There are all sorts of stories circulating in our beloved city about the underground structures on Rymarskaya Street! However, as we both know, reality is much more interesting than myth. That’s why today you’ll learn the whole truth about the underground structures on Rymarskaya Street. My friend and colleague, Andrei Kovalev, president of the “Children of the Underground” Foundation, will help us with this.
“A section of an underground passage near a residential building (the former Freiman estate, 23 Rymars’ka St.) and the Philharmonic building (the former Commercial Club, Rymars’ka Street, 21) has been known since December 1910. It was then, during a downpour, that a sinkhole formed in the courtyard of the Commercial Club, exposing the underground passage. The underground cavity was deemed safe, and city engineer D.I. Cherkes ordered the passage to be filled in and compacted. In the summer of 1913, while laying sewer lines to the Freiman estate (an area adjacent to the courtyard of the Commercial Club—now the Kharkiv Philharmonic building), the underground passage was discovered again.
Since this was not the only instance of an underground space being discovered (similar cavities had been found on Pushkinskaya (Hryhoriia Skovorody) Street and Cathedral Square), a special commission of the City Council was formed to investigate such sinkholes and instances of underground passages being discovered. On August 3, 1913, the commission set out to investigate the underground passages on the Freiman estate.
The commission included engineers Pavlovsky, Linnik, Kustersky, and Stepanov, as well as City Council member Kharmansky. It was originally planned that the commission members would inspect the sinkhole that had been discovered earlier in the courtyard of the Commercial Club. But Mr. Freiman skillfully diverted the experts’ attention by suggesting they examine another section. According to Freiman, he intended to use this section of the underground tunnels to build a boiler room and therefore had not been in a hurry to report it to the authorities.
Nevertheless, having likely concluded that it would be impossible to conceal this fact, the building owner decided to show the underground galleries. The commission inspected the underground lobby and decided to explore the entire system. It immediately became clear that the underground passages had been discovered during the construction of the foundations back in the spring. At that time, Freiman’s building manager, the janitor, and an assistant accountant from the Commercial Club took a tour of underground Kharkiv.
According to them, the gallery led to Dr. Braunstein’s house, and it was possible to “walk” through it. However, the commission was unable to take such a walk, as the galleries were heavily cluttered. As a result, Kustersky and Stepanov were tasked with excavating the buried passages. Anticipating the discovery of antique artifacts, a request was sent to Kharkiv University to send someone to participate in the excavations. However, the commission’s work came to a standstill, as written permission from all members of the Commercial Club’s board was required to conduct work on the club’s grounds.
Finally, it appears that such permission was granted, as on August 8 the newspapers *Yuzhny Krai* and *Utro* both reported that the excavations had indeed begun. The plan was to access the passage from the surface via a test pit and begin clearing the tunnels. Foreman Grebennikov was appointed to oversee the work; in his capacity as a road foreman, he had already inspected similar underground passages when a streetcar car had collapsed on Nikolayevskaya Square 15–17 years earlier. The commission’s work boiled down to inspecting the underground passage, opening a ventilation shaft, and attempting to excavate inaccessible sections from the surface. Incidentally, the excavation method was supposed to be logical and fairly safe. The plan was to excavate a section of the underground gallery via a test pit, clear it out if necessary, and then, for every 10 sazhens of tunneling, cut openings to the surface for lighting, ventilation, and safety. The commission members had no doubt that the underground passages discovered at Freiman’s estate formed a single system with the underground passage in the courtyard of the Commercial Club, although this was not confirmed by the excavation work…”
“Another figure appeared at the survey site—A.L. Monvizh-Montvid, an engineer and cave explorer who had experience with underground exploration in his youth. Using a special device—the “pointer”—he set out to determine the direction and depth of the underground tunnels. The “pointer” was a nickel-plated rod bent into the shape of a ring. Judging by the description of the method, Monvizh-Montvid practiced dowsing—or, as it is now called, biolocation—and the “pointer” was a type of “dowsing rod” that is now used to search not only for underground tunnels but also for cables, pipes, water, minerals, and buried treasure.
