User:Eureca/Architecture of Mariupol

Mariupol, County Zemsky administration, main and side facades, built 1875-1876

Mariupol, Western Stadium, 2012

Architecture of Mariupol - Overview of the architecture of the provincial city of Mariupol on the coast of the Sea of Azov, Ukraine.

16th & 17th century

Mariupol’s origins date back to the beginning of the 16th century, when the Cossack fortress of Domakha, on the site of the former Venetian-Genoese colony, Adomakha, was built. By 1611, Domakha was the center of the Zaporozhian Cossack Kalmius Palanka. In 1776, the governor of the Azov Governorate, Vasily A. Chertkov, reported that ruins of ancient Domakha had been found in the area.

18th century

Plan of Mariupol with the project of the fortress wall in the west in 1784

The city was designed by V.A. Chertkov in 1775 with the name Pavlovsk and received city rights in 1778. It was renamed Mariupol in 1779.

During 1778 and 1779, the first inhabitants built fifty-five houses, six small shops and fourteen wooden state institutions from logs imported from outside the area. Fortress walls were planned to be built on the western outskirts of the city, marked on the old plan of 1784.

The original buildings were simple structures and built of sandstone. The ruins of such buildings were reported by the teacher of the Mariupol Alexander Men's Gymnasium, M.I. Kustovsky, in his book Mariupol and its environs. Report on educational excursions of the Mariupol Alexander Gymnasium (1892). According to the Crimean custom, fences were made of local sandstone, the remains of which survived for centuries and are preserved on the modern Zaozerna Street.

The earliest surviving construction plan of the city dates back to 1782, with significant adjustments introduced in 1811, approved by Emperor Alexander I.

19th century

Helen-Constantine Church & ordinary buildings with tiled roofs

Tile from Mariupol Alexander Ceramic Plant

Although brick and tile production began at the beginning of the second quarter of the 19th century, many buildings, even schools, were built of wood up to the end of the 19th century. Such buildings were covered with tiles of the type "Tatar" and can still be found on the outskirts of modern Mariupol. Brick houses were sometimes embossed with colored porcelain tiles on the facade. Tiled inserts have been preserved on the facade of the house at 13 Georgievskaya Street.

The connection of Mariupol to the railway in 1882 enabled the delivery of coal from mines, and timber and bricks from the northern regions of the country. Since then, brick construction became widespread in the city.

For a long time, Mariupol was a small provincial city in terms of appearance, architecture, houses and general amenities. It began to grow rapidly influenced by three factors. Firstly, the establishment of the Mariupol port in 1887. Secondly, the construction of two large metallurgical plants near the port, the Nikopol-Mariupol Society and Providence, brought a lot of money into the city, real estate prices rose rapidly and a building fever began. Thirdly, the Land Bank began to issue loans for houses under construction, which gave rise to intensive housing construction, giving the city a well-organized look.

Unlike Odessa or Nikolaev, Mariupol for decades remained only a bourgeois and merchant city. In Mariupol there were no noble estates, no ancient private libraries or collections. Significant cultural change arrived only at the stage of the first savage capitalism, when the aristocratic period declined and the wealthy and educated merchants of the second half of the 19th century came to rise. In the history of Mariupol, the dominant positions were occupied by representatives of educated and wealthy merchant families, such as Kharadzhayev Alexander Davidovich, Psalti George Grigoryevich, Kharadzhaeva Sofia Ivanovna, and Geocintov Vasily Ivanovich. [REF!!!]

The building of the county Zemsky administration was built in 1875-1876 in Zemskaya Street, one of the oldest streets in the city. The building had two floors and a magnificent facade of palatial character with three projections, two side and a small central one. In 1943, the GErman Nazis set fire to the building during their retreat. It was later demolished, and in the 1950s, according to the project of the architect N.I. Nikaro-Karpenko, a plain and functional three-storey building of gray silicate brick was erected on the old foundations.

Pseudo-Russian style

Pseudo-Russian style (or Russian-Byzantine style) was a trend in architecture of the mid-18th to early 20th centuries. Of the Russian Empire, which used the traditional decor of ancient Russian architecture and architecture of the 17th century, as well as architectural elements of Byzantine architecture, as it was inaccurately represented by the architects of the empire. The 17th century decor was imposed on buildings of the new bourgeois period - hotels, railway stations, shopping arcades, ans exhibition pavilions. Pseudo-Russian style was also combined with elements of neo-Gothic (architectural romanticism of the first half of the 19th century) and Art Nouveau. Examples of pseudo-Russian style in Mariupol include residential buildings on Katerynynska and Torhova streets (almost all destroyed before the end of the 20th century), the Karl Marx Palace of Culture (Kalmius district), and the ruined churches of St. Helena and St. Mary Magdalene.

One of the few buildings still standing is the former Hotel Continental, built in 1897, later also known as "Azovstal Palace of Culture", "Molodizhny Palace of Culture", now the Palace of Culture "Youth".

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  Former hotel Continental, now Palace of Culture "Youth"

20th century

The editorial office of the newspaper "Priazovsky Worker", built 1902

The editorial office of the newspaper "Priazovsky Worker" «Приазовский рабочий» (today: https://donbas24.news), built in 1902, Координаты: 47°5'39"N 37°33'29"E 87500, г. Мариуполь Донецкая область, пр. Мира, 19 ???

