Zvezdinka is a street in Nizhegorodsky District, running almost parallel to Gorky Street. It takes its name from the originally star-shaped ravine that once occupied the site, where the The Kovalikha River had its source.
According to another version, the name derives from the surname of the Zvezdiny noble family, to whom the land formerly belonged. The name "Zvezdinkinsky Square" is also used.
In the mid-19th century, the Zvezdinsky Pond, embankment, and dam were well known.
The ravine was filled in at the end of the 19th century.
Today the street takes the form of a boulevard running from the Nizhny Novgorod Main Post Office to Vodnik Stadium.
Zvezdinka Street was laid out as an extension of Malaya Pokrovskaya Street, connecting it along the edge of the waterlogged Kovalikha Ravine to Alekseevskaya Street, which led to the city boundary. The northern line of Zvezdinka was defined by the 1824 plan of Nizhny Novgorod and refined by the 1839 plan, but due to the difficulties of the terrain, the street was built up only in separate sections for a long time. After the Pokrovsky Pond was bisected by an earthen dam in the 1840s, two bodies of water formed. The lower pond, which discharged directly into the Kovalikha Ravine, survived until the 1870s, while the upper one (between Malaya Pokrovskaya Street Street and the New Square beyond the Ulybyshev estate) was eliminated. The Kovalikha Ravine was gradually filled in; in 1873–1874, following a design by Academician L. V. Dal, the Nizhny Novgorod Hunting Society established a shooting range there (on the site of the Vodnik Stadium), while in winter the pond regularly hosted mass public festivities and ice-skating. Around the same time, the southern side of the ravine began to be actively built up, while a considerable distance between the rows of residential buildings was maintained. Zvezdinka Street was initially referred to as "the street leading to the Kovalikha Ravine," but from the 1860s onward — possibly because of the curiously spreading deep erosion gullies, whose shape resembled a star — this part of the ravine came to be called Zvezdinka.
The