1. TRAIN STATION

The train station was the greeting point for each and every migrant worker and temporary visitor to the city, as well as the unloading point for every commodity. Because of the symbolic and strategic position that this building would come to occupy, an astonishing amount of scrutiny was focused on exactly where to locate this building. The first conversations about placing the station occurring in April 1888, when a commission of engineers and officials was set up to choose a location. By May of 1893, after years of constant discussion, two locations were narrowed down: one by the Moscow Gate, just north of the city center, and the other directly west of the city on the opposite bank of the Angara. There were many facets that made the placement of this building especially complex. Planners worried about flooding along the river, wanted to make sure that the station would have room to expand, and also aimed for the minimization of costs.

By 1895, the consensus shifts toward to latter location for its expansion potential, but concerns about distance from the city were still pronounced. A new bridge would have to be built, necessarily aggregating a higher cost. Along with the station, the building housing the Department of Construction and railways also received a serious makeover in the wake of regular railway traffic to the city. In 1905, an open-ended sum was granted to this institution to renovate their building. Structures explicitly related to the railway were given especially high priority in a city dedicated to the movement of people and goods.

*Adapted from Sierra Nota’s senior thesis.
 

2. REGIONAL MUSEUM

Cultural institutions became the vital medium through which this pronounced luxury was ultimately instilled. Museums became a centerpiece of the monetary investment in Irkutsk, and the Regional (Kraevedcheskii) Museum was perhaps the greatest accomplishment of these. The institution, at first named The Museum of the East Siberian Department of the Geographical Society, took the form of an elaborately built Moorish castle, equipped with inflammable stone towers housing the society’s library collections. It presented an opportunity for a fresh start in preserving the historical and scholarly records of the city, this time securely encased in layers of rock that would stand even through the December 1917 battles. Right on the intersection of Bolshaya and the banks of the Angara river, the state-funded building constructed from 1883-1891 is perhaps one of the most vital symbols of Irkutskian pride and recovery after the fire of 1879. Furthermore, this building annexed to another behemoth space on Bolshaya to house its natural history materials. The space was originally constructed as a printing house in pseudo-Gothic style beginning in 1903.

*Adapted from Sierra Nota’s senior thesis.