Yubileiny Public Services Building (Pripyat)

The Yubileiny Public Services Building is a five-storey building of consumer services in the ghost town of Pripyat (Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine), 3 km from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It stood at the corner of Lazareva and Sportivnaya streets, in the city's 4th microdistrict, and until 1986 housed workshops and service points: appliance repair, tailoring, a hairdresser's and other everyday services for the district's residents.

History

Pripyat was founded on 4 February 1970 as a town for Chernobyl power plant workers; by 1986 it had about 47,500 residents. After the accident at the plant's fourth reactor on 26 April 1986, the city was evacuated the next day, 27 April, and has remained uninhabited ever since — today it is effectively an open-air museum inside the exclusion zone.

What Remains Inside

The Yubileiny building is now a half-ruined structure, almost completely looted: the windows are broken, the walls are crumbling, and the workshops stand empty. The large letters spelling "Дом быта Юбилейный" ("Yubileiny Public Services") are still visible on the roof. Inside you can see the remains of a hairdresser's, a repair workshop for appliances and shoes, and other traces of the building's former service combine.

The building and its surroundings look noticeably different from how they appear in the video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, but that does not make it any less interesting to visit. It is not the most substantial of Pripyat's abandoned sites, but there is still plenty to see for anyone interested in the city's history and atmosphere.