Читать книгу The Most Detailed Travel Guide around Irkutsk. All the attractions with the route of movement & addresses - Alexander Dmitrievich Katashevtsev - Страница 5

CESovskaya embankment street, named after the oldest city power plant that operated in this area of the city for almost a century since 1910. It ends next to unusual building in the Stalinist Empire style with a hemispherical end on the northern facade. Here once was the one of the most outstanding temples in Irkutsk – Church of Sts. Procopius and John of Ustyug. It had characteristic stylistic features that later became dominant in the cult architecture of the city and determined the identity of the local school. Had been built in 1767, it was destroyed in the 1930s.

Miracle-Workers Church

In the last years of the church existence, since 1932, a direction of tea-packing factory which produced a half of all tea in the USSR was placed here. Today nothing reminds of the temple or plant, as well as of the building of the oldest power station in Irkutsk. The building of the factory which was the only enterprise in the country that produced tea during the WWII, was demolished, and one of the city banks is located in the former warehouse building. Also it is planned to construct one of the new architectural landmarks of Irkutsk on the site of the old power plant.

Tea-packing factory and CES

We move on and passing by “Lovers’ Square”, which is comfortably located right opposite one of the most beautiful wooden mansions in the city – this is the estate of the merchant and deputy of the Irkutsk City Duma I. I. Ogladin.

House of I. I. Ogladin

Immediately after it there is an interesting stone building, where from March 13, 1807 and until April 19, 1868 was the main Siberian office of the Russian-American Company, as evidenced by the memorable plate on the wall. Irkutsk, due to its favorable location, was once the center of Russian America or the American district of the Irkutsk Goberny with the center in Novo-Arkhangelsk on Alaska (nowdays Sitka, USA).

Map of Russian America

And now the “snow-white frigate” appears ahead – the beautiful Savior Church, which marks the exact place where the city of Irkutsk was founded. Let’s take a closer look at it, because this is the only building that has survived since the time of the wooden fortress, which was established on this place on July 16, 1661. Today from this date we count the official date of the foundation of Irkutsk, despite the fact that the city was founded on the site of an aboriginal settlements earlier (in 1620 and 1652). In the past, at the mouth of Irkut River, which flows here into the Angara, there was already a Russian winter hut for collecting “yasak” (tax with the furs of wild animals).

Irkutsk fortress in 1692