#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Guests of the city from latitudes with a temperate climate are especially surprised by this. Norilsk residents do not pay attention to the impressive size of the figures.
However, this was not always this way. There was a time when residents complained about their absence. Here, for example, is a letter to the Norilsk press in 1954:
“Whichever city you go to, it will not be difficult for you to find any street and the house number you need. This cannot be said about our Norilsk. Newcomers spend a lot of time to find a street and a house. Not all houses have numbers, and it is difficult to find a sign indicating the name of the street. And the housing and communal services’ employees should have taken care of these “little things””.
It is necessary to put a number on each house, illuminating it with a lantern so that it can be seen at night. Each corner house of the street must have a sign indicating its name. Then it will not be difficult for our postmen, who also spend a lot of time to find the addressee.
This work has already been partially done in Gorstroy (the new part of the city). But such streets as Zheleznodorozhnaya, Melnichenko and Pyasinskaya are completely unmarked with signs, and not a single house has a number.
In the 1940s, the houses addresses themselves caused inconvenience to the townspeople: the buildings were numbered according to their building numbers. The names of the first streets of the new part of the city – Gorstroy – were officially approved only in 1947. At the same time, they were given a new numbering, which for the most part has survived to this day, and a single form of plates on the facades was determined.
Large numbers, which are clearly visible on the facades during a blizzard and polar night, appeared only in the 1980s. Accordingly, they can be seen on new buildings of those years: at the beginning of Talnahskaya street, on the mountain part of Komsomolskaya, on Urvantsev Embankment and Solnechny passage. In the rest of Norilsk there are plates with numbers of usual size.
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we told you about the fact that this year Norilsk could have celebrated not its 70th, but its 281st birthday.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Norilsk people and Nornickel Polar Branch’s archives
