House of Specialists

In September 1935, the first apartment building for specialists was completed in Besh-Agach, Tashkent: four stories, apartments with three to four rooms featuring kitchens, bathrooms, and running water. Seventeen apartments were allocated to families of researchers, twenty-six to engineers, and five to military specialists. The City Council promised pipes, electrical fittings, and white paint so that people could move in by the anniversary of October. The main structure was already standing by this time, but it still lacked a facade. Requirements for the architectural appearance of buildings, it was written at the time, had "sharply increased," and the construction department commissioned architect A. I. Pavlov to design the decoration for the already completed shell. Pavlov created a building unlike almost anything built in Tashkent afterwards. Six stairwells protrude on the southern facade as bay windows glazed from the ground floor to the top with square windows, and the building itself steps down the terrain in six ledges. A square ornament is etched into the plaster. On the eastern end, there was a curved inscription reading "Dom ITR," meaning the house of engineering and technical personnel, along with a wreath of ears of grain featuring a star, a shovel, and an axe. The inscription and wreath have not survived. Two years later, Pavlov built a twin next to it, the second House of Specialists, of the same size and with the same six entrances, but more ornate: with columns, arches, and loggias. Architectural historians consider both buildings to be the only known examples of Art Deco in Tashkent.

In November 1936, a letter arrived at the editorial office: "Tashkent's only House of Specialists is already populated by residents, but... it is not finished." As early as July, the residents warned that the heating was not ready. Construction head Khaldeev promised that everything would soon be in order, only the coal shed needed to be built from mud brick. By November, the foundation for the shed was barely being laid, and no coal had been brought. The cold set in. In the evenings, families sat in the kitchens by the stoves. Honored Artist Sarra Ishanturaeva caught a severe cold and lost her voice, and the children fell ill. The radiators, where they were installed, leaked and ruined the walls. The residents were ready to build stoves at their own expense, but the construction head forbade it. The residents paid for the wiring themselves. The Committee of Sciences paid five hundred rubles for an apartment back in March, the university gave a thousand, the medical institute bought everything from the meter to the screws. Electricity was wired to one apartment in three months and not turned on. Artist Tatevosyan paid a thousand rubles and never got the electricity. "Electricity will be soon," residents were answered for seven to eight months. Transoms are not hung, newspaper is used instead of glass, parquet flooring "jumps", there are through-holes in the walls and floors. And Khaldeev himself was awarded a finished apartment in the same building by the city council. There are eighteen signatures under the letter: professors, doctors, People's Artist Abrar Khidoyatov, Doctor of Archaeology M. Masson, Honored Artist Usta Alim, People's Artist Uygur. Today, memorial plaques to the people who lived here hang on the eastern gable of the house.