Central Telegraph

In the autumn of 1935, Tashkent received nine thousand telegrams every day and sent seven thousand. The Central Telegraph machines transmitted about four hundred thousand words per day. The People's Commissariat of Agriculture wrote the most, up to eight hundred telegrams a day. Machines of various systems were in operation: old Morse devices gave four hundred to six hundred words per hour, Baudot up to nine hundred, Siemens about one thousand two hundred, and the newest Soviet Treml devices one thousand five hundred. Telegraph operator Mikelchenko once transmitted 1,879 words in an hour. All of this fit into cramped quarters, and in 1935 the telegraph and long-distance telephone station were expanded at the expense of the post office rooms. The new building rose on Navoi Street, which, according to the 1939 plan, was to be built up with large houses. By May 1940, construction was nearing completion. The three-story building housed the telegraph, post office, and long-distance telephone station. It was finished with Gazgan marble, bronze, mosaic, and painting. In front of the building, a paved area with space for flower beds and fountains was left, and a wide staircase led to the lobby. The strict facade with columns was decorated with the coats of arms of the USSR and the UzSSR, and a clock was to be installed above the entrance. In the lobby, operational, and equipment halls, mosaic floors were already laid, the lobby columns were faced with the same marble, and the walls were paneled with oak. A team of parquet layers from Kharkov prepared two and a half thousand square meters of parquet. Plasterer and Komsomol member Akzam Ismailov finished the columns with special care. There was a shortage of cement and sand, and completion was scheduled for July.

Among the buildings on Navoi Street, the telegraph office stands out for what it lacks. Nearby, the Vatan cinema and the Sredazugol building were being constructed with quotes from Central Asian architecture, and later the Bulatov houses with pointed arches, but here there is not a single oriental motif. The 125 meter long facade is set back from the street line, creating a small square in front of it. The staircase is embraced by two curved ramps with pyramidal candelabras. Above the central part stand four three-story-high half-columns with Corinthian capitals, and on the frieze above them there used to be the inscription - Central Telegraph. Today the frieze is empty, and the round emblem on the attic has also vanished. In the autumn of 1940, as soon as the building was completed, the architect Jahangirov called Navoi Street an example of architectural motley: the apartment building of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture specialists, the regional executive committee building, people's commissariats, the telegraph, and the Rodina cinema were for him architecturally incompatible structures. The city architect was to blame, according to him, for not providing builders with detailed planning projects. In March 1963, a call office was opened in the telegraph building, unlike any other in Central Asia. On Wednesdays and Fridays from ten to two, and on Sundays from nine to half past ten, Tashkent residents could see their interlocutor in Andijan on a screen. The line via a radio relay route was assembled by the engineers and technicians of the republic's Ministry of Communications themselves, by rebuilding the existing equipment. - Andijan, how do you hear me? And how do you see me? - asked engineer Boris Loginov at the first session. - Excellent! - answered the head of the Andijan Regional Communications Department. This was the second intercity videophone line in the country. The first one, between Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev, was launched during the days of the 22nd Party Congress.