Art Nouveau

European influence on architecture in the Russian Empire reached its peak at the end of the 19th century, when the Secession (Art Nouveau) style emerged. The founder of the Art Nouveau style is considered to be the Belgian architect Victor Orta (1861-1947). The spread of the style was facilitated by the widespread industrial production of concrete, large-scale glass, the rise of the industrial production of iron, brick, ceramics, as well as the rise of trade and the construction boom.

In Mariupol, where the aristocratic element of culture has always been weak, the Art Nouveau style was widely adopted by merchants. The two-story shopping rows on Torgovaya Street had wavy architectural forms and wide glass surfaces, which offered a new style at the time. The Art Nouveau style also took place in the construction of private houses and educational institutions: The private house of architect V.O. Nielsen, the private house of Gozadinov, since 2010 the Kuindzhi Art Museum (destroyed during the siege of Mariupol in 2022), the house of the Invalids of Ekaterinoslav Provincial Zemstvo, built in 1920 and now the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore.

The small and two-story apartment buildings created massive street construction in the historic center of Mariupol, even more so until the 1940s, when they were lost in shelling and fires and dismantled to the foundations in the postwar period.

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  Mariupol, Torgovaya Street at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, shops. (destroyed in 20th c.)
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  Former house of architect VO Nielsen, photo 2012
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  Shopping shops in the Art Nouveau style of the early 20th century
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  Gozadinov House VI, northern Art Nouveau, built 1910, photo late 1930s (since 2010 Kuindzhi Art Museum
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  House of the Invalids, built 1920, now Mariupol Museum of Local Lore

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  Old water tower, built 1910, eclecticism

Temple architecture

The first temples date back to the early 1780s. As early as 1780, Greek Metropolitan Ignatius founded the Church of the Assumption, the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin, and in 1782, the Cathedral of Kharlampiev probably on the site where the Zaporozhian Cossacks once built St. Nicholas Church. This first Christian cathedral in Mariupol fell into disrepair in just over 60 years and was closed. The Church of the Assumption was rebuilt several times during the 19th century, the first time in 1804. The Church of Mary Magdalene, although planned since 1778, was consecrated only in 1791. Over time, its wooden structures fell into disrepair and in 1891 it was dismantled. At that time, Mariupol was small and there were only nine churches. Construction technology was so imperfect at the time, that none of the churches built in the 18th century survived. In the location of the Church of Mary Magdalene a chapel was erected and consecrated in 1895. It had to make way to the city's development and was demolished in 1933 as it interfered with the construction of a tramway on what is now known as Peace Avenue (Myru Ave).

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  Church of the Assumption, 18th century.
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  Orthodox Church of the Nativity of the Virgin, 18th century.
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  Kharlampievsky Cathedral, 1782.
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  First Church of Mary Magdalene, 18th c.
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  Chapel on Ekaterininskaya Street, 1895

The new Kharlampievsky Cathedral (Ukrainian: Харлампієвський собор) was built over 20 years in the second half of the 19th century in the style of late classicism at the very beginning of Catherine Street (Ukrainian: Екатерининская улица). Against the background of ordinary and one-storey buildings of the city, the cathedral stood out for its height and style, marking the then city center with its market. The cathedral accommodated about 5,000 people. It was destroyed in the early 1930s as part of the Soviet Atheistic Five-Year Plan to eradicate the memory of the name of God, which included the closure of churches and prayer houses. In the postwar period, the land was built up by a high-rise Soviet DOSAAF building in simplified forms.

The Choral Synagogue was established in a in neo-classical building of 1864 in 'Georgievskaya Street 18. After the arrival of the Bolsheviks in the early 20th century, the synagogue building was repurposed for secular uses and fell into disrepair. Today, only the facade and foundations remain of the building.

The second Church of Mary Magdalene was built of brick in the pseudo-Byzantine architectural style. It had three domes and chapels. It was consecrated in 1897 and became the second-largest church in Mariupol after Kharlampievsky Cathedral. It became a new citywide dominant and was located on the area of the modern Theater Square. It was demolished in 1934 also for reasons of the Atheistic Five-Year Plan.

The construction of the Helen-Constantine Church began in 1903, in Slobidka, Mariupol, at the foot of the central hill, and became a dominant feature when completed in 1911. By Mariupol standards, it was the youngest pre-revolutionary church, and was designed by architect Victor Alexandrovich Nielsen. It was also demolished in the 1930s. By that time, there were virtually no Christian churches left standing in the city.

After the decades-long ban by the Soviet regime on the construction of churches was over, Ukraine started to experiencing a boom in sacred construction in the 1990s.

One of the churches built at that time is the Cathedral of Saint Michael the Archangel. It is a six-domed church built of red brick in Neo-Byzantine style at the left bank of the river Kalmius, Mariupol, and consecrated in 1997. In 2022, during the Siege of Mariupol, the cathedral was heavily damaged.

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  Kharlampievsky Cathedral, built 19th c.
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  Second Church of Mary Magdalene, 1879
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  Choral Synagogue, front view, 2006
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  Helen-Constantine Church, Slobidka, Mariupol, 1911
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  Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel, 2010

See also

• Mariupol
• Ukrainian architecture