#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. In the early 1960s, when the current Ordzhonikidze street was being built in Norilsk, the square with the turning circle at its beginning was also planned to be named after the people’s commissar of Heavy Industry. Today it is an unnamed intersection of Ordzhonikidze, Krasnoyarskaya and Komsomolskaya streets. But in the 1960s, city planners had big plans for this place.
The city’s chief architect Larisa Nazarova, was instructed not only to design a round square there, to think over its architectural ensemble, but also to put a monument to Sergo Ordzhonikidze in the middle.
This was due to the fact that the people’s commissar of Heavy Industry once personally supervised Norilskstroy, and it was he who ‘promoted’ Avraamy Zavenyagin.
However, those plans were never realized: the square was unnamed and unfinished for a long time. Only in 1983 the builders began to erect the famous ‘trefoil house’ at the junction of three streets: a brick, twelve-story one with three turning sections.
It was the author’s project of the Norilsk architect Sergey Teryaev, who later lived there.
The building was called ‘the house of veterans’, because it was initially planned to settle veterans of war and labor there. But later, ordinary Norilsk residents got apartments as well.
The house was handed over three years after the start of construction – in 1986. The most fashionable jewelry store in the city Karat was opened on the first floor.
And although it has long since changed its name and assortment, the old Norilsk residents continue to call it by its first name.
In the last issue of the History spot photo project, we talked about the White Deer restaurant building collapse in Kayerkan in 1976.
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Text: Svetlana Samohina, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
