White Tower

In Yekaterinburg, in the area of Ordzhonikidze, there is an architectural monument that belongs to the era of constructivism. This is a former water tower, built in 1928-1931 and abandoned in our time.

The need for the tower arose when the construction of the Ural plant began in the north of Sverdlovsk. The architect of the structure was Reischer M.V. According to his plan, the structure had two observation decks at the very top. Two geometric bodies – the prismatic plate of the cylinder of the tank and the stairs had to intersect. The tower reached 29 meters in height, its tank was completely iron. In 1931, the tower was ready, but an hour after it was filled with water, the bottom arched, fell off, and all the water poured into the street.

The bottom was remade by Prokhorov, and this time it turned out to be reliable and made of reinforced concrete. The tower was painted with white lime and became known as the White Tower. Now it is an unofficial symbol of Uralmash and a prototype for many other similar structures. In 2006, Red Cross activists planned to reanimate the monument, which was already on the list of cultural heritage sites. They wanted to create a security zone around the structure.

To date, only piles of rubbish can be seen inside the tower, the Red Cross refused custody of the monument in 2012 and is now being handled by a public organization called the Architectural Initiatives Group.