HOUSING REDUCTION OF THE TOWN OF OLEKSANDRIVSK BY ONE THIRD IN 1841-1842

Abstract

The problem of a sharp housing reduction of the county town of Oleksandrivsk in the Katerynoslav province is first raised in the middle of the 19th century. Based on the analysis, a hypothesis is put forward: probably during the period between 1839 and 1841 three state-owned buildings were erected in Oleksandrivsk – a three-story barrackfor artillery company personnel, an arsenal for storing artillery supplies, and a headquarters. As a result of the arsenal explosion, a third of the town’s housing was destroyed. Also, only one surviving wall of the barracks remains, which forms an acute corner of the modern building №29 on Sobornyi Avenue. The explosion probably occurred between 1841 and April 1842. The construction of military facilities, including powder cellars, near urban neighborhoods was widely practiced in those days and was widespread all over the empire. The presence of a small area of four buildings on the site with signs of damage allows us to conclude that their destruction was caused not by a fire but an ex-plosion. During the period from 1842 to 1847, the number of houses in Oleksandrivsk decreased by one third and was not restored even by 1862. There was no such housing reduction in any of the cities of Katerynoslav province. By 1848, several streets in Oleksandrivsk had changed their configuration, as recorded in the map from 1849. For the period from 1834 to 1849 in Oleksan-drivsk, Mykolaivska and Tyuremna streets lost their straightness, Soborna Street instead of a perpendicular intersection with Tyuremna Street acquired a smooth turn to the MokraMoskovka River. The analysis conducted on the basis of a wide range of documents suggests that in Оlex-andrivsk in the time range from 1841 to April 1842 there was an arsenal explosion, which led to significant destruction and building halt in the town in the next almost twenty-year period and even bringing up the issue of moving the administrative center of the county to the town of Or-ikhiv.