Church of st. John the divine under an Elm

The massive and majestic church building dominates all surrounding tasks. Even the new building of the twentieth century in the neighborhood did not crush it and did not diminish its significance in shaping the appearance of the New Square.  However, the crosses on the church and the bell tower came back recently.

The exact date of construction of the first church is unknown, but it is mentioned as existing already in 1493. The next time it appeared in the sources after nearly a century - in 1585 as a wooden. Then it became known and had a nickname - "under the elm," on a large tree, which grew next to the altar of the temple until 1775. By the beginning of the XIX century the old church building was dilapidated, but the reorganization of the Patriotic War prevented the beginning of its reorganization in 1812. Only in 1825 (this date is still visible on the pediment above the altar) began construction work on the project of architects S.P. Obitayeva and L.P. Carloni, which lasted for 12 years and ended in 1837.
Constructed in Empire style, the two-tiered building of the new church received six altars at once - a very large figure for the parish church. Upstairs is the main throne in the name of John the Theologian with two chapels on either side: Finding the Head of John the Forerunner and Evangelist Luke. Below - the central chapel of the Protection of the Blessed Virgin and the side altars of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker and Mitrophania of Voronezh. The church goes to the New Square with its eastern facade with an altar, which, because of this parade, was decorated in the form of a massive six-columned portico with a rust in the lower part and devoid of protrusions. The side facades are decorated more modestly. A special solemnity is attached to the building by a tall light dome decorated with ionic columns and crowned with a traditional head for orthodox churches. In the 1840s, the church received a new bell tower, almost equal in height to the dome of the temple thanks to an elongated spire with a cross. From the north and south of the temple to Novyi Piazzo are the symmetrically furnished two-story empire dwelling houses with shops on the first floor: connected with the church with the help of two arches of gates with figured endings, they form together with it a complete ensemble.

In 1925 the church was closed - one of the first in the district - and adapted for the archive first, and then under the municipal museum, turned in 1934 to the Museum of History and Reconstruction of Moscow. The church has lost the head of the bell tower and spire, appeared in floor slabs, almost all the decoration was destroyed, except for some fragments of stucco. Until the museum moved to the building of Proviant warehouses on Zubovsky Boulevard the church was closed. Only in 2011 the services were resumed here, at the same time the church received the status of a house church at the Russian Orthodox University named after John the Theologian. The restoration is underway, in the process of which the lost endings of the church and the bell tower have already been reconstructed, it is also planned to restore the lost appearance to the interiors.