Features of the wooden buildings of Chita in the pre-revolutionary period

Semushina Irina Sergeevna Postgraduate student, Department of Architecture and Urbanistics, Pacific National University 680035, Russia, Khabarovsk region, Khabarovsk, ul. Pacific, 136 semushinai@mail.ru Bazilevich Mikhail Evgenevich PhD in Architecture Associate Professor of the Department of Architecture and Urbanistics, Pacific National University 680035, Russia, Khabarovsk Krai, Khabarovsk, ul. Pacific, 136 mikhailbazilevich@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Bazilevich Evgenii Mikhailovich PhD in Psychology Associate Professor of the Department of Architecture and Urbanistics, Pacific National University 680035, Russia, Khabarovsk Krai, Khabarovsk, ul. Pacific, 136 apelsin157@mail.ru

Introduction

The preserved monuments of wooden architecture of Chita have an important historical and cultural significance and still play a key role in shaping the architectural landscape of the city. The use of wood as the main building material was a traditional practice in the cities of Eastern Siberia, due to the natural climatic features of the region, and allowed for the rapid construction of a large number of objects for various purposes. The wooden architectural heritage of the city reflects the main milestones of its historical development. The settlement was founded in the middle of the XVII century. at the confluence of the Chitinka and Igoda rivers, the construction of the Chita winter quarters, a cemetery and a prison belong to this period. For a long time, Chita served as an intermediate platform for the promotion of the Russian state to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. In 1851, the settlement received the status of a city, and by the beginning of the XX century, with the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway, it turned into one of the most important military-administrative centers of the east of the Russian Empire, which contributed to the development of its architecture.

The basis for this study was the work of predecessors – historians and architects who considered various aspects of the historical and architectural development of the capital of Transbaikalia, including monuments of wooden architecture. The works of Chita historians V. F. Nemerov ^{[1, 2]} and V. G. Lobanov ^[3] are devoted to general issues of the history of the city's development. The description of a number of architectural monuments is contained in the publications of S. V. Salmina ^{[4, 5]}, P. V. Baklysky ^[6], as well as a number of the authors' own works ^[7-9]. Nevertheless, despite the existing works on this topic, the preserved wooden architecture of Chita of the pre-revolutionary period still remains insufficiently investigated, as a result of which the problem deserves special attention and systematic study.

The purpose of this publication is to identify the features of the wooden building of Chita in the pre-revolutionary period. To achieve the desired result, the authors propose to study the process of formation of this layer of historical and architectural heritage at the level of planning, volumetric and decorative solutions.

Planning development of the building

The conducted research showed that up to the beginning of the XX century, wooden structures accounted for more than 90% of the total volume of urban development. The formation of city blocks was carried out by the transformation of the original peasant land plots, the formation of a regular grid of streets. The front of the building was formed mainly by single-storey residential buildings made according to standard designs, with rare "inclusions" of two-storey buildings. Depending on the geometry of the plots, the Chita blocks were divided into standard rectangular 120x60 fathoms (255x127.5 m.), square and trapezoidal, formed by bending the street grid (along Voroshilov Street). Over time, the functional and planning organization of the adjacent territories became more and more diverse. In the state archive of the Trans-Baikal Territory, petitions of citizens dating from the middle of the XIX century have been preserved, containing requests for the allocation of additional space for the arrangement of gardens and vegetable gardens. The appearance of the first stone buildings built for administrative and public needs dates back to the same time (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Chita building scheme for 1869 (Compiled by Semushina I. S.)

The development of handicraft and industrial production, as well as trade and economic relations, gave impetus to the organization of new types of households in the city and the appearance of additional buildings on the sites, such as warehouses, craft workshops and shops. At the same time, population growth contributed to the expansion of development and the allocation of new construction sites. This stage in the development of the city's planning structure is associated with the activities of civil engineer S. L. Byshevsky, who worked in 1873-1878 at the disposal of the military governor of the Trans-Baikal region, first as an architectural assistant, and then as a city architect of Chita (Fig. 2). The study showed that initially, when the city administration allocated plots for individual construction, the principle of dividing blocks was used along the longitudinal axis into two equal parts, further divided into smaller sections depending on the size of the block and the needs of the household. The most common land plots are 25x5, 25x10, 15x5 and 25x15 fathoms. Nevertheless, over time, the functional and planning organization of the house space became more and more diverse.

Figure 2. Chita building scheme for 1885 (Compiled by Semushina I. S.)

At the turn of the XIX–XX centuries, the city noted the construction of a large number of two and three-storey public stone buildings that formed the street facades of the central quarters of the city (Fig. 3). The flourishing of trade and entrepreneurship contributed to the emergence of design by private order. This stage is marked by the work in the city of such masters of architectural and construction art as I. V. Taranov, A. G. Prosyannikov, M. Yu. Arnolnod, G. V. Nikitin, F. E. Ponomarev, L. I. Korganov and G. I. Zubkov, who carried out projects for large entrepreneurs. Working mainly in stone, Chita architects, nevertheless, created their works in wood, leaving behind a number of outstanding structures included today in the registers of historical and cultural monuments of the peoples of the Russian Federation of regional and federal significance (Fig. 4).

