Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment is a street and a roadway with wharves along the bank of the Volga. It runs around the Upper Part of Nizhny Novgorod, roughly in the area of its Historic Center.
Location
The pedestrian section of the embankment begins at the Kanavinsky Bridge and continues to the Rowing Channel. Further on it turns into the road known as "Naberezhnaya of the Rowing Canal" street, and under that name it runs to the A village within the Nizhny Novgorod region of Kuzminki in Kstovo District. At the end of the street is the aeration station and the snow-melting site of the Nizhegorodsky District.
The most popular, walking section of Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment lies at the foot of the hill on which the The Kremlin stands.
The essence of the phenomenon
Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment was built a century and a half ago merely as a continuation of the Nizhne-Okskaya Embankment, but over the years it inherited from it the status of "the main Nizhny Novgorod wharf," which it has kept to this day.
History of the matter
The territory of Nizhny Novgorod adjoining the right bank of the Volga near the Strelka, was long known as the Nizhny Posad (Lower Settlement), as opposed to the Upper one, which spread from Blagoveshchenskaya Square (now Minin Square) to the edges of the city.
Here, since time immemorial, brisk trade had gone on all year round, and during the navigation season the life of the river folk was in full swing. Bound up with large-scale trade and the Volga, the building-up of Nizhny Posad had from ancient times been dense and chaotic.
Each owner put up residential, warehouse, or trade buildings here to suit his own taste and financial means, but always behind high fences. Groups of buildings were separated by winding lanes ending in dead ends.
Only the shallows along the shore remained open, and even those were taken up in summer by wharves, temporary trading spots, and woodpiles. Running parallel to the embankment, all the way through Nizhny Posad from the Ivanovskiye Gates of the Kremlin to the Annunciation Monastery, lay Rozhdestvenskaya (formerly Kozmodemyanskaya) Street, crossed by the ravines of streams and brooks running down from the Dyatlovy Hills.
On September 9, 1778, Nizhny Posad burned down — not for the first time. So the trading rows were ordered rebuilt "according to plan and in the best and most durable order," and the Gostiny Dvor (merchant arcade) was to be built of stone. Its design was drawn up by the architect Ya. A. Ananyin, who in 1780-1784 built three blocks: two with upper colonnaded galleries in line with the building of the Salt Office (architect V. V. Isakov, 1750-1755), and closer to the shore, the Flour block (this block has survived). They determined not only the dimensions of the main trading square but also the building lines of Rozhdestvenskaya.
The fire of May 29, 1782, near the Stroganov estate, forced the buildings into "regularity." After it, on the site of 24 households, 32 shops, 60 storehouses, 8 grain stores, and 2 plants destroyed by the blaze, new buildings went up, this time to an approved plan. Although Rozhdestvenskaya Street was straightened in the 18th century as far as this was possible, its buildings remained of varying scale, interrupted by ravines and vacant lots. The shore itself was divided by fences running down into the water into privately owned lots (with wharves, warehouses, and trading complexes). There was no common walkway along the river. Only a bargemen's path — the "bechyova" (towpath) — ran along the shallows. Bringing the buildings of Nizhny Posad into "general order" became the task of the 19th century.
Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment was designed as part of the general system of urban-planning reforms of the city in the 1830s by the architects Ivan Yefimovich Yefimov and Pyotr Danilovich Gotman. In 1836, work on its construction began, employing up to 2,850 people and 750 carts each year. Supervision of the project was carried out by engineer-captain Dmitriev. Earth for filling the bank was delivered from the digging of the Zelensky Congress and The Pokhvalinsky Congress descents. So that the fill would not be washed away by floods, the bank was to be faced with cobblestone, brought to Nizhny from the Yaroslavl and Kostroma provinces. In spring, a barge was loaded with 8-10 cubic sazhens of stone; in summer, 4-6. Rafting and unloading a barge cost on average 420 rubles (60 rubles per cubic sazhen). On April 6, 1836, the peasant D. Klimov took on the contract to perform the stone facing of the embankment.
In 1838, Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment was finished under the direction of engineer N. I. Lik, after which, for the first time in the history of Nizhny Novgorod, vehicle traffic along the city bank became possible. The look of Nizhny Bazaar began to change fundamentally as well. Along the building line of the embankment, only stone houses were henceforth permitted. The first stone estate in this district was built by the princes Golitsyn (1837-1839, now Rozhdestvenskaya, 47). In the center of Nizhny Bazaar — between Rozhdestvenskaya Street and Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment — Sofronovskaya Square was laid out.
