Irkutsk Mining School
Another forerunner of all technical educational institutions in Irkutsk is hiding behind the body of the hotel the building of the industrial school named after N.P. Trapeznikov, designed by the best architects of the city H.V. Rosen and V.A. Kudelsky in 1884. Today, its premises are occupied by the Faculty of Biology and Soil Science of Irkutsk State University.
Industrial school named after N.P. Trapeznikov
Opposite the building, there is a square named after M. M. Speransky, to whom a monument was established at this place in 2016 the first in the history of modern Russia. For a year and a half from 1819 to 1821, this great lawmaker ruled Irkutsk Governorate. For 11 months of his direct work here, two governors and 48 officials were brought to justice, 2 million and 847 thousand silver rubles were returned to the treasury. But the main result of his stay in Irkutsk was a package of 10 bills for 4019 paragraphs regarding the arrangement of life in Siberia, which Alexander approved as a laws in 1822. Grateful Siberians did not forget their patron and Kirov Square was named after M. M. Speransky from 1886 to 1917.
Monument to M. M. Speransky
Kanazawa Street
We return to the State Bank building and turn right into a small lane, formerly called Bankovsky. The walls of a residential building built in 1938 for the employees of the Irkutsk branch of the StateBank of the USSR for 40 apartments are still rise here. On the other side of the alleyway there is another creation of the Soviet era Hotel Sibir, built according to the design of K.W. Mital in 1933. Half of that building facing Lenin Street burned down in a severe fire on March 13, 1995.
Hotel Sibir
Today it is Kanazawa Street, named after the oldest sister city of Irkutsk (since 1967), the center of Ishikawa province in Japan. In memory of strong relations at the end of the lane a monument to Russian-Japanese ties which symbolizes a common undertakings was built in 1994.
Monument on Kanazawa Street
In total, Irkutsk has 15 twin towns, and the capital of Eastern Siberia was one of six places in the USSR, which were allowed to establish such relations with foreign cities.
The city has old ties with Japan. In the summer of 1783, the ship Shinshu-Maru of the Japanese captain Daikokuya Kodayu with 16 sailors, after six months of drifting ended up in the waters controlled by Russia. Wanting to return to their homeland the Japanese made a long journey from the Aleutian Islands to Irkutsk where they met Academician E.G. Laxman, who helped the five surviving sailors get an audience with Empress Catherine the Greatin in St. Petersburg. Only three returned to their native land in 1792, two remained as teachers of the first Japanese language school in Siberia. Thanks to the care for seafarers Russia received the right to enter one of the closed ports of Japan for the next few years. However, it was not possible to achieve a strong friendship then, but modern relations are already have a more than half a century of history.
E.G. Laxman on Japanese engravings
Marata Street
At the crossroads we run into a wooden house of Pyatidesyatnikov and turn left. This quarter is full of beautiful wooden apartment buildings from the late 19th century. Particularly notable is the pink mansion with its brick stone outbuilding, which belonged to a certain Bibikov and where lived for a long time one of the founders of Writers Union of Irkutsk, as well as a delegate to the first Congress of Soviet Writers I.G. Goldberg.
Irkutsk is undoubtedly considered the wooden capital of Russia. No other city has so many monuments of wooden architecture as here, and there is not such a variety of styles and forms of carving. And, besides, only a few cities in Russia has preserved entire blocks of wooden buildings these are Kyakhta, Tomsk, Irkutsk and Vologda. Today more than 760 wooden houses are under protection, but it is not possible to restore them all due to the small budget of the city. Therefore, today the prerogative is on the side of foundations that buy houses and restore them, subsequently renting them out or putting them up for sale.
If we drive a little more along Marat Street, then on the right side we can see the first five-story building in the history of Irkutsk, which was built in 1934 according to the project of K.W. Mital, who himself lived in this house (Marat st., 29). The foundation of this building was made of bricks from the destroyed Kazan Cathedral. About this house the Irkutsk writer G.S. Stom (Apartsina) wrote the book Our Home. And this is no coincidence, because in different years here lived the famous doctors ophthalmologist Z.G. Frank-Kamenetsky, neuropathologist K.G. Hodos, otorhinolaryngologist I.M. Krukover, histologist S.I. Timofeev and surgeon V.G. Shchipachev, one of the founders of Russian balneology and creator of health resorts Arshan, Darasun, Shivanda and Ugdan M.P. Mikhailov, founder of the Department of Geography of ISU and creator of the plan for the Angarsk HPP cascade professor K.N. Mirotvortsev. In addition, here in the family of her parents, odontologist S.I. Weiss and dentist E.M. Emelyanova, lived one of the most famous Soviet pop singers A.S. Vedischeva.
The first five-story building in Irkutsk
But at the next intersection, we turn left to Sverdlov Street and on the right there is another incredible mansion which built in the Romanesque style it is the former Bazanov orphanage, which today houses the faculty clinics of the IMSU for eye and ENT diseases. The complex of buildings was created by the architect H.V. Rosen in 1883 to replace the building lost in the Great Fire, which had been located in the same place since 1874. The owner of the orphanage I.I. Bazanov did not live to see the resumption of the activity for only two months.
Bazanov orphanage,
In Russia in 19th century, there were only eight such institutions, due to the very high mortality rate of adopted children they were not popular. Children were brought to the gates of the orphanage, where there was a special tray in which a desperate mothers left babies than they pulled the bell and ran away. No one ever tried to find out the secret of a women in childbirth. All the boys, upon completion of their education, received the surname of Bazanov and a profession, as soon as the girls received a dowry.
Merchant I.I. Bazanov
Opposite the orphanage behind a fence hides the stone mansion of Irkutsk merchant of the 2nd guild I.V. Samsonov, which was built in the middle of the 19th century and one of the few survived the Great Fire of 1879. After the construction of the hotel Sibir nearby, it remained in oblivion and today is in a sorrowful condition. From April to July 1915 there was an underground printing of the Bolshevik organization Union of Printing Workers. In Soviet times, communal apartments were appeared in the house.