Trading companies typology in the cities of Siberia XVII – early XX century

The paper examines the stages of the emergence of trading activities in the historically established cities of Siberia. The study shows the measures for the construction of the first city buildings for the storage and sale of goods – gostinye dvory. The archival documents, testifying to the measures taken by the government authorities to preserve the state treasury and goods of merchants in Siberia were revealed. Unique and little-known archival texts disclose the actions of the central and local authorities to establish control over trade activities in Siberian cities, which provided significant cash receipts to the state treasury. The surviving rare drawings of the XVIII century show attempts to introduce new types of buildings in Siberian cities: administrative – commercial, commercial – residential, wholesale and commercial – warehouse. The architectural and constructive transformations of traditional commercial buildings (gostinye dvory), which began in Siberia at the turn of the XVIII – XIX centuries are noted. The rapid development of Russian trade in the second half of the XIX century contributed to the spread in Siberian cities of a new type of trade enterprises – department stores with expressive architectural forms, equipped with the latest achievements of scientific and technological progress, and providing a wide range of goods for buyers. The paper shows an example of the formation at the turn of the century of the city of Novonikolaevsk (Novosibirsk), which grew at a fabulous speed among the centuries-old Siberian taiga due to its favorable location at the crossroads of transport and trade routes. In the first decade of the XX century, most forecasts about future transformations of Siberia were associated with the growing process of the emergence and rapid growth of new cities, in which commercial and industrial activities played the main role.