Nizhne-Okskaya Embankment - now Chernigovskaya Street.
Most Nizhny Novgorod residents would hardly know where the Nizhne-Okskaya Embankment was located.
And upon finding out, they would not believe that it was once the starting point for the development of embankments along the right banks of the Oka and the Volga River — so completely has this place lost its status and appeal over recent decades, reduced to an unkempt urban backwater.
There was a time when life bustled here, on the bank of the Oka below the Blagoveschensky Monastery: near the Oka bridge stood one of the largest cab-driver stands in the city, the riverbank was crowded with numerous vessels large and small — their numbers multiplying several times over during the all-Russian Yarmarka — and close by was the only Romodanovskiy Railway Station in Nizhny Novgorod, from which trains departed for Moscow.
In the Soviet years, the Nizhne-Okskaya Embankment was renamed Chernigovskaya Street, effectively forgotten by the city authorities and its residents, and only the remnants of the former grandeur of its solid stone buildings can make one believe that the Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment was once laid out as its continuation.
History
The Nizhne-Okskaya Embankment began to take shape as part of the broader urban-development transformation of Nizhny Novgorod, designed by architects I. Ye. Yefimov and P. D. Gotman, somewhat earlier than the construction of the Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment. The city authorities allocated 176,824 rubles for the project. Construction was carried out by direct labor under the supervision of engineer Dmitriev. The earth used to build up the riverbank was taken from the excavation of Pokhvalinskiy Descent.
In the spring of 1836, piles for bank reinforcement and white stone for the apron near the pontoon bridge across the Oka were delivered to the site. The work of facing the bank slopes with cobblestones — following the construction of a roadway along the river in 1838 — was taken on by merchant-contractor D. Klimov under the supervision of engineer N. I. Lik. By 21 October of that year, 800 square sazhens had been paved; by the end of 1839, approximately 2,000. Despite the bank being reinforced with piles, part of its cobblestone facing was destroyed by floodwaters every year. In 1854–1856, the reinforcement of the bank slopes of the Nizhne-Okskaya Embankment was carried out by architect L. V. Fostikov, and in the early twentieth century by engineer K. G. Ivanov.
The construction of the embankment coincided with the great fire of 1836, in which all the old, predominantly wooden buildings of the ancient Blagoveshchenskaya Sloboda burned to the ground. After that, only stone houses were to be built along the Oka, and only "to the best façades" — above all those of the eminent architect Kizevetter — though the piecemeal development of this part of the city together with Blagoveshchenskaya Sloboda with profitable stone tenement buildings had begun immediately after the transfer of the Makaryev Fair to Nizhny Novgorod.