«Aleksandrovsky Sad» is the terminal station of the Filyovskaya line of the Moscow metro. It was opened on May 15, 1935 as part of the first section of the Moscow Metro. It got its current name from the Alexander Garden located at the western wall of the Kremlin, to which the passage from the station leads. Earlier (until December 24, 1946) it was called «Kominterna Street», until November 5, 1990 — «Kalininskaya». In 1990, for several days it received the official name «Vozdvizhenka». It is one of the stations of the four-station interchange hub «Aleksandrovsky Sad — Arbatskaya — Lenin Library — Borovitskaya».

According to the initial projects, a double-track running tunnel was supposed to be built on the site that the station now occupies. However, when the decision was made to build the Ulitsa Kominterna station and include it in the Arbat radius, the route had already been agreed and approved, and work had already begun on it, therefore, in order to reduce the number of changes in the project and rebuild the already erected sections, it was decided to build the station with curved side platforms, which allowed leaving the track design unchanged. The station with side platforms had to be built due to the demands of Professor V.L. Nikolai and the commandant of the Kremlin R.A.Peterson that the tracks were placed between the Manezh and the Kutafya tower.

The construction of the station itself began in July 1934 and was completed in record time, less than 6 months (for comparison, today the shortest construction period for a station in Moscow is 15.5 months, in Kiev — 13 months). The construction of the station was carried out by mine 31-32 of Mosmetrostroy (the construction was supervised by G. Klimov, M. Terpigorev, I. Zubkov). During the construction, it was necessary to solve the most difficult engineering problem of shifting a powerful sewer collector under one of the sections of the future station from a fragile pottery pipe to a strong metal pipe for a length of 40 meters. The station was put into operation on January 31, 1935, and opened to passengers on May 15, 1935 as part of the first section of the Moscow metro from 13 stations — Sokolniki — Park Kultury with a branch Okhotny Ryad — Smolenskaya.

From the moment of opening in 1935 and until 1938, trains from Komintern Street followed to Sokolniki station, and in 1938, after extending the Arbat radius to Kurskaya station in an eastern direction and began operating separately from Frunzensky, trains from of the current «Aleksandrovsky Sad» began to travel to this station.

Initially, the transition to the station «Library im. Lenin «was not, however, there was a temporary ground lobby common with this station at the corner of Mokhovaya Street and Vozdvizhenka, which has not been preserved at present. In 1937, a temporary transition was organized. The modern crossing appeared only in 1938, when, after the opening of the Kominterna-Kurskaya section, the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line became a separate one.

The construction of the new permanent vestibule was planned to be completed by 1940, however, since the station could not cope with passenger traffic, it was decided to first reconstruct the station, including widening the passages, reducing ascents and descents and building an arched bridge over the tracks. However, the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War forced to reconsider these plans. The construction of a permanent vestibule in the building of the current Russian State Library and the reconstruction of the station were completed only by 1946. In the same year, on December 24, the station was renamed Kalininskaya.

On April 5, 1953, after the construction of the new deep-level stations Arbatskaya and Smolenskaya, the Kalininskaya station was closed to passengers, and the lobby in the library building was used for the Arbatskaya station. The station itself was partially reconstructed, in particular, two of the three passes to the platform were eliminated.

After the completion of the construction of the new Filyovskaya line to the Kutuzovskaya station, the Kalininskaya station was reopened on November 7, 1958.

In 1990, the station was renamed, and the station was originally named «Vozdvizhenka» and bore this name for several days, during which diagrams with this name were even printed, but for some reason this name did not stay, and from November 5, 1990 The station received its current name «Alexandrovsky Sad».

During the construction of the Okhotny Ryad shopping and recreational complex under Manezhnaya Square in 1995-1996, one of the tracks (from platform No. 2) to the Okhotny Ryad station was dismantled and filled up.

А. Савин, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons