#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. There are classic designer Stalin buildings, and typical Hrushchev buildings, and nine-story panel buildings, and high-rise “candles”, and the comfortable K-69 series, and “elite-monolithic” mansions. And in the courtyards there was room for small-apartment block-of-flats. Such urban diversity is presented only here – on Kirov street.
For a long time, Kirov street was predominantly two-story one. Moreover, at first there were no amenities in the houses. Their construction was far ahead of the construction of permanent utilities. The first pipes for standpipes were laid directly on the ground, and can be seen in this photo from 1953. The buildings themselves were apartment-type communal flats or corridor system ones.
In the two-story building on the left – Kirov street, 2, with more intricate architecture than the neighboring houses – pilasters, capitals, balconies – at first there was school No. 2. Although the building was first designed as a residential building, in 1944 there was an urgent need to provide classrooms for Gorstroy (the new part of the town) children. As houses were built, there were more and more schoolchildren, and it was a long way to walk to the Zero Point in winter. When the buildings of schools No. 1 and No. 4 were built in the new district of Norilsk, this building was given to the maternity hospital – it was located nearby, on the corner with the Southern Line, the current street 50 Let Octyabrya.
Kirov street is also famous for the fact that over the 80 years of its life it has changed more names than all other Norilsk highways. In 1947, it was given its first name – Monchegorskaya – in honor of the workers of the Monchegorsk Severonickel plant evacuated to Norilsk at the beginning of the war. Those specialists strengthened Norilsk personnel and ensured the launch of the Big metallurgical plant. Among them there were metallurgists Daryalsky, Terpogosov and Kuzhel, geologists Maslov and Kotulsky, builder Anisimov… There is a version that the families of many displaced people were given housing in the Monchegorskaya area – in new blocks No. 17, 22 and 28, that is why it was named in their honor. In 1960, for Lenin’s 90th anniversary, “initiative Norilsk residents” proposed renaming Stalin avenue to Lenin avenue. But cautious authorities decided to first test the idea on Monchegorskaya, which became Lenin street. That did it good: the city finally got around to its unpainted facades, bad roads and sidewalks. It bore the “honorary” name for only a year and a half, and in December 1961 it received its current name – Kirov street.
Now only three Stalin buildings remain from the old houses of Monchegorskaya street – two at the end of the street and one at the beginning. Moreover, house No. 1, which is in the photograph, has undergone reconstruction and has become an example of how an old building can be completely remodeled, leaving only the outer walls. Fortunately, its foundation rests firmly on the rock.
The striking details of Kirov street were the fire station and the city market. The firehouse with a high tower was designed by the architect Mikhail Usov. There was a sign on the depot building: “Call 01 about a fire”. It stood at the crossroads of Kirov and Pushkin streets until 1991, after which a temple was built on this site.
But it was not the fire station that attracted Norilsk residents there. In 1957, a new city market, or, as Norilsk residents more often called it, a bazaar, opened behind it. The shopping arcades moved to Kirov street from the Old Town, where they were located in the outskirts of Octyabrskaya street. The Norilsk market sold manufactured goods – from fur hats to washcloths, and food products, including ones of a terrible shortage – fresh meat, eggs, vegetables and greenery. In later times, the market was a haven for “farts” – underground jeans, fashionable boots, etc. However, now townspeople, remembering the Norilsk bazaar, more often talk about sugar cockerels on a stick for 15 kopecks apiece and chewing sulfur, an old analogue of chewing gum, for five kopecks.
As we have already said, the street has changed three names. But part of it was called by block numbers, according to the city’s construction plan – blocks No. 17, 22 and 28. They stood on the site of the current nine-story buildings. Those were small two-story houses with arched conduits – a sign of those neighborhoods. The houses had their own numbering. Letters sent there were signed: “17th block, building 15”.
And one more interesting detail that can only be seen in old photographs of Kirov and Pushkin streets. We are talking about arches – ground water conduits between houses. They curved not for beauty, but for the free passage of cars under them.
Those arches between houses were not only architectural objects, but also landscaping items. The above-ground conduits stood for the current sewers. Designers were looking for ways to lay communications in the Arctic for a long time. They tried to bury them in the ground, but in spring they could not find the pipes in the melted permafrost. So the idea arose to run heating lines along the roofs, and throw arches-overpasses from house to house. The first designer of Norilsk, Alexander Sharoiko, even wrote: “Every minor street will begin and end with an arcade. They will be more organically built into the buildings and will form a single architectural ensemble, like the famous Senate arch in Leningrad”.
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we wrote about Pushkin street.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Nornickel Polar Branch archive
