The Pharmacy of Maria Mikhailovna Tarasova, a Titular Councillor's Widow
The town's oldest pharmacy was built after the fire of 1906. The building belonged to Stepan Ivanovich Mazanov, owner of the trading house “S. I. Mazanov and Sons.” According to archival documents, the house on Ilyinskaya Street (now Internatsionalnaya) was bought from him by Maria Mikhailovna Tarasova, the wife of a titular councillor (a civil-service rank), widow of a pharmacist who had owned his own pharmacy beyond the Krymza. That pharmacy burned down in the fire of 1906, and her husband Pyotr died at the same time. Left with five children, the widow managed to re-establish the pharmacy in the new house, where the family moved. The pharmacy was nationalized under the Decree on the Nationalization of Pharmacies of 1918. In 1920 the pay register of pharmacy workers lists a 17th-grade assistant, Alexandra Petrovna Tarasova. It's easy to guess that this was Maria Mikhailovna Tarasova's daughter, carrying on the family business. The pharmacy was closed in 2012. Its unique furniture and other items were handed over to the local history museum. Today they form the core of the “District Medicine” exhibition in the museum's exhibition hall.

