Читать книгу The Most Detailed Travel Guide around Irkutsk. All the attractions with the route of movement & addresses - Alexander Dmitrievich Katashevtsev - Страница 13

On the other side of the intersection, on the left, you can see the building of the oldest bank in Irkutsk. These is a former State Bank, established in 1899, which today is occupied by the Faculties of Geology and Social Sciences of ISU, as well as the Research Institute of Biology. The building was badly burned out during the revolutionary battles in 1917, and was rebuilt several years later with tetrahedral and octahedral domes that accentuated the building’s volumes.

State Bank

Across the road from it to the right is the building of the largest and oldest museum of arts in Siberia, which has more than 23 thousand works of painting, graphics, sculpture and decorative arts in its collection. The collection was based on the assemblage of the famous Irkutsk philanthropist and mayor V.P. Sukachev, who held the first exhibition back in 1874 and left his creation to Irkutsk shortly before the revolution. It is his name that the museum bears, which counts its creation from 25 April 1936.

The building itself was originally built for the needs of the Irkutsk gymnasium for boys in 1907 according to the project of D.R. Magidey. The main fund of the museum moved here in 1975, and despite the existence of three branches the exposition contains no more than 3% of all works of art.

Irkutsk gymnasium for boys

The nearby building of the Governorate Gymnasium for boys is also interesting. It’s opened here in 1805 and still is one of the oldest stone buildings in Irkutsk which was built back in 1799 for the needs of the main public school according to the project of A.I. Losev. Count M.M. Speransky, when he was the governor-general of Siberia, called this institution “authentically the best gymnasium in all of Russia.” And this is not surprising, since among the teachers there were such prominent historians as I.E. Muller, I.L. Slovtsov, I.V. Shcheglov and N.N. Kozmin.

Founder of the Soviet school in agronomic chemistry D.N. Pryanishnikov

Many famous people were graduates of this gymnasium, as the founder of the first school of Tibetan medicine P.A. Badmaev, Deputy Minister of Public Education of Russia M.S. Volkonsky, organizer of the first revolutionary political organization “People’s Will” in Siberia I. G. Neustroev, medical scientists V.N. Popov, K.M. Pavlinov, S.A. Sukhanov and P.N. Shastin, travellers V.C. Dorogostaysky and A.P. Fedchenko, founder of the Soviet school in agronomic chemistry D.N. Pryanishnikov, first rector of ISU M.M. Rubinstein, three times cavalier of Order of the Red Banner L.I. Kotelnikov, writers I.T. Kalashnikov, N.S. Shchukin, V.M. Mikheev, I.V. Fedorov-Omulevsky and F.M. Lytkin.

Tibetologist P.A. Badmaev

Tellingly, this building still houses an educational institution – the Irkutsk Aviation Technical School, which moved here in June 1945 to replace the cartridge plant No. 540 evacuated from Leningrad during the WWII (it was one of the four most powerful such factories in the country, produced more than 700 million ammunition).

On the site of the building opposite, where the Irkutsk Regional Geriatric Center is now located, there used to be the oldest kindergarten in the city, opened at the initiative of M.G. Tyumentseva in 1869. Its building, designed by the best architect of Irkutsk, Baron H.V. Rosen in 1882 instead of the burnt down old one, it was one of the best wooden buildings in the capital of Eastern Siberia. However, in 1938, during the construction of the clinic, it was moved and installed on the site of the parish cemetery of the St. Charalambos Church. Today, on the site of the kindergarten, there is a public garden named after one of the first doctors of sciences in the USSR, as well as the Irkutsk author of the textbook on nervous diseases K.G. Hodos.

At the crossroads there are towering buildings representing the reference buildings of the Soviet era, which surprisingly organically fit into the old city face. At the corner of Lenin and Gorky streets there is the famous Irkutsk “house with a trunk” built in 1950 according to the project of E.F. Yanko. Here lived the main artist of Irkutsk in 1970s and the author of the memorial “Eternal Flame” V.G. Smagin. Opposite on the left the house in which she spent the last years of her life People’s Artist of the RSFSR G.A. Kramova. On the other side of the crossroads there is another magnificent monument of Soviet architecture – a house buit in 1948 according to the project of A.S. Butenko, where lived until his death the famous poet-ethnographer A.S. Olkhon (Pestyukhin).

Poet-ethnographer A.S. Olkhon (Pestyukhin)