) and the church in the village of Arkhangel’skoe, Moscow Oblast, with its unique iconostasis in the form of a triumphal arch (1822).