This was where the main Historic Buildings of Nizhny Novgorod came to an end.
Nature of the Place
The pre-revolutionary counterpart of the construction site — the future center of Soviet District of The City of Gorky and its Soviet Square.
History of the Square
Before the tall building of the Main Post Office was erected, the intersection of Pokrovka with Malaya Pokrovskaya Street offered a panoramic view of the vast Novaya Square.
Large-scale earthworks were carried out here under the supervision of engineer P. Gotman, and in 1842 architect G. Kizevetter drew up the outlines of the square for future development. Gradually all the ravines were filled in, the marshes drained, and a new square appeared in the city — long known simply as Novaya (New).
The first structures built on it were a prison ostrog with a convict school and a boys' orphanage opened by Countess O. Kutasova. In the early 20th century, a graceful and beautiful Church of John the Theologian was built on the grounds of the Kutasov orphanage to a design by architect D. Verner; it has not survived to the present day. Novaya Square was also known as Arestantskaya (Convict Square) on account of the convict school located there, on the site of whose buildings the Vysshaya Shkola of the Ministry of Internal Affairs now stands.
The history of Novaya Square also had its dark periods, when the city's sewage was discharged onto its territory. According to local historian Mila Smirnova, the former beer warehouses (now a state garage at 30 Novaya Street) until recently still had sewage manholes — no longer in use — whose pipes, it is said, ran in the direction of the square. Incidentally, about thirty years ago, workers repairing the warehouse walls discovered crates of pre-revolutionary beer. Word has it that it had not spoiled and tasted quite good.
The outline of Gorky Square has remained virtually unchanged over the past 150 years. It was, however, renamed several times: it has borne the names Novaya, Arestantskaya, Novobazarnaya, First of May, and Gorky.
The square became Novobazarnaya (New Market Square) when, in the late 19th century, the busiest and most commercially significant market in the Upper Town of Nizhny Novgorod began to be held on its grounds. It took place on Wednesdays, utterly transforming a square that was completely deserted on all other days of the week. The entire market area was packed with peasant carts loaded with produce, and many traders arrived the evening before, spending the night in the open air. An echo of this once-thriving trade survived into the Soviet era in the form of Srednoy Market, which sprang up nearby. As for the revolutionary years, according to the same Mila Smirnova, an entirely new kind of vendor replaced the old traders: "These were formerly wealthy people who, hoping to feed themselves somehow, were selling off whatever the new authorities had not yet taken from them."
Over a century and a half, the layout of the streets connected to Novaya Square has remained entirely unchanged: these are Kostina Street (formerly Gotmanovskaya) and Maslyakova Street (formerly Pryadilnaya). The square still divides Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, Novaya, and Gorky (formerly Polevaya) streets into two sections each, so that residents and visitors alike are left with the impression of six entirely separate streets.
On February 19, 1901, the City Duma of Nizhny Novgorod resolved to commemorate in the city the greatest event in Russia's history — the abolition of serfdom — by building "at municipal expense a primary school to be named the School of Emperor Alexander II." In 1903, a three-story school building with a Chapel of Alexander Nevsky was erected on the corner of Novaya Square and Pryadilnaya Street.