This article contains material on the study of the development of industrial architecture in the provincial city of Orenburg at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries and includes a comparative architectural and art historical analysis of steam mills from their first buildings in 1878 to 1912. A brief description of the provincial Orenburg as a large commercial and industrial center of the region is given. The turn-of-the-century period is also associated with the accumulation of financial capital by merchants, who during this period actively built industrial buildings and entire industrial complexes. It is suggested that the first steam mill, built in Orenburg by a merchant from St. Petersburg, is a prototype of the beginning of the formation of the visual appearance of industrial architecture. All industrial structures of steam mills in Orenburg that have survived to the present day are considered. It is determined that the steam mills in Orenburg are made in the provincial Russian brick style, and their compositional and artistic-figurative characteristics.