Author(s): Mehmet YAVUZ, Ali Yalçın TAVUKÇU
The old railway line from Do?ukap? to Erzurum passing through Akyaka, Kars, and Sar?kam?? was evidently the only railway line constructed outside the will of the Ottoman Empire. This railway line constructed in three major stages for military purposes by the Russian Czardom in 1878-1878 after the Ottoman-Russian War was part of the major Transcaucasia railway line and a continuation of the Batumi-Tbilisi-Gyumri (Alexendrepol) railway line. This essay aims to examine the buildings that were constructed for administrative purposes such as bridges, tunnels, vent shafts, station buildings, managerial buildings, water towers, locomotive hangars, and living quarters located from Erzurum to Kars in terms of architectural style, design, building techniques, materials, and function.
When the architectural constructions are examined from a stylistic point of view, we note that these buildings bear elements peculiar to the different architectural movements such as the Renaissance and Mannerism. Nevertheless, the co-use of these different architectural features in the same buildings seems to indicate that these buildings were designed with the sense of “The Baltic eclecticism with European origin.” These buildings, which are different from their Anatolian counterparts in terms of design and style, display numerous closest parallels mainly in the railway station buildings found in different geographic parts of the Russian Czardom. In this sense, the architectural constructions identified along the Do?ukap?-Erzurum railway line in northwest Anatolia should be viewed as part of the Russian railway building tradition.
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