Verkh-Isetsky Plant Dam

Brief information

This dam appeared not as an embellishment of the embankment, but as a water reserve for the plant downstream. In 1725, it was built on the Iset in six months so that the Yekaterinburg Plant would not stop in winter because of a shortage of water. Thus the Verkh-Isetsky Pond emerged, and the dam itself quickly became more than an auxiliary structure: the water reserve proved powerful enough for a full-fledged metallurgical plant to begin being built nearby.

What matters now is the contrast between the dam’s former function and what can be seen in its structure. It has lost its energy-producing significance, the former water conduits to the workshops have been dismantled, the openings have been filled in, and road and railway routes have been laid across its surface. The place reads as a former factory machine that the city gradually incorporated into its ordinary infrastructure.

What to notice right away

It makes sense to look at the dam as a structure in which the former work of water was gradually covered over by new functions. Its early foundation was wooden and earthen: log cribwork was laid in the riverbed and packed with stones, clay, and earth. Later, on the downstream side, the dam was reinforced with rubble stone; this detail explains why the structure was not merely an embankment, but a working barrier designed to withstand water pressure.

By the twentieth century, the meaning of the visible elements had changed. The new sluice and the building for controlling the shutoff mechanisms recall water regulation, but the flumes that supplied water to the factory workshops had already been dismantled, and the flume openings and spillway opening had been filled in. The surface of the dam was taken over by road and railway routes. Its elongated meridional direction is important to compare with the surrounding development: it was this line that became the planning axis of the plant and the future district.