No hint of Sovietism: what Donetsk was like over 100 years ago. Unique photos

According to eyewitnesses, modern Donetsk, which is under Russian occupation, is increasingly slipping back into Soviet unsettledness: the city's roads have deteriorated, and there are constant problems with water supply. But this was not the case a century ago.

At that time, the city was called Yuzivka and was the center of a rapidly developing and rich industrial region. This is reflected, in particular, in color postcards, photographs, and reproductions of paintings. A collection of such images, probably from the 1890s, was published on his Facebook page by a local historian from New York City in the Bakhmut district, who goes by the pseudonym Etnografo Donetz.

According to him, these postcards were made on the basis of black-and-white photographs, which were then hand-colored. They tried to convey the real colors of the buildings. Therefore, they give a good idea of the Yuzivka of that time, and now Donetsk.

In those years, the streets in Yuzivka, which were built, in particular, by the Americans, were called "lines." This is reflected in some of the captions to the images.

In the first photo, we see a painting. This is a painting of the house of Edwin James Williams, who was a mine engineer in Yuzivka in the late nineteenth century.

The next postcard shows the First Line of Yuzivka. Now it is a part of Artema Street from Donetsk Metallurgical Plant to Lenin Square.

Next, we can see the zemstvo hospital. As you can see, the building is quite large.

Images of the Catherine Society complete the selection. The Rykivka depicted here is part of the modern Kalininsky district of Donetsk. Here you can see the Directorate House, also known as the Balfour House, a hospital, and mine buildings.

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