Description
The unusual art object did not appear at this place by chance. The very first steps to organize the city's water supply were taken in 1827 by the military governor, Count Peter Essen, but then this project was not fully implemented. Some time later, in 1864, after numerous attempts, the first water supply system was launched in our city. And what is especially important is that it became one of the first provincial water pipelines in Russia, which operated according to a permanent scheme. Alexander Bezak, Governor-General of Orenburg and Samara, took a direct part in its creation.
A few years ago, the "Orenburg Vodokanal" emergency recovery team repaired a leak on the water supply networks at this place near the drama theater. During the excavation, experts came across a fragment of a wooden pipe. The same part of the water supply network that has been in operation since 1864. Then the idea was born to historically designate this place and preserve the memory of the beginning of the Orenburg water supply system. Today, a fragment of a wooden water pipe from a single trunk of a larch tree is an exhibit at the Museum of the City's History.
There were a lot of ideas. At first, it was supposed to build a special underground niche under a glass dome so that you could see how the wooden pipes were laid. But the head of Orenburg, Yu.N. Mishcheryakov, visited the Orenburg art factory "Plast" and saw how our craftsmen recreated the ancient column by order of the city of Kolomna. That's when the idea came to do something similar in Orenburg, which was implemented with the permission of the Kolomna city administration and with the financial assistance of "Rosvodokanal Management Company" LLC. This is a functioning water collecting column that works for free, an exact copy of the speakers that stood all over Russia at the beginning of the last century.
Text and photo from the book "In memoriam… Monuments of Orenburg" / I.V. Khramov. Orenburg: Orenburg Book Publishing House named after G.P. Donkovtsev, 2023
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