They have been searching with varying degrees of success, but they have never once been able to pinpoint the underground cavity. Or rather, they have pinpointed it many times, but the verification wells drilled based on those locations have consistently failed to uncover what they were looking for.
One of the “vine walkers” reported that such underground structures are surrounded by a special “energy-information shield” designed specifically to prevent attempts to detect the underground facilities in this very way. Furthermore, in his opinion, the frame may react not only to real phenomena, but also to virtual ones that exist only on paper or even in someone’s mind.
So Monvizh-Montvida’s investigations also yielded no results. As reported in the newspapers of the time, a pit 7 sazhens deep was dug under the direction of the vineyard engineer, but nothing was found. His services (which, incidentally, were quite expensive) were prudently declined.
The description of a section of the underground passage at the Freiman estate and the map drawn in 1913 differ little from what can be seen today.
We also find a later mention of this site in the book *Old Kharkiv* (1929) by the Kharkiv local historian V. Ivolgin. According to his descriptions, at that time the passage was almost completely filled with furnace slag, and one could only make one’s way through it by crawling.
During World War II, residents of the city center used the underground passages as bomb shelters.
According to eyewitness accounts, one such shelter was located on Rymars’ka Street. It is quite possible that the facility beneath Freiman’s house was also part of Kharkiv’s air defense system. Since 2003, members of the “Children of the Underground” foundation have been conducting regular inspections of the underground complex. During this time, the facility has been flooded on multiple occasions due to leaks in the water supply lines.
In April 2007, two holes appeared in the vault as a result of buses pulling into the area in front of the philharmonic hall.
The holes were filled with gravel and construction debris. Some of the fill material ended up in the basement.
In August 2007, members of the “Children of the Underground” Foundation organized a volunteer cleanup to remove trash from the entrance area of the underground structure. Currently, the large underground lobby is used to house water and heating systems. It can be accessed from the courtyard at No. 23 on Rymars’ka Street, either through a square ventilation shaft (which is not mentioned in the 1913 commission’s reports or in later sources) or through the building’s basement.
The entrance hall is partially cluttered with household and construction debris; the arches have several breaches that have been hastily patched up. In the southern part, almost exactly in the middle, a 31-meter-long gallery branches off from the vestibule at a right angle. At the end of the gallery is a niche. This section of the passage runs beneath the plaza in front of the Philharmonic Hall. At distances of 16 and 29 meters from the entrance, the gallery has branches extending eastward. The first branch off this gallery leads to a junction. To the left is a 6-meter dead-end section with a niche at the end. The passage continues for 11 meters before being interrupted by a section where the vault has collapsed. Ceramic pipes were found here—possibly the very sewer system whose installation led to the discovery of the passage.
Finally, the right-hand branch extends for 12 meters and is also interrupted by a section of collapsed vault.
The second branch, only 2 m long, is blocked by a pile of construction debris. The total length of the sections of the underground structure accessible to humans is 70 m. Undoubtedly, its original dimensions were larger. Pilot excavations in the buried galleries reveal that the brick vaults continue in the southeast and southwest directions. All galleries have a uniform structure, with a width of 1.8 m and a height of 1.8 m. Currently, the floor level has risen due to the influx of soil from areas where the vault has collapsed. The distance from the soil deposits to the vault ranges from 1.45 to 0.7 m. The walls and vaults are lined with brick blocks set in lime mortar.
The walls are built with half-bricks, and the vault is one brick thick (two layers). There are four niches in the walls, each 0.9 m deep. The vaults feature two ventilation openings.To date, this is the most thoroughly studied fragment of man-made underground structures in Kharkiv. The site has been mapped and documented; bricks have been sampled to determine its age. Photographic and video documentation has been conducted. A comprehensive set of archaeological investigations has been carried out.
The basement is classified as a utility structure built no earlier than the mid-19th century.