Ordinary residential buildings also underwent changes. Based on the analysis, the authors identified three main types of organization of the territories of Chita households: open, covered and transitional courtyards. The first type is represented by plots with a perimeter arrangement of outbuildings that are separated from the house at a certain distance. The indoor type is characterized by the placement of utility rooms under one roof or a shade canopy in two rows parallel or perpendicular to the residential building. There are also options for joining the volumes of technical and residential buildings at right angles, which it is advisable to attribute to the third, transitional type of development. It should be noted that, regardless of the nature of the location of the buildings, the traditional division of the plot into ceremonial and economic zones was preserved in all households.

Figure 3. Chita building scheme for 1922 (Compiled by Semushina I. S.)

Figure 4. Layout of the key objects of wooden architecture of Chita

(Compiled by Semushina I. S.)

Space-planning and decorative solutions

There are certain patterns in the variety of architectural solutions of residential and public buildings that make up the wooden residential development of Chita. First of all, the nature of the space-planning composition of the structures depended on their location on the site (face-to-face or along the street). So, in the XIX century, rectangular residential buildings with a symmetrical axial main facade and single-storey houses on a stone foundation, stretched along the main front of the building in the form of an extended parallelepiped, completed with a hip, and having five or seven windows along the street facade, became widespread. In the decorative design of facades up to the beginning of the XX century, the influence of classicism architecture is traced, manifested at the level of profiled sandricks, pilaster porticos of the Doric order, corner rust and cornice belts of the classical profile. Examples are the houses of Lyakhova, Stein and Bayborodin, which differ in characteristic decorative elements and a pattern of sawn carving.

For a long time, the most common types of planning structure of residential buildings were enfilade and single-chamber ("five-wall" or "six-wall)" schemes associated with the structural features of buildings erected mainly from a log cabin. In the future, the beginning of the use of internal load-bearing brick walls and self-supporting wooden partitions contributed to the complexity and variety of internal layouts.

In the wooden buildings of the second half of the XIX century, there is a departure from the symmetrical axial composition at the level of the plan, as well as an increase in the number of facades with an even number of light axes, and the development of multi-apartment housing construction led to an increase in the size of buildings and the appearance of two-storey residential buildings. When constructing space-planning compositions of objects with an angular location in the building structure, the form of an "iron" with a cut-off angle was used. In some cases, the shape of the plan was a trapezoid, the sides of which stretched along the streets. It should be noted that in this case, the cut corner was rarely accentuated with the help of additional volumes or decorative elements.

The spread of Art Nouveau ideas among architects of the Eastern suburbs at the turn of the XIX–XX century. contributed to the search for new methods of space-planning compositions. The most striking reflection in the architecture of Chita, this phenomenon was found in the buildings of G. V. Nikitin, F. E. Ponomareva and L. I. Korganova. The departure from symmetry and complex shaping can be traced in the architecture of the mansions of photographer V. N. Konovalov, merchant's wife M. D. Ignatieva, residential and apartment buildings of D. V. Polutov, which belonged to the authorship of these outstanding masters of architectural and construction art.

In ordinary buildings erected without the participation of professional architects, there is also a movement towards asymmetry due to the allocation of one of the flanks of the facade, decorated in the form of a portal or gallery. In small single-storey houses, the asymmetry was often reinforced by the device of massive canopies on consoles. The "constructive" type of platband is widely used, which is an element made up of slotted boards superimposed on each other, completed with a forceps sandrik strongly protruding relative to the main plane of the platband on brackets resting on "hangers", as well as a half-timbered type of decor with horizontal and vertical bars forming a graphic lattice system of the facade.

Conclusion

The evolution of Chita's wooden buildings has become a reflection of the general processes of historical, cultural and socio-economic development of the city, which has gone from a small village to a large regional trade and administrative center. As a result of the study, three main stages of the development of this layer of historical and architectural heritage have been identified: 1653-1850, 1851-1896 and 1897-1922, the chronological boundaries of which are determined by the moment of the founding of the settlement, the assignment of the status of the city to Chita, the arrival of the Trans-Siberian railway to the city and the completion of the events of the October Revolution and the Civil War, which marked the transition to a new stage of development  The Russian state.

The historical architectural landscape of the capital of the Trans-Baikal Territory is unique and contains several harmoniously combined layers of cultural heritage from classicism to Art Nouveau, a significant place among which is occupied by monuments of wooden architecture, represented for the most part by single-storey residential buildings, which, as this study has shown, existed up to the beginning of the XX century. more than 90% of the total volume of urban development.

A variety of large forms and small decorative elements, intricate patterns of sawn carving and expressive silhouettes of towers and mezzanines, not only create a unique and memorable image of the city, but also reflect the ideas of the first city architects and other masters of construction art about form-making and their search for their own architectural and plastic language, which was formed under the influence of local conditions. 

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