Despite its fame as one of the main industrial centers of Ukraine, Mariupol’s symbol is a pair of architectural objects erected during the era of «militant communism». There are two houses, numbered 35 and 48, which are located on Artema Street, just in the place where it is crossed by Lenin Avenue. The buildings are separated by a roadway, sidewalks, a few poplars and a chestnut tree.
This couple is distinguished from hundreds of other houses in the city of Maria, which is the name of Mariupol, by the unusual, absolutely atypical for Soviet buildings, tops of the building. These are shaped portals, similar to the ancient Greek Parthenon, which are crowned with spires. Such portals are usually drawn by artists illustrating Pushkin’s «The Tale of the Golden Cockerel».
The original eclectic tops are superstructured over the central part of each of the houses. By the way, their base is seven-story, and the two side wings of both buildings are five- and four-story. If to use the language of official architects, both houses are made in the classical style, but the people have long dubbed such buildings «Stalin’s Empire». All the more so because all the structural elements of the legendary houses fully correspond to the era that gave birth to them — massive, rusticated plinth, arches and pseudo-balconies, Ionic columns and heavy stucco.
Both West Spire Houses were built in 1953. The author of the masterpieces was Kiev architect L. Yanovitsky, who worked in Kharkov’s Gorstroyproekt. Curiously, the commissioning of the buildings was timed to coincide with the celebration of the three hundredth anniversary of Ukraine’s annexation to Russia. When Stalin died, buildings of this type were no longer built, switching to standard, but cheap housing. Therefore, both the eastern and western buildings became one-of-a-kind «houses with spires» and quickly earned the title of city landmarks.
The most interesting thing happened to these architectural landmarks after the formation of independent Ukraine. One of the houses, the Western one, was rented in 2000 by a business group, of which there are many in the industrial Azov region. The new owners cleaned it, strengthened it, restored it and painted it white. The second house, Vostochny, remained on the balance sheet of the municipal utility, so it retained its original brick color and «Soviet» design.
To buy an apartment in the Western house became as prestigious as a house in Koncha-Zaspa or at the worst along Rublevskoe highway. The East House began to fall apart and crack at the seams during each passing of the streetcar along Artema Street. And on May 1, 2011, after a little rain, a significant layer of plaster and stucco fell off its facade. According to unverified information and gossip circulating in the circle of citizens, pieces of decor were injured by a Kiev citizen and 2 residents of Donetsk. By the way, the next candidate in the queue to fall is considered to be the spire of the Eastern House, which holds on one «honest word» — on corroded metal fittings.
Since then, both houses have expanded their status «landmarks of Mariupol» and got the role of a kind of barometer-orienters to the West and East, to the capitalist and communist style of communal economy. If you have not yet changed your mind about coming to the Azov region for vacation (it is dangerous to be only under the Eastern House with a spire), you can enjoy the panorama of the legendary «Donetsk steppe», views of the Port Complex and thalassotherapy on the sandy beaches stretching along the coastline of the shallowest sea on Earth.