The history of Verny – Alma-Ata – began over 150 years ago. Street names are first encountered on the city’s general plans in 1858. In 1879, 43 streets were named.
Until the October Revolution, the city was mostly wooden – after the earthquake of 1887, when most of the buildings collapsed, the Governor-General of Semirechye ordered to continue building in Verny one-, maximum two-story houses and at a sufficient distance from each other. Many trees had to be planted in all the yards. So Alma-Ata owes its title of garden city and the greenest city of the USSR to that devastating earthquake.
In 1927, large-scale construction began there, and nine years later, when Alma-Ata became the capital of the Kazakh SSR, asphalt streets first appeared in the city. Before that, they had been unpaved or paved with bricks. In the 50s – 60s of the last century, a real architectural boom began: a lot of young architects came to Alma-Ata, through whose efforts many avenues, squares, embankments, and driveways appeared.
There are almost 1200 streets in the Apple city today. But during more than 150-year history, they have undergone renaming three times. And every time the reason for this was new political realities, whether it was the establishment of Soviet power in Semirechye or the acquisition of the state sovereignty by Kazakhstan, after which the names of ancient khans, biys and batyrs, as well as figures of science, culture and art appeared on the city’s map. Norilskaya street was not affected by those transformations.
Norilskaya street appeared in the Turksib region, in the north of the city, in 1962. Until that time, it was called School street. It is easy to understand what caused the change of the plates on the houses: since 1960, when the first well was laid, the word “Talnah” (a part of Norilsk) was thundering throughout the country. The field, which turned out to be unique in composition and the largest in the world, opened fantastic prospects for the Norilsk combine.
All Soviet newspapers wrote about how, in off-road conditions, in the virgin forest-tundra, the village was being build. It is logical that the street is in the Turksib district, which has long been considered an industrial area of the city – a number of the largest enterprises are located on its territory.
Norilskaya street in Almaty intersects with Kubeev, Poddubny and Tukai streets. And it goes out onto a large highway – Mailin Street.
Read about Norilskaya streets in other cities in the A point on the planet section.
Text: Elena Popova, Photo: open sources
