Description of the attraction
The active development of Russian industry in the 19th century. made the development of the construction of new railways an absolute necessity. And Alexandrov was no exception. In 1870, the Moscow-Yaroslavl railway was put into operation, which was caused, among other things, by the increased needs of the Strunino, Alexandrov, Karabanovo manufactories. At the end of the 19th century. especially far-sighted industrialists and merchants of Aleksandrov bought out and made changes to the project of the Northern Railway. In the version of 1868, this section of the railway began to pass not through Pereslavl-Zalessky, but through Aleksandrov.
In December 1870, the station was officially opened, and the railway solemnly announced its birth with the whistle of a steam locomotive. In the same year, construction began on the entire railway station complex. In 1873, train traffic was already opened here, and in 1896, when a railway line was stretched from Aleksandrov to Kolchugino, the station began to be a junction.
A new brick station was built instead of the old wooden one in 1903. Most likely, the other buildings of the railway station complex were also built at the same time: the chapel of Seraphim of Sarov, brick and wooden warehouse buildings, a luggage compartment, a village of railway workers, a building for a signal communication distance.
The stone station building is one of the city's most representative public buildings and is symmetrically built in an eclectic style with a predominance of classical forms.
The building is rectangular in plan, long, its side parts are one-story, and the middle consists of two floors. The central volume of the building and the side parts are decorated with small triangular pediments. Rustic painting revives the walls. The central volume of the building is connected to the flanking low pavilions, where the telegraph office, the restaurant, and the office of the station chief were located. Currently, the layout of the building has changed somewhat. There is no original decoration of the interiors either.
The line of the station building is continued by a low luggage compartment, which is a rectangular simple structure with a gable roof. Further, there are two service buildings (the researchers assume that initially there were a track barracks and an ambulance station). These buildings are built in the Art Nouveau style, but without particularly prominent typical features. The next building, which is quite interesting, is a water body, which is the main vertical dominant of the station complex. The octagonal tower is made in the eclectic style and has been perfectly preserved to this day. It should not be confused with a water-lifting structure, which is an eclectic-style brick building with heavy and powerful facade decoration, currently in a ruined state.
Another station building is made in the Art Nouveau style. This is a signal communication distance, which was built at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. and built on in the 1920s. to the third floor.
The largest structure of the Alexandrov railway station is a fan-type locomotive depot. It is a huge brick building of a semicircular shape, which is located away from the rest of the station buildings, behind the tracks. Inside the arc formed by the building of the park, paths diverge like a fan, which lead to eighteen stalls of locomotives.
A little away from the tracks, near the main station building, there is a chapel in honor of Seraphim of Sarov, built in memory of the miraculous salvation of the royal family of Alexander III during a train wreck in Borki.
Aleksandrov is a railway station that still operates and retains its functions. A railway complex that deserves attention both as a station and as a unique monument of civil architecture.
