Zavenyagin street served testing site for Norilsk construction
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Zavenyagin street served testing site for Norilsk construction

June 26, 2024

Zavenyagin street was an experimenting ground for urban planning innovations. The first building in Norilsk to stand on stilts was constructed there.

#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The construction of the first Hrushchev-era apartment buildings began in its courtyards. And it was there that city planners dreamed of a completely new type of housing for northerners: a courtyard, a street, and even a city under a dome.

Zavenyagin street was designed in 1954. According to the official version, voiced by the chief architect of the Norilsk project, Vitold Nepokoychitsky, its development embodied the idea of ​​neighborhoods with a completely closed contour, which would play the role of a wind and snow barrier. Communication with the outside world in such courtyards had to occur through entrances and arches with blind gates that closed during a snowstorm. And although there were obvious shortcomings in the implemented project, the wind speed in block No. 29 (as the five closed courtyards on the odd side of Zavenyagin street are called on the architects’ plans) actually decreases by an average of 60 percent.

A city legend says that they planned to turn the courtyards on Zavenyagin street into complexes under transparent domes. Arches with gates were supposed to retain warmth inside the courtyards and protect them from the outside world, and through walk-through entrances residents could get from one covered courtyard to another without going outside. Sports fields and lawns were provided under the domes, and on the ground floors there were shops, hairdressers, canteens, kindergartens, shoe workshops, coal storage facilities – in general, everything for the population’s needs. This legend is indirectly confirmed by the three-way entrances, as well as the fact that the Hrushchev buildings in block No. 29 were built six stories high and stand level with the Stalin buildings. Perhaps it was during their construction that the idea of ​​a dome arose, and the same level of roofs was made right for this purpose.

“The builders did not complete the experiment, leaving the entrance arches open on the windward side, through which a large mass of snow gets inside. At one time, the question was even considered: whether it would be worth blocking the courtyards with translucent structures, or even covering the whole city with a dome, or blocking off individual streets. Interesting ideas, but so far technically unsolvable”, the chief Norilsk architect Larisa Nazarova wrote.

The idea of ​​polar city planners about courtyards under domes did not get materialized. But Zavenyagin street became a testing ground for other innovations. House No. 2 on Zavenyagin street is considered the first building in Norilsk, built using the new method of pile foundation on permafrost.

Since 1958, the transition to the industrialization of housing construction began in Norilsk. In the city they began to build standard five-story buildings of the all-Union series 447, but slightly adapted to northern conditions, mainly in terms of the foundation. The first such houses were erected right in the block between Leninsky prospect and Zavenyagin street.

In 1959, the street got its own name: the executive committee of the city council decided “to name the street between blocks 29–30, 38, coming from Sovetskaya street, Zavenyagin street”. By that time, the Norilsk combine had been bearing Avraamy Zavenyagin’s name for two years, and later the administrative square in the Old Town and the icebreaker were named after him.

The dietary canteen first operated at 30 Leninsky prospect, adjacent to the children’s cafe From Two to Five. In 1968, builders built a separate building for it at the intersection of Zavenyagin and Dzerzhinsky streets. It was designed for 160 seats and built according to the same standard design as, for example, Krasnoyarsk Pillars. In the diet cafeteria they ate according to coupons issued by the enterprises, and the children of the surrounding houses willingly ran there for lunch. During the period of shortage, there was an order desk there. With a voucher issued by the health center of a factory or mine, it was possible to obtain such a scarce commodity as mineral water.

In 1960, store No. 23 with the departments Bread-Milk and Meat-Fish began operating in new buildings on Zavenyagin street. Subsequently, this store was located in two of Zavenyagin’s houses; grocery and wine and vodka departments were added to the already mentioned departments. When fast food outlets became fashionable in Norilsk, Zavenyagin street got its own snack bar: Kotletnaya. But, to the displeasure of the surrounding houses’ residents, it looked more like a ‘drink bar’. Later it was renamed Sausage, and in 1995 the pavilion burned down.

In the previous History Spot’s publication, we told about Sovestkaya street. We also reported that our mediacompany’s news site Severny Gorod is among the eight best regional media in the country.

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June 26, 2024

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Chief editor: Natalia N. Popova

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