Donetsk Region. Cultural and Architectural Heritage in Ruins. An SOS Signal

In the Donetsk region, as throughout Ukraine, historic buildings that are famous landmarks of towns and villages are collapsing, falling into decay, and burning down. The destruction of the historical and cultural layer of this industrial region has been going on for decades, and since the early 1990s the number of neglected sites among the pre-revolutionary buildings has increased considerably. Some of the houses have owners, but they are not concerned about the state of their priceless property. Not all the historic buildings that make up the architectural face of this industrial land, or are simply important for preserving memory, are under municipal protection. But even those that have been granted the status of monuments enjoy no special privileges, and protected status has added nothing for these former masterpieces. Genuine pearls, whose history spans more than a hundred years, have potential and could be the adornment of towns and objects on tourist routes. If these works of architecture, these industrial monuments, were saved and, with the help of investors, turned into museums, offices, shops, and art galleries, they would bring both aesthetic pleasure and practical benefit.

Prelesne, Donetsk region. The abandoned Bantysh estate

A devil's dozen of neglected architectural monuments

1. The Zaleskyi crypt-chapel (Sloviansk)

2. The office of the Dziewulski and Lange factory (Sloviansk)

3. The Mennonite water tower (Myrne, Malynivka village council)

4. The station water tower (Avdiivka)

5. The lordly bathhouse (Ivanivske, Bakhmut district)

6. Belgian architecture (Kostiantynivka)

7. The Bantysh estate (Prelesne, Kramatorsk district)

8. Shukhov's water tower (Chasiv Yar)

9. The railway station (Chunyshyne)

10. The two-class railway school (Pokrovsk)

11. The zemstvo school (Mykolaivka, Pokrovsk district)

12. The Korshun family house (Kramatorsk)

13. The Centre of Children's Creativity (Myrnohrad)

The list could go on, and it is too early to put a full stop to it. Every old building is a monument of history, a little pearl and a calling card of the region. In conditions where our historical heritage is dying before our very eyes, the driving force for saving monuments of history and architecture may become the work of civic organisations, territorial communities, volunteers, and caring citizens.

Sloviansk

Leads in indifference to its own cultural heritage Sloviansk— is one of the oldest towns in the Donetsk region. Rotted roofs and ceilings, broken windows and shabby facades — such is the real state of the architectural monuments in a town that is more than three centuries old. Unique structures have been reduced to ruins and rubble as a result of public indifference and the bungling of the authorities. In the old town cemetery rest the industrialists and merchants Weiss, the princes Shakhovskyi, and members of the family of the millionaire Shnurkov. The gravestones, which were works of art, have been destroyed. Amid the fragments of monuments and broken crosses, the rubbish and the thickets of weeds, rises the family crypt-chapel of the entrepreneur Zaleskyi, built at the end of the 19th century. The pylons, the dome, and the decorative ornaments are shattered. The one-off clean-ups near the architectural monument had the character of a PR campaign and had no positive effect on preserving the chapel.

Coordinates: 48°51'39"N 37°35'55"E

 

Sloviansk. The Zaleskyi crypt-chapel

The office of the ceramic factory of Jan Dziewulski and Josef Lange was built in 1895 by Polish industrialists. The status of an architectural monument had no effect on preserving the old building, which survived two wars. This brick building on the main thoroughfare of Sloviansk is perishing; the depressing sight of the monument does no credit to the industrial, historical, and cultural centre of the Donetsk region and speaks volumes.

Coordinates: 48°50'29"N 37°34'51"E

Sloviansk. The office of the ceramic factory of Jan Dziewulski and Josef Lange

Myrne, Pokrovsk district 

It is visible from the H-32 motorway and impossible to miss when driving the stretch from Novoekonomichne to Malynivka. The water tower, built by Mennonite Germans more than 100 years ago, rises like a watchman's outpost on the western edge of the small village of Myrne of the Malynivka rural council.

Beheaded and neglected, the former workhorse gapes with the black void of a broken window, while the sprawling crowns of poplars and maples cover the ragged wounds of the red-brick building. Despite its more than century-long history, it has not lost its European pedigree and elegance, for its creators were famed for their craftsmanship and built for the ages. This brick lady has no protected status, and her fate, like that of the other architectural pearls, is preordained by indifference and mismanagement. The tower stands 600 metres from a road of inter-regional importance in a densely populated region and could be a tourist centre in a picturesque area with landscapes and ponds, the Prytorskyi and Halyna Hirka reserves.

Coordinates: 48.3394853, 37.3686755 

Myrne, Malynivka village council. The water tower built by Mennonite Germans

Avdiivka 

Water towers were not only important components of settlements' water-supply systems; these elegant buildings were created to original designs, and the architects adorned their creations with refined artistic decoration. The oldest building in Avdiivka, a contemporary of the Katerynynska Railway, was used for refuelling steam locomotives from the end of the 19th century. This square-plan brick structure with stone framing around the windows, corners, and entrance stands on the grounds of a vocational school and is in a dilapidated state.

Coordinates: 48°8'36"N 37°44'35"E

 

Avdiivka. The trackside water tower

Ivanivske, Bakhmut district 

Amid dense thickets, in a neglected state, a cultural heritage site has been discovered which, by the architect's estimate, is more than 100 years old. From the recollections of old residents, the structure in the neo-Gothic style has been identified asa lordly bathhouse and is depicted on the settlement's coat of arms.

According to another version, the building with its vaulted windows served in the water-supply system. Whatever the little orphan's original purpose, its appearance and its fate leave much to be desired.

Coordinates: 48°34'3"N 37°54'19"E

Ivanivske, Bakhmut district. The lordly bathhouse

Kostiantynivka

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the capital investments of European industrialists laid the foundation for the industrialisation of the Donbas. InKostiantynivka Belgian companies invested in the construction of factories, outpatient clinics, schools, and residential houses. Driving across the bridge over the Kazennyi Torets, you are sure to see a building made by Belgian masters' hands. One of the buildings of the hospital compound did not lose its medical purpose in the Soviet period: it housed a maternity home, and later a medical college. The structure was given the name Gaudi Castle in honour of the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí and his famous creation. Later the name transformed into Brody Castle, alluding to the mysteriousness and desolation of the two-storey building.

Coordinates: 48°31'57"N 37°41'2"E

Kostiantynivka. An example of Belgian architecture

Prelesne, Kramatorsk district

This 19th-century monument of garden and architectural art has been turning into ruins for more than 20 years now. The noble dwelling has all the features of aristocracy. The founder of the estate was Vasyl Vasyliovych Bantysh. In 1837 Oleksandr Fedorovych, the grandson of the estate's founder, built the palace in the classicist style. The 200-year-old oaks have remained the mute witnesses of the events at the estate. Four of them were planted by the palace, in the noble custom, in honour of the sons born there. Sadly, almost none of these gems of "frozen music" remain in the Donetsk region, and one would like to preserve the rest of the 19th-century examples of architecture.

Coordinates: 48°50'12"N 37°17'25"E

Prelesne. The abandoned Bantysh estate

Chasiv Yar

The year 2019 in the town of Chasiv Yar was marked by a fateful decision concerning a unique monument of engineering architecture — the water tower of V. G. Shukhov. After many years of neglect and oblivion, the avant-garde architectural masterpiece was threatened with demolition, but thanks to the efforts of the public the tower was saved from being dismantled for scrap metal.

 

In a difficult time for the country, when ever less attention is paid to preserving architectural monuments both in the capital and in the big cities, the caring residents of a small industrial town located just 25 kilometres from the line of contact performed a truly civic deed by rescuing the only hyperboloid structure of the engineer Shukhov in the east of Ukraine.

Coordinates: 48°35'41"N 37°48'53"E

 

Chasiv Yar. Shukhov's water tower

Chunyshyne 

The halt of Chunyshyne of the Krasnyi Lyman division of the Donetsk Railway has a depressing appearance and has not been in operation since 2014. The asymmetrical station building was built in the neo-Romanesque style and resembles a small palace, which once gave the station a romantic atmosphere, and the small village of a little over 100 people a special status. The facades are decorated with a severe ornament using straight lines and right-angled breaks that outwardly resemble railway tracks and platforms.

 

The station building is neither in use nor mothballed. The window panes are smashed, the floorboards and wiring torn out; the wind roams through the premises and ruin holds sway. The station awaits sensible decisions from the department's management and the local authorities. And for now — oblivion and hopelessness.

Coordinates: 48°14'7"N 37°12'15"E

Chunyshyne. The abandoned railway station

Pokrovsk

In this mining town, the music school bears the name of Mykola Leontovych, one of the streets is named in honour of the author of the world-famous "Shchedryk", and a memorial bas-relief of the Ukrainian composer is mounted on the facade of the railway station. In 1904, a place as a singing teacher at the two-class railway school at Hryshyne station (Pokrovsk) was found for the graduate of a theological seminary, who had successfully mastered church singing and the playing of several instruments. The young teacher founded a workers' choir and taught the railwaymen to sing, a skill they honed at rallies and strikes. An old board in a wooden frame, more like a shop sign than a memorial plaque, testifies to the presence here of Mykola Dmytrovych in 1904-1908 as a music teacher. One of the oldest station buildings is partly used by the water utility as a gatehouse. In the opinion of the town's local historians and researchers, it would be sensible to create, in this still-sturdy building, a museum of the Pokrovsk railway station, where an exhibition devoted to the work of Leontovych would certainly be opened.

Coordinates: 48°17'15"N 37°10'35"E

Pokrovsk. The former two-class railway school

Mykolaivka, Pokrovsk district

The Mykolaivka zemstvo school, built under the tsar, closed under the communists, and destroyed under the democrats, stands on the edge of a small village in a half-ruined state, in oblivion and desolation. It is the only architectural monument in Mykolaivka, which has two and a half streets, about 300 residents, and not even a grocery shop.

 

Former pupils considered this village temple of learning their own home and remember it warmly, and their teachers with gratitude. In the 1990s, with the collapse of the economy, the building was left ownerless and unattended. In 2018 the run-wild educational institution was granted the status of cultural and historical heritage of the Pokrovsk district.

Coordinates: 48°19'11"N 37 20'49"E

Mykolaivka, Pokrovsk district. The former zemstvo school

Kramatorsk

Neglected and destroyed estates, forgotten names, and the tragic fates of their owners. Ruined family houses in which grew up and lived people who served their Homeland and their people faithfully and truly. On the northern outskirts of Kramatorsk , in oblivion and desolation, amid the thickets of an abandoned park, the mansion of a noble family stands forlornly white — the mansion in which lived and worked the outstanding microbiologist, the talented scientist Stepan Vasyliovych Korshun. In the 1990s, a memorial plaque on house No. 10 on Sakhalinska Street testified: "Here, in this country, lived, created, healed, taught, and died while rescuing others, Doctor Stepan Vasyliovych Korshun. 1868-1931." The plaque was torn off by metal thieves and has not been restored on the lonely house. The sight of the estate house and the surrounding park evokes a very sad mood.

Coordinates: 48°46'7"N 37°35'25"E 

Kramatorsk. The house of the microbiologist S. V. Korshun

Myrnohrad 

On Tsentralna Street, near the town council and the administrative buildings, stands the House of Creativity for Children and Youth, which lost its library and assembly hall in a fire in 1998. The mansion, built in 1914, was intended for the manager of the Novoekonomichnyi mine. In 1918 it housed the headquarters of the Revolutionary Military Council. Later it was a lodging house for visitors and a club for engineering and technical staff. During the liberation from the Nazi occupation in 1943 the structure suffered greatly, but in 1946 the building was restored, a second floor was added, and, like everything best, it was given over for the use of children. The building, mutilated by fire and with a destroyed wing, is a symbol of the mismanagement, irresponsibility, and indifference of the town's leaders to preserving the cultural heritage of Myrnohrad. 

Coordinates: 48°18'31"N 37°15'42"E

Myrnohrad. The House of Creativity for Children and Youth