Editing Ashgabat (section)

====1881 to 1929====
Prior to 1881 any buildings other than [[yurt]]s were made solely from [[adobe]] and were limited to one story in height due to the seismic risk.<ref name=ria /> As of 1900 only one building in the city was two stories tall, the municipal museum.<ref name=muradov3>{{cite news|url= https://turkmenistan.gov.tm/ru/post/54091/istoriya-ashhabada-na-zare-dvadcatogo-veka |title=  История Ашхабада: на заре двадцатого века|first=Ruslan|last=Muradov |date=6 May 2021 |language=ru |publisher=«Туркменистан: золотой век»}}</ref> City planning began following the Russian conquest, with "very simple planning schemes". The basic layout of downtown streets "has been preserved to this day and defined the unique character of the city structure combining linear and radial types of layout of blocks". The Russian writer [[Vasily Yan]], who lived in Askhabad from 1901 to 1904, described the city as "a little tidy town consisting of numerous clay houses, surrounded by fruit gardens with straight streets, planted with slim cottonwood, chestnut, and white acacia planned by the hand of military engineers".<ref name=guide /> Another description noted,
: The fortress was the center of the bureaucratic part of the city. Here stood especially sturdy thick-walled houses, with strong window grates and corner buttresses. Earthquakes were less frightening in such houses, and behind the thick walls even in the hottest months some measure of indoor coolness was retained. Each house had a garden around it, on maintenance of which residents spared neither expenditures nor water...Nearer the rail station lived the railroad workers and craftsmen. Here the houses were shorter and more densely spaced, gardens smaller, and dust on the streets greater...
: Gradually a third center of Ashkhabad started to emerge, of the merchants. Roughly equidistant from the rail station and the fortress was laid out a sad marketplace, becoming not only a center of stores and stalls, but a center of gravity for merchants' residence.<ref name=turkmenistan />