Architecture of Odess

[Jehan]

I have been to Odessa many times, and in my opinion this city is definitely in the top 5 in the former USSR in terms of scenic beauty.

By curiosity what would be the 4 others citys.



Odessa looks great.

[Wolfdog]

One of my favourite styles...

Kryzhanovsky's house ( 1900 year )
in the Marazlievskaya street, closely to Shevchenko's park

Mix of Jugendstil and Gothic revival
* also I am fond of these decor structure
= brick texture + cream stucco elements

[Wolfdog]

Nolle 's house ( 1901 year )
in the Richeleu street

Most monumental example of Moorish revival style mixed with some Gothic elements and Jugendstil proportions...

[Wolfdog]

Weinberg 's house (1875 year)
near the corner of Sobornaya square L Koblevskaya street

like this one very much too!

Example of the Byzantine revival style (unfortunately, too rare here)
And my favourite scheme of colours again = bricks + limestone + yellow stucco

[Alexandro]

Lovely stuff! I always hate to see old works destroyed by greedy developers, where I live there was this nice example of architectural....revival? The original was demolished for whatever reason, perhaps they wanted to put up some repulsive Norman Foster/Zaha Hadid/Santiago Calatrava monstrosity, but instead they just rebuilt the old design. A lovely example of the Catalan “Modernisme" style btw, our local brand of art noveau, characteristic of the late 19th and early 20th Century when the urbanization of the plains surrounding the city was in full swing.



(Sorry for derailing your thread, haha, maybe I should start my own thread about Barcelona architecture )

[KirillMazur]

By curiosity what would be the 4 others citys.



Odessa looks great.

5 is of course a small number, but I'll try (these are the ones where I was personally):

St. Petersburg
Moscow
Odessa
Tbilisi (and Yerevan)
Kiev
Well, Sevastopol and Yevpatoria too (as a Crimean, I must definitely mention them).
I did not name the cities of the "Golden Ring", because I do not yet have the experience of traveling to those places.

[Wolfdog]

It's extremely sad that so-many beautiful building are destroyed by "developers" in Barcelona and New York, London and Vienna and many other cities.

"Developers" here are greedy enough as well, but historical center is not too "interesting" place for them (they are extremely interested into seacoast areas...)...
Sure, they are not interested to save historical buildings as well. But that is another kind of story...

Also, 196 buildings (almost all interesting tenements, palaces, churches, historical markets etc.) in Odessa are defended by special laws.
Odessa is quite corrupted, but potential penalties are too heavy to play against the legal system in this certain sphere.


Overall,
main problem in Odessa = buildings are dying for natural causes.
And main one = extra bad quality of the local limestone materials (so-call, "rakushnyak").
This material was very cheap until the late 1950s.

For example, this monumental Gothic mansion (1847)
in the Marazlievskaya street L Troitskaya street corner.

All it's structures were built of "rakushnyak" limestone
and you can see how badly it saved :

[Wolfdog]

Talking about problems again...

I like this composition :
Sandcolour brick facade + light cream stucco + various trees around.
It's the tenement (1890s) in a front of McDonald's near the Central Railways station ( corner of Leutenant Shmidt street L Privokzalnaya square )




But only facade is brick. While all other structures were built of "rakushnyak" limestone.
So, once (imagine 2050 year or later) this house would be quite problemful.
Sure, I hope brick facade would be more or less easily saved...

[Wolfdog]

Example of purely renovated limestone "rakushnyak" building
(Reznik 's hospital in the Sadovaya street)

* sure it's an exception

[Wolfdog]

Pure brick buildings
are extremely rare in the oldest quarters of Odessa.

Example :
this Baroque revival style tenement (late XIXth century)
in the south end of the Richeleu street
It is listed as architectural monument without official information about first owners and architectors.
But unofficial sources calls it as " Babadagli 's house " and " Rahat 's house "

It was built of bricks.
Not just facade, but all walls and other structures as well.

* unfortunately, it's hard to make decent photoshoots, because this house situated between important crossroads and streets there are full of cars in every single moment (and pedestrian zone here is too narrow)

BTW it looks really extremely classy and timeless iMO,
despite the fact that some elements were spoiled by owners of apartments