In the 18th century, the city pond spit served as a refuge for prisoners from the Old Believers’ prison (Zarechniy Tyn) and in 1934, was adorned with the Dynamo Sport Complex. The architect Veniamin Sokolov likened the complex’s southern, pond-facing facade to a majestic vessel. More precisely, he made it look like the bow of a majestic vessel, with decks, dinghies, captain’s bridge, and antenna masts. With this logic, its opposite, northern facade was a rounded stern with porthole windows. The complex, among other things, included a stadium and an aquatic sports station with pools, equipped with diving platforms and a springboard, and spectator stands on the opposite shore. Plaster sculptures of labourers and athletes placed along the embankment created an uplifted, festive atmosphere. Well-loved by the townsmen, the “Ship-House” became the centre of sports and athletic lifestyles in the Soviet Sverdlovsk. The opening of Dynamo’s aquatic station was marked by the Ural-Kuzbass Games, in which the USSR’s top-ranking athletes and foreign workers’ delegation participated. In 1937, a New Year’s city ice skating rink and one of the first officially permitted Christmas trees in Sverdlovsk were set up on the ice near the Physical Training Centre. In the postwar years, it was on Dynamo’s ice arena where the national seasonal ice hockey championship took place, a sport that was only just gaining popularity in the Soviet Union at that time.