#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Over the years, this area has changed so much that only the building of the Norilsk Industrial Institute, now the Polar State University, remains in its original condition. Even that building is currently undergoing renovations.
This photo, taken in 1964, was shot from the highest building on Kirov street at the time – the fire department’s bell tower. The courtyards of the small two-story houses, built in the old style, were referred to as the 4th and 10th blocks back then.
The little shop nestled between two residential buildings was a bread and dairy branch of the grocery store No. 6, which was located on the first floor of the neighboring three-story building. In the 1970s, this branch was transformed into a wine department. The shop’s exterior is also interesting; it was an architectural twin of the Priroda (eng.: Nature) store, which still stands on the parallel B. Hmelnitsky street. Two other buildings, constructed according to a similar design, were located nearby in the 17th block, housing the Dudinsky store and the city film library.
As for the next building, which housed the grocery store No. 6, it was built at the corner of what would become Sevastopolskaya and Monchegorskaya streets in 1943, when the modern part of Norilsk was just beginning to take shape. The streets did not yet have names, and for a time, the building was referred to by its construction address – Gorstroy (the modern part of Norilsk. – editor), building 10. The grocery store on its first floor was the first retail outlet in this part of the city. It didn’t have its own name initially; it was modestly called store No. 11 before it evolved into a full grocery store. In the 1940s, a small spontaneous market gathered in front of it, where various items were sold: candies, sugar roosters, and loosies. In the late 1980s, the three-story building with the store was demolished, and now two nine-story buildings – Sevastopolskaya street, 9, and Kirova street, 5 – stand in its place.
In the unplastered two-story building that stood perpendicular to Kirov street at the corner of Southern Line, the first maternity hospital in Norilsk opened in 1946. It’s not that Norilsk residents had been giving birth in the bare tundra before that; initially, mothers were either in makeshift barracks or in beds allocated for them in the combine’s hospital. In that maternity hospital, Norilsk residents were born until 1968, when to the health campus.
In the neighboring building No. 2 on Monchegorskaya street (later Kirov street), school No. 2 was established in 1945, serving the children of that new, developing part of Norilsk. In 1952, when two full-fledged schools – No. 1 and No. 4 – were built, this building was connected to the maternity hospital and housed the obstetrics and gynecology department. Today, on the site of the original maternity hospital and school, there is now one large corner building: Kirov street, 2.
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we featured the first multi-apartment buildings of Gorstroy.
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