The urban planning situation in this place is ambivalent. On the one hand, according to Tamanyan's plan, the entire strip between two parallel streets (Buzand and Arami), running from northwest to southeast, was to be cleared. Historical urban buildings, having lost their former owners after the revolution and sentenced to demolition by Tamanyan, were destroyed not all at once, but gradually. In the 1970s, the Main Avenue was once again thinned out, partially landscaped, but not completely cleared. The face of the "new Yerevan" of the 2000s was the brutally built-up Northern Avenue, also punched in accordance with the old Tamanyan general plan, and the boulevard of the supposed Main Avenue faded into the background, gradually acquiring the appearance of a neglected park with inactive fountains. The stone and adobe buildings of the late 19th - early 20th centuries in the last two undisturbed quarters were dying out and gradually dilapidated, although people still live in the surviving buildings.
And it is here, on the way of the Main Avenue, that the creation of the so-called. "Old Yerevan" - a collection of "reconstructed" buildings-monuments, already demolished and demolished today, here and elsewhere in the city.
The press is discussing the project of the Yerevan architectural bureau Levon Vardanyan (LV + Architect), developed back in 2005 and revived in the fall of 2011 by the former mayor of Yerevan Karen Karapetyan. In an interview with the “Golos Armenii” newspaper, architect L. Vardanyan speaks of a “salvific” and “functional” recipe for combining “old” stone facades, carved wooden balconies and large glass planes (Tigran Mirzoyan, “Old Yerevan in the center of the capital”, GA, February 4, 2012, No. 10).
The process of preparing the territory for the implementation of the project can be traced from the photo of the memorial house on the street. Buzand with a plaque dedicated to artist Kocharian, made in May, August and November last year.
And how the historical houses "restored" in "Old Yerevan" will most likely look like, you can imagine looking at the photographs of the new building on the corner of st. Abovyan and Northern Avenue using the old dismantled facade.
So you don’t know which is better - to honestly finish off the last remnants of genuine old Yerevan and complete the construction of Tamanyan Boulevard (just these days the townspeople are fighting for their favorite green corner on the Main Avenue - the so-called Mashtots Garden: pickets against the placement of trade pavilions, which are transferred here from the famous wide sidewalks of Abovyan Street), or to put together a pseudo-historical puzzle around the new glass mall? Honestly, "both are worse."
