This street runs from the New Arbat to the Garden Ring. In the 16th century this area was where the Tsar's cooks (povar) lived, which is what gives it its name. Not far from this street near Bolshaya Molchanovka Street there was an area known as Kurii Nozhki (Chickens' Legs, in this usage meaning 'scrag end'). Because of their poverty the cooks asked Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich for a little area of gardens close to where they lived so that they could grow vegetables to feed their families. So he gave them some of the poor land as 'Chickens' Legs', just as in later years people would give tips for tea or vodka.
Lanes in this area have kept their names associated.with the Tsar's kitchen: Stolovy, Skatertny, Khiebny and Nozhovy (Dining Room, Table Linen, Bakery and Cutlery). In Peter the Great's time the cook's settlement was abolished, and the area was taken over completely by the nobility. Up to 1917 Povarskaya Street was regarded as the most aristocratic in Moscow, like Millionnaya Street in St. Petersburg.
Against the background of the towering concrete and glass boxes on the New Arbat, the little Church of St. Simeon Stylites looks like a toy It was built in 1679, and it was the scene for the wedding of the writer Aksakov to Olga Zaplatina, daughter of one of Slivorov's generals. It was Gogol's parish church, since he lived nearby on Nikitskv Boulevard, and would often come here for divine service. Through the efforts of the local community the church was saved from destruction during the building of the new roadway.
The slightly winding Borisoglebsky Lane leads off from the left of Povarskaya Street towards the Arbat. The poet Marina Tsvetayeva lived from 1914-1922 in a two storeyed house at No. 6. On leaving the beloved house of her childhood on Tryokhprudny Lane, she spent a long time looking for a new place which would remind her of her Moscow birthplace. Eventually she found it in this house on Borisoglebsky. Tsvetayeva had her study in the house's attic in the very eaves of the house, and it was here that she wrote the poems that appeared in her collections: Lebediny Stan, Versty, Tsar Denitsa, and the End of Casunolia. She lived in this house during the terrible years of the civil war, and in 1922 she went abroad to be with her husband Sergei Efron. The house was opened as a memorial museum to Tsvetayeva on the hundredth anniversary of her birth.
An 18th century mansion can be seen at No. 31. In the 1840s and 1850s it was owned by Koshelev, who was a rich tax-farmer with a passionate interest in literature and philosophy. His house was used for meetings of the Moscow Slavophiles, and Chaadayev and Gogol were regular visitors here. It is thought that Koshelev's personality provided Gogol with material for the creation of 'the benevolent tax-farmer' Kostanzhogio in the second volume of Dead Souls.
At the end of the street on the right, a beautiful mansion from the late 18th century stands in a modest garden at No. 52. It was owned firstly by the Princes Dolgoruky, and then by the Princes Sologub. It is known as the 'Rostov House', for Tolstoy settled his heroes of War and Peace in this house. The courtyard contains a statue to Tolstoy by the sculptor Novokreshchenova, and it was put up in 1958. After the revolution the house was closely associated with the development of Soviet literature. In 1920 it was opened as a House of the Arts. where Blok, Bryusov, Yesenin, Pasternak and A. Tolstoy among others would read their writings. In April 1930 thousands of people passed through its doors
to pay their last respects to Mayakovsky. Since 1932 it has been occupied by the Union of Writers of the USSR.
