Homemade Wooden Skyscraper

December 21, 2006 7:22 PM

The story of how Russian Nikolai Sutyagin began building his homemade wooden skyscraper, went to prison, lost most of his fortune & now lives with his wife in his unfinished masterpiece is a fascinating one. Many more photos of the structure can be found here. Via
posted by jonson (13 comments total)

Interesting. Wish the pictures were better. That is one proud shirtless man.
posted by luckypozzo at 8:43 PM on December 21, 2006

Are all the photos from three blocks away, in the fog?
I'd like to see some of the interior.

I'm wishing for too much.
posted by Balisong at 8:55 PM on December 21, 2006

too long to load
posted by spunk at 8:59 PM on December 21, 2006

Wow. Those fog-enshrouded photos make it look like something out of Zhivago.
posted by dhartung at 9:33 PM on December 21, 2006

Here are some more pictures, for the curious, although none of the interior (which I would also really, really like to see).
posted by posadnitsa at 10:04 PM on December 21, 2006

But Sutyagin was accused by one of his employees (who stole $30,000 from Sutyagin) of beating him up and imprisoning him in a shed.
I think he got off very lightly.
posted by Joeforking at 11:23 PM on December 21, 2006

That thing is just crazy looking, like something out of an Edward Gorey illustration or a dark and spooky children's book. Witches live there!

I'm not sure how willing I would be to climb up in it, and I tend to be pretty comfortable taking risks.
posted by loquacious at 6:00 AM on December 22, 2006

What a story! This Russian article quotes him as saying:

"I myself don't know what possessed me to do all this. I wanted to build a house where I could entertain business partners from other cities. In our hotels you can't get any rest — the prostitutes have the run of the place. But then I got sucked in. The higher the house rose, the more beautiful the view was. It was annoying that in the city, whatever window you looked out of all you saw was the next building."

Thanks for the post!
posted by languagehat at 6:10 AM on December 22, 2006

niiice!
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 7:06 AM on December 22, 2006

Man, languagehat, never have I been more jealous of your skills. I ran across a bunch of websites about this place, and not a single one was in English.
posted by jonson at 7:17 AM on December 22, 2006

awesome. reminds me of the broken angel in bed-stuy (brooklyn).
posted by pinto at 8:15 AM on December 22, 2006

Pinto - you're not alone. That "broken angel" building is actually referenced by one of the commenters at the bottom of the first link in my post.
posted by jonson at 9:20 AM on December 22, 2006

Those images of a giant wooden wizard's tower emerging from the fog... like a lost calvino city... perfect for a rain haze high ass day as this one. Some men's ideas rise higher than others.
And languagehat, excellent russian-fu.
posted by sarcasman at 10:16 AM on December 22, 2006