Historical sights of Almaty.

"I had the honor to report to Your Excellency about my intention to survey the peaks of Almaty. Having examined the first and second Almatys (the Bolshaya and Malaya Almatinka rivers) and the valley between them with engineer-lieutenant Aleksandrovsky, we found the convenience of obtaining timber, a large amount of excellent arable land cut by irrigation ditches, pastures and hayfields, far surpassing the tracts on Issyk and Talgar, which is why we proposed Almaty as the site of the future settlement."

Report of the head of the Zailiysky military detachment, Major M.D. Peremyshlsky. August, 1854.

Church of Blessed Alexander Nevsky and Equal-saving Mary Magdalene in Verny.

The orphanage in the city of Verny opened in 1878. Initially, the orphanage was located in the building of the Vernoye district chief, which was located in the Bolshe-Almatinskaya stanitsa. The premises occupied by the orphanage, designed for 20 people, soon turned out to be cramped and extremely inconvenient. In 1883, they began collecting funds for the construction of their own building.
Most of the funds for the maintenance of the orphanage were collected by subscription from private donors. Only 9 years later, in 1891, having collected donations in the amount of 36,807 rubles 66 kopecks, the trustees could afford to build a new building for the orphanage according to the design of the architect Pavel Vasilyevich Gurde.
The building intended for the orphanage, and the Church of the Blessed Alexander Nevsky and the Equal-Saving Mary Magdalene near it were quickly put into operation. By 1891, they were collected and the Vernoye architect Pavel Vasilyevich Gurde was instructed to draw up plans and estimates for the construction of this building.
He had to do this work free of charge. The land for construction was allocated free of charge by the city council. The building of the orphanage, as well as the Church of the Blessed Alexander Nevsky and the Equal-Saving Mary Magdalene near it were built by July 20, 1892.
The church was consecrated on August 27, 1892. The church of the Vernoye orphanage was wooden with an octagonal dome, illuminated by windows, and was located in the middle of the orphanage building. A corridor separated the church from the inhabitants' homes.
The church of the Vernoye orphanage was wooden with an octagonal dome, illuminated by windows, and was located in the middle of the orphanage building. A corridor separated the church from the inhabitants' homes. During the earthquake in 1910, the building collapsed, but it was among the first to be restored.
When Alma-Ata became the capital (1929), the church domes were demolished. The children (mostly orphans and children from low-income families) studied in the orphanage's one-class parish school. The school's curriculum included reading, writing, basic arithmetic, the main principles of the Law of God, moral teachings, and explanatory readings of the book "A Brief Instruction on Rural Housekeeping, the Works of Nature, the Composition of the Human Body, and in General on the Means of Preserving Health."
In addition to education, the school administration tried to teach the children of the orphanage crafts. Boys were sent to shoemaking, bookbinding, and carpentry workshops, where they acquired the basics of these professions. Girls were taught sewing. In addition to classes at school and workshops, the children cultivated their own garden and vegetable garden.
In the XIX th century, the children of the orphanage planted a Pine Park opposite the orphanage building, which has survived to this day. In January 1904, there were 69 children in the orphanage. From 1879 to 1904, as follows from the certificate dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the existence of the orphanage, 260 orphans of both sexes received their upbringing and primary education there.
Every year, almost all prominent officials, artisans and merchants of the city provided monetary and material assistance to the orphanage. Not far from the orphanage, in the square of Meshchanskaya (Kabanbay Batyr), Gospitalnaya (Zhambyl), Sartovskaya (Seifullin) and Kirgizskaya (Amangeldy) streets, the forester Baum had his own garden.
He gave the harvest from his garden to the orphanage. In Soviet times, the orphanage was taken over by the state. In the late 1930s, it was transferred to the village of Issyk and was named after Ya. M. Sverdlov. During the Soviet era, the building of the former orphanage housed various institutions:
in 1929 – the Kazakh Central Executive Committee, the Council of People's Commissars, and the State Planning Committee of the Kazakh ASSR.
In later times – Children's Clinical Infectious Diseases Hospital No. 1.
From 1981 to the second half of 2015 – City Medical School (now Medical College).
In 2016, the Museum of History of City of Almaty moved to the former building of the Vernoye Orphanage, and is still located here.
History of building of Vernoye Orphanage.
A one-story wooden log rectangular building, on a rubble foundation with a basement. The main facade has a symmetrical three-part structure highlighted by risalits. The plasticity is created horizontally by a strip of frequent windows; vertically – by the blades in the piers.
The windows are framed by developed carved platbands resting on brackets. The main high-rise entrance is emphasized by a wide staircase. In the side wings of the building there was a school with three departments and a workshop for cutting and sewing for girls and shoemaking and bookbinding for boys.
The risalits housed living quarters. In the back southern courtyard, a garden, vegetable garden and flower beds were laid out (now the Dynamo stadium), in front of the main entrance, a garden was planted by the students (now Sosnovy Park).
During the Soviet era, the five-domed Alexander-Mariinsky Church was demolished along the axis of the central risalit. The interiors of the building retain the decoration of the walls and ceiling in the form of stucco elements.
Geographic coordinates of building of former Vernoye town orphanage and Church of St. Alexander Nevsky and Equal-saving Mary Magdalene: N43°14'55 E76°56'10

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Архив of Alexander Yuryevich Ushakov
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