In 1841, a flood damaged 111 sazhens of the embankment. Repairs costing 3,000 rubles were again carried out by the peasant Klimov. Afterward, no such significant damage to the embankment was ever seen again. In 1909-1911, in the area of the Stroganov and Golitsyn estates, the shore was built up and additionally faced with cobblestone.
For more than a century and a half, red-brick barracks buildings have stood on the bank of the Volga below the The Kremlin. Until the late 17th century, the streltsy of the Nizhny Novgorod garrison lived in the city in their own households, in special streltsy quarters; from Peter the Great's time they were billeted with the townspeople, which gave rise to numerous conflicts. At the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, local nobles, at their own expense, built two stone barracks blocks for the garrison on the grounds of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, but most officers and soldiers still lived billeted with residents.
When plans for a fundamental urban-planning overhaul of Nizhny Novgorod were being drawn up in 1834, the city community petitioned the Ministry of Internal Affairs for permission to erect stone military barracks at its own expense. Permission was granted in December of that year, and the design and supervision of the works were entrusted to the Nizhny Novgorod Construction Commission. In 1835, architect I. Ye. Yefimov designed a complex of four buildings below the Kremlin: two three-story residential buildings on basements for 2,600 people (60 by 10 sazhens) and the corresponding outbuildings (stables, kitchens, storerooms). The architect received a fee of 500 rubles for the design.
Architect P. D. Gotman drew up the estimate, totaling 1,149,096 rubles. On September 30, 1836, Yefimov and Gotman took on overall control of the construction, and requested two assistants and two foremen be appointed for day-to-day supervision. On February 13, 1837, the project was highly confirmed, and on May 3, 1838, a new estimate followed. At the same time, in Moscow, Yefimov concluded a construction contract with the Tver coachman Ivan Timofeyevich Dubitsky. However, building the barracks turned out to be no quick matter. In 1838, the foundations were laid on piles, but only by 1844 were the walls of the blocks raised to their rough form. For the drawn-out construction, many of Nizhny Novgorod's senior officials, including the military governor, ended up on trial. Finishing work on the barracks continued for almost another decade, and only in 1853 did soldiers of the garrison and gendarme companies move into the blocks.
The present-day house No. 1 on Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment belonged to the first-guild merchant Vasily Klimentyevich Michurin. During the replanning of Nizhny Novgorod in the 1830s, he acquired a plot on the building line of the still-forming Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment, right next to the foundations of the Red Barracks (Nizhny Novgorod). On October 24, 1846, after a fire, V. K. Michurin turned to the city architect Lev Vasilyevich Fostikov with a request to design the rebuilding of his stone two-story house with basements, with 15 windows, on Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment. On May 26, 1848, the design was approved, and construction began that same year.
In 1857, for building a church at his own expense at the prison, Vasily Michurin received the Order of St. Anne, 3rd class, and for the finishing of the Zhivonosnovskaya Church (below the Kremlin in Nizhny Posad) — a gold medal on the Stanislaus ribbon. Later he was awarded the title of honorary hereditary citizen of Nizhny Novgorod, and under these circumstances decided to rebuild the house. In 1864, he commissioned architect Ivan Kuzmich Kostryukov to design an already three-story house with a more imposing facade, which has survived to this day. House No. 3 was formerly owned by the titular councillor's wife Avdotya Andreyeva.
Since Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment was required to be built up exclusively with stone houses, their construction proceeded gradually, as brick, white stone, and iron were procured. In 1843, in the second block from the Red Barracks, a significant plot of land was acquired by the titular councillor's wife Avdotya Andreyeva, who commissioned a two-story house design from Pavel Semyonovich Gess, a graduate of the Academy of Arts. On August 12, 1843, the plans and facades were approved in Moscow, and construction began immediately. The decorative treatment of the facades was based on the rhythm of the arched round windows of the second floor, reinforced above by a relief border of brickwork. The ground floor was intended for shops. Over time their windows were widened, which distorted the building's original architecture. In 1850, to a design by architect L. V. Fostikov, two two-story service blocks with a shared canopy between them were added to the house facing Rybny Lane.
House No. 49 on Rozhdestvenskaya Street belonged to the merchant brothers Ivan and Alexei Vyalov. In February 1829, the Vyalovs bought a "vacant plot" near the Oka pontoon bridge from D. Burmistrov, and in 1840 also the adjacent plot of land. They commissioned the design of their income house from architect Anton Lavrentyevich Leer. On May 24, 1841, the Nizhny Novgorod Construction Commission reviewed the plans and facades of the house, but they were criticized by the seasoned architect G. I. Kizewetter, who thereby backed military governor M. P. Buturlin in his conflict with Leer. But architects P. D. Gotman and V. P. Stremoukhov spoke in Leer's defense and insisted the project be sent for supreme review to St. Petersburg, where it was finally approved on October 27, 1841. Construction of the house began in spring 1842 under the supervision of the project's author, and two years later it was fully finished. The ground floor and corner sections received rusticated quoin-work, the center of the facade has eight pilasters spanning the second and third floors, and the frieze below the cornice is a molded ornamental band. The house not only fixed the building line of Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment but, in the opinion of many 19th-century Residents of Nizhny Novgorod, became "a true adornment of this part of the city."
The present-day house No. 16 on Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment housed the Nizhny Novgorod Stock Exchange a little more than a century ago. The idea of building a special exchange building in Nizhny Novgorod had already been discussed in the first years after the all-Russian fair was moved here. In 1828, architect I. Matveyev created a design for a stately single-domed building with columned porticoes, but for various reasons it was never built. By the late 19th century, when Nizhny Novgorod had established itself as a leading center for wholesale deal-making, the need for an exchange building became obvious. On September 12, 1880, the government approved the charter of the Nizhny Novgorod Exchange. In 1889-1890, contracts for the supply of 68,456,339 poods of goods were officially concluded there, and in 1890-1891 — for 74,457,584 poods.
At first, the site for the exchange was set opposite the pontoon bridge across the Oka. However, on December 7, 1891, the exchange committee asked to erect the building instead in the center of Sofronovskaya Square. Since this could harm a public recreation area, the city duma refused the committee's request. Only in February 1895, ahead of the opening of the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod, did the Blinov family brothers allot part of their land at the corner of the square and the embankment for building the exchange. The design was commissioned from the capital's architect Karl Vasilyevich Treiman. By spring 1896, the exchange building had been not only erected but also finished (an enviable pace of work!). On the facade facing the Volga, the years of construction — 1895 and 1896 — are laid out in brick. The building has largely retained its original architecture. Only a small turret with a flagstaff over the main entrance has been lost.
One of the notable "moneyed" spots on Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment was also the bank of the Rukavishnikovs. It had two blocks, which are now listed under two addresses: Rozhdestvenskaya, house No. 23, and Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment, house No. 11. In 1899, after a fire in his own two-story stone house with two industrial blocks in the lower part of the city, the heirs of the wealthy Nizhny Novgorod merchant Mikhail Grigoryevich Rukavishnikov applied to the Construction Department of the City Council with a request to repair it. However, the restored old buildings looked unsightly, and one of the heirs, namely Sergei Mikhailovich Rukavishnikov, in 1908 turned to the Moscow architect F. O. Schechtel with a request to design plans and facades for building two new structures in place of the old two, with their main facades facing Rozhdestvenskaya Street and Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment.
The facades of the house on the embankment were designed in "neo-Gothic" forms: with powerful framing buttresses topped with "pinnacles," glazed surfaces, and walls faced with polychrome ceramic tile. Colored Ceramics were also used in the facing of the block facing Rozhdestvenskaya Street, whose decoration widely used cast-iron artistic work, including round figures of a worker and a peasant woman, made from sketches by the young sculptor S. T. Konenkov. After construction was finished, the blocks began "pressing" on the neighboring Merchants' Bank (Rozhdestvenskaya St., 21) and the Kudryashov-Chesnokov income house (Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment, 9), whose walls developed cracks. A special commission headed by architect Alexei Nikolayevich Poltanov was sent to the site. Measures taken promptly helped correct the situation.
Two small original houses, built in a pseudo-Gothic style, have survived to this day on Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment. They now house the restaurant "Plakuchaya Iva" (Weeping Willow) and the bar "Bizon" (Bison), and once these houses belonged to the Volga river-navigation district office. On July 19, 1911, the head of the Kazan district of communication routes applied to the City Council requesting a site on Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment for building an office of the river-navigation district and a clinic for dock workers.
The thousands-strong crews of dockworkers who arrived here each summer often caused mass epidemics, so the proposal was received by the Nizhny Novgorod authorities with understanding and interest.
The site for building the houses was set opposite the Golitsyn Estate, on the embankment, which had been widened after land filling in 1908-1909 under the direction of engineer B. N. Alekseyev. The building designs were drawn up in 1912 by architect Nikolai Mikhailovich Veshnyakov, styling them after the Gothic revival then in fashion: with steep-pitched roofs, romantic little towers, and small-paned "chamber" glazing. In 1913, a year after the design was completed, the buildings of the river-navigation district office were built and handed over to the client.
The modern Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment has partly preserved the look it took on by the early 20th century and, as one of the city's calling cards, still greets guests arriving by way of the Volga just as it did before.