ARCHITECTURE OF OMSK

About three centuries have passed since those gone events when the troop of Lieutenant-colonel of Life Guards Preobrazhebsky regiment (= полк) Ivan Bukholts landed at the mouth of the Om River and built two small palisaded redoubts. That gave a start of this Siberian town.

Omsk has its real individual and inimitable worth which is based, first of all, on the fortunate choice of the site for a new fortress at the confluence of the quiet River of Om and the powerful Irtysh River in 1716. A number of constructions erected in different epochs but in concord with it also adds to the originality of the city. Some of the buildings are rightly considered as monuments of architecture.

The panorama of Omsk is stylistically varied: it is the fortress where the earliest examples can be found. Who might even imagine a pattern in Baroque to exist in Omsk?! But to be true, this pattern is unpretentious (= непретенциозная) being not a palace but a building for its particular military purpose kept till nowadays.

The austere style of Classicism came up to take the place of the elaborate style in Baroque. And the building of the Siberian Cadet Military College proves it. One can find its form of design stylistically repeated in the Nikolsky Cathedral built in accordance with the drawings of the outstanding Russian architect Vasili Stasov.

The Cathedral of the Exhalation of the Cross (Crossvozdvizhensky) situated in Tarskaya Street exists already 130 years. The edifice (= здание) signifies a great interest of the architects of the second half of the 19^th Century to historical styles. The silhouette of the domes and church tower makes one recall the shapes of the Baroque structures. This impression is more intensified when the Cathedral in recent times was restored with gold.

By the year of 1905 the high street of old Omsk – Lyubinsky Prospect had been finally formed. No doubt, the leading role of its architectural complex belonged to the Moscow rows of stalls (= торговые ряды). Various Russian manufactory joint-stock companies (including P.Ryabushinsky, S.Morozov, the Nosovs) accommodated their goods for wholesale trade there.

The famous Paris Grand-Opera had served as a prototype for a great number of theatre buildings in Russia. The Omsk Drama Theater was among them. More than ten years ago the edifice was topped by the statue of a “Winged Genius”.

In 1911 the famous West Siberian agricultural and industrial exhibition was organized in Omsk. The novelty and originality of the form of its pavilions in the Modernist style had rather a great influence upon the building practice of the town.

The Omsk Railway Administration can be really perceived as a monument to the Great Siberian railway track (the Trans-Siberian Railway) due to the radical transformation it brought. Omsk has turned into a large industrial and commercial city by the early twentieth century.

And soon, in 1923 two engineers worked out a project according to which Omsk would have to be converted into a garden city. The start of this realization was made immediately bringing to Omsk the fame of a city of gardens and flowers by the late 1950s.

The panorama of the city is enriched by some new largescale erections of the last decades. They are the Shopping Centre, the Musical Theatre, the Irtysh Complex-Hall for Sports and Concerts and the Pushkin Library.

(" Omsk. The City’s motifs” (I. Devetyarova, V. Chirkov)

http://www. univer.omsk/city.html

Ex. 11. Переведите текст с русского на английский, используя данные ниже слова и выражения.

.

Поиск по сайту: