Tver River Terminal or Tverskoy rechnoy vokzal () is a partially destroyed passenger terminal of river transport in

Tver Tver ( rus, Тверь, p=tvʲerʲ) is a city and the administrative centre of Tver Oblast, Russia. It is northwest of Moscow. Population: Tver was formerly the capital of a powerful medieval state and a model provincial town in the Russian ...

. It is situated at the

confluence In geography, a confluence (also: ''conflux'') occurs where two or more flowing bodies of water join to form a single channel. A confluence can occur in several configurations: at the point where a tributary joins a larger river (main stem); o ...

of the

Volga The Volga (; russian: Во́лга, a=Ru-Волга.ogg, p=ˈvoɫɡə) is the List of rivers of Europe#Rivers of Europe by length, longest river in Europe. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Cas ...

and

Tvertsa The Tvertsa () is a river in Vyshnevolotsky, Spirovsky, Torzhoksky, and Kalininsky Districts, as well as in the cities of Torzhok and Tver in Tver Oblast, Russia, a left tributary of the Volga. It is long, and the area of its basin . The princ ...

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...

s, on the left bank of the Volga, just near the

river mouth A river mouth is where a river flows into a larger body of water, such as another river, a lake/reservoir, a bay/gulf, a sea, or an ocean. At the river mouth, sediments are often deposited due to the slowing of the current reducing the carrying ...

of Tvertsa. The construction began in 1935, near the site of the demolished , and was completed by 1938. Both architects and most of the workers on site were prisoners of the

labour camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...

(part of the

Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...

). Because of the compromises and corner-cutting made during the planning and construction, the building's structure began to decline by the end of 1980s. Due to the financial difficulties that city experienced in 1990s and early 2000s, local authorities were unable to afford proper repairs, which lead to further deterioration. By that time, following the decline of water transport in the region, the river terminal building was out of the commission for almost a decade. In the following years, up until 2011, it was sometimes used as a venue for art expositions, while some of the sections were rented out to various tenants. On the eve of August 7, 2017, main building began collapsing—a process that continued on the next day, eventually leading to the loss of external walls, floor structures and the

roof A roof ( : roofs or rooves) is the top covering of a building, including all materials and constructions necessary to support it on the walls of the building or on uprights, providing protection against rain, snow, sunlight, extremes of temper ...

Events after the collapse

Immediately after the event, the

governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

of the

Tver Oblast Tver Oblast (russian: Тверска́я о́бласть, ''Tverskaya oblast'', ), from 1935 to 1990 known as Kalinin Oblast (), is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is the city of Tver. It was named after Mikhai ...

Igor Rudenya Igor Mikhaylovich Rudenya (russian: Игорь Михайлович Руденя; born on 15 February 1968), is a Russian statesman who is currently the 5th governor of Tver Oblast since 23 September 2016. He was the acting Governor on 2 March u ...

announced that terminal's building will be restored in its historical form. However, no firm dates were announced with the regard to that statement. On August 28, 2017, one of the regional media outlets has reported that local authorities knew that building was about to collapse for at least few months, as they've ordered an inspection on building's constructions, but ultimately decided to hold off with emergency repairs because of their cost. Tver River Terminal 12 Jan 2019 04

By November 2017 most of the rubble from the collapse was cleared, and any unstable leftovers were forced down. The building itself was covered with decorative banner and fenced off from the pier and pedestrian walkways in order to protect the people from any random falling debris. In April 2018 Aleksandra Smirnova, deputy head of Tver's regional chapter of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Monuments of History and Culture has stated in the interview that budget of the

for 2018 has no money allocated for the emergency repairs or the reconstruction of the terminal. On June 19, 2019, the chairman of Tver Duma (lower house of the regional parliament) Evgeny Pichuyev, answering the question about river terminal's fate, has stated that city has no funds for the restoration, and that it's necessary to find an investor who will be interested in funding the repairs. On July 22, 2019, local authorities have announced that a complex engineering study will be undertaken in order to develop suggestions and instructions on the restoration procedure. However, it was also stated that no hard decision on the building's fate will be made until the study is complete: should the engineers decide that there's an irreparable damage, the building most likely will be demolished rather than restored. In accordance with the contract for the study, its results should be delivered to the authorities no later than December 20, 2019. As of December 26, 2019, those were not made publicly available. On December 11, 2019, the

of the

stated in the interview that it is planned to construct a brand-new building for the river terminal instead of restoring a historical one, employing "new technologies". Rudenya announced that 800 million rubles are already secured to fund the construction. In the same interview he also stated that there are plans to partially restore an building complex along with the terminal's construction (it is widely believed that the former was occupying the same spot as the river terminal, just before it got demolished in the early 1930s). Governor has failed to mention how local authorities will go around the federal law which strictly prohibits to demolish any buildings which were declared as objects of cultural heritage of the peoples of the Russian Federation.

References

External links

Post-collapse video of the terminal

Transport infrastructure completed in 1938 Stalinist architecture Ports and harbours of Russia Water transport in Russia Cultural heritage monuments in Tver Oblast Objects of cultural heritage of Russia of regional significance {{Russia-struct-stub