What is this structure?

Honza

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Does anyone know what this structure is? This is a photo of the Brickworks between DTW and RB. What is the structure in the lower middle of the photo? It is whitish in colour unlike the factory buildings, but it is large enough to be a factory.

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Honza

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The structure is also unusual because the edges are curved unlike a factory building.
 

Honza

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Might be a sports stadium, they were scattered around the city.
Hi Tom, the thing is it is situated right next to the brick works and is probably part and parcel of the works. I was thinking it may be a warehouse of some sort.
 

Michael Dorosh

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Could be a curved roof rather than a curved building - like a Quonset or Nissen hut.

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My old neighbourhood was built on the site of a British Commonwealth Air Training Plan airfield. This old hut has survived. Viewed from above, the shape seems similar to the aerial photo above?

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Honza

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Hi Michael,

Yes I was thinking something like a curved roof. A guy on FB showed another photo of the area and this time it looks like a depression. It could be the brick works quarry. A mystery.
 

Michael Dorosh

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If it was a depression, wouldn't the shadow be on the other side of the hole?
 

Paul M. Weir

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I think Honza might be onto something. The shadow for that is to the bottom of the faint white line while buildings elsewhere have their shadows to the top. In addition, the shape of the main shadow is irregular as if cast by rising and falling higher ground. Most of the other shadows are thin, implying the photo was taken close to noon.
 

Sparafucil3

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You have a better link to the photo? Looking at the modern Google Map of the place, there is a stadium / track that is pretty run down. It seems to be built in a depression with high grand stands on either side. I don't have enough of the original to make sure its the same place and the buildings and surroundings in your photo have change quite bit. -- jim

PS: spent much of my life a photo interpreter. Love to look at this stuff :)
PPS: I think this is the place: https://www.google.com/maps/search/stalingrad+red+barricades/@48.7685884,44.570512,1888m/data=!3m1!1e3
 

Michael Dorosh

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You have a better link to the photo? Looking at the modern Google Map of the place, there is a stadium / track that is pretty run down. It seems to be built in a depression with high grand stands on either side. I don't have enough of the original to make sure its the same place and the buildings and surroundings in your photo have change quite bit. -- jim

PS: spent much of my life a photo interpreter. Love to look at this stuff :)
PPS: I think this is the place: https://www.google.com/maps/search/stalingrad+red+barricades/@48.7685884,44.570512,1888m/data=!3m1!1e3
Amazingly, there is Google Street view footage of this location. Those grandstands seem to be apartment buildings.

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Sparafucil3

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I think my original link is too far south. Based on the 2nd image that Bloefeld posted, I think this is the right area now: https://www.google.com/maps/search/stalingrad+red+barricades/@48.7863299,44.59448,1888m/data=!3m1!1e3. Modern day, the factory has expanded into the area shown on the WWII photos. If you scroll down a little bit from this link, you can see what is in the 2nd photo, particularly building 4 as it was rebuilt with the same shape. From there, you can find building 6 in the lower right hand corner of the annotated square. If you look closely on the modern photo, you can see the curved rail line consistent with the historical photo. Based on this, the factory in the square historical annotation has grown northwards and consumed this space. The closest I can come to putting you on the modern map is here: https://www.google.com/maps/search/stalingrad+red+barricades/@48.7841752,44.5986139,1335m/data=!3m1!1e3
It is hard to say for sure, but the white, open area might be the same place but I don't think so. I think what ever it was has been consumed by the factories growth. -- jim
 

lluis61

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All my references indicate that it's part of the brick factory. And, if you look at the buildings around defined as complex "brickworks", in fact this structure could be the main brick factory. It has a pier near, which could be convenient. At any case, no depression or stadium. It's about 200 m long and about 100 m wide.
 

lluis61

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The main street nearest would be Pribaltiiskaya, but don't googlestreet much... Volgograd is not the old Stalingrad. The difference in colors with the roofs and the rest of the factories... it's conjecture, of course, but the two brickworks I've seen have flat roof, without skylights, and open at the sides.
 

RandyT0001

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All my references indicate that it's part of the brick factory. And, if you look at the buildings around defined as complex "brickworks", in fact this structure could be the main brick factory. It has a pier near, which could be convenient. At any case, no depression or stadium. It's about 200 m long and about 100 m wide.
So we have five or six parallel continuously fired tunnel kilns, probably using a rail system to move the bricks through the heating-cooling process.
 

lluis61

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So we have five or six parallel continuously fired tunnel kilns, probably using a rail system to move the bricks through the heating-cooling process.
Why not? Brickworks The ones I've seen are in Catalonia, a small country, not in the great Stalin's USSR ;)
 

lluis61

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My source: La Defensa de los Distritos Obreros, by Elena Tsunayeva (Volgogradski Gosudarstvenny Universitet), published at Desperta Ferro Contemporánea, nº2
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lluis61

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So we have five or six parallel continuously fired tunnel kilns, probably using a rail system to move the bricks through the heating-cooling process.
And, conjecturing again, could be not the works, but the warehouse of the manufactured bricks... The streets/roads around suggest that...
 
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