Bolshie Ovragi is a district of Historic Buildings in Nizhny Novgorod, situated between Maslyakova Street, Malaya Yamskaya, Pokhvalinskiy Descent, and The Oka Descent.
Nature of the Area
The ravines are genuinely large: the plateaus on their slopes rise anywhere from 80 to 120 metres above the Oka, and the ravines themselves stretch hundreds of metres inland into the Dyatlov Hills. Streams and rivulets once ran along the floors of the old ravines: Gremyachy Klyuch (stream), Starkovka stream, Bezymyanny Klyuch (stream). Settling here was more trouble than it was worth, which is why the city streets — some of which closely follow the contours of the terrain — appeared in this district much later than in other parts of old Nizhny Novgorod.
Historical Background
The earliest records relating to the Bolshie Ovragi district date to the late fourteenth century, when a monastery sloboda (a settlement attached to a monastery) was destroyed in the lower part of the slope. At the same time, on the crests of the Oka hills, there existed an Old Town. It was excavated in 1988 on a headland of the original riverbank, below the end of Third Yamskaya Street. Under the name Gorodok Settlement, it was placed under state protection. The Gorodok occupied the Bolshie Ovragi area in the thirteenth through fourteenth centuries. Around the same period, a trading sloboda or wharf belonging to the Gorodok existed in the lower part of the slope at the site where the Kazan Railway Station would later stand. It is not impossible, however, that this sloboda belonged to the Blagoveschenskiy Muzhskoy Monastery rather than to the Gorodok — Nizhny Novgorod Landslide.
For a long time, Bolshie Ovragi did not belong to Nizhny Novgorod proper.
In the early sixteenth century, a third line of fortifications — a large ostrog (stockade) — was built to protect the posady (trading settlements) from Khanate raids. The earthen rampart and ditch of the large ostrog ran along what is now Malaya Pokrovskaya Street; at the intersection of Malaya Pokrovskaya and Ilyinka stood the Ilyinsky Gates, through which a road passed.
The wall of the Large Ostrog then extended to Grebeshok and descended to the river. The Blagoveschenskiy Muzhskoy Monastery also fell within the ostrog's boundaries. A market known as "Reshetka" (The Grate) was located in the area of Maslyakova Street.
When, at the end of the eighteenth century, the haphazard growth of Nizhny Novgorod's streets was brought to order by a regular town plan, rope- and sail-making industries were relocated beyond the Ilyinsky Gate. At the same time, coachmen's yards were ordered to pay state taxes. Those who refused were driven out of the city onto the common lands. Thus, in 1799, Bolshaya Yamskaya and Malaya Yamskaya streets appeared along the Murom–Moscow road and were partly built up.
A considerable gap remained between the city's built-up area and the Yamskaya streets; this was filled in the early nineteenth century according to a plan by the architect A. Betancourt, who laid out 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Yamskaya streets.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the Kazan Cemetery lay to the west of the Murom–Moscow road; in the early nineteenth century the Krestovozdvizhensky Monastery was relocated here (on the very site of the dormitory building on Lyadov Square). Further settlement of this territory proceeded outward from the monastery toward the Oka.
Current State
Today, Bolshie Ovragi retains a sufficient quantity of dilapidated housing stock — though in a terrible condition. Its appearance readily prompts the imagination to reconstruct how development in this area proceeded over the years.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Bolshaya Yamskaya ended near the Krestovozdvizhensky Monastery. To the right of "Reshetka," Malaya Pokrovskaya Street continued, and opposite it — beyond [[Ulitsa Gogolya|Telyachya Street (Gogol Street)]] — lay the road to Grebeshok. On the left side of this street was a ravine. Beyond the ravine — running lengthwise, crosswise, and diagonally — were new streets, and beyond them a field with rope factories. In earlier times, walking from Malaya Yamskaya Street toward the riverbank, one could reach the locality of Yarilo, which took its name from the fact that before the tenth century pagan tribes held their rituals there in honor of the sun god Yarilo. Today, Yarilsky Ravine remains as a reminder of this.
Malaya Yamskaya was a dead-end street, connecting no other streets and leading to no squares; to this day it serves mainly as a link between the city proper and the development along Fedorovsky Embankment. It has no urban focal points: the street looks the same at its beginning, middle, and end. Its corners, as it were, make no impression. At one end it opens onto Maslyakov Square, which until recently was laid out more as a tram-route loop than as a proper square. There is no dominant feature here capable of orienting the viewer. Malaya Yamskaya effectively runs into old, dilapidated buildings. The absence of focal points has a simple explanation: under Soviet Power, the churches on Bolshie Ovragi were demolished and the cemetery was built over.
Soviet Development Plans for Bolshie Ovragi
The 1960 development plan for Bolshie Ovragi envisaged the construction of reinforced-concrete slopes along a strengthened embankment. Yacht clubs, beaches, and moorings were to be arranged along it. A road was to be built along the shoreline from Kanavinsky Bridge to Malinovaya Gryada. And at the top, along the brow of the slope, a boulevard was to be laid out with restaurants, nightclubs, and, of course, libraries. Residential development was to be reorganized from individual homesteads into "housing blocks spread out toward the open expanses of the far bank." Of all that was planned, what actually got built was the Molitovsky Bridge and the approach road to it from Lyadov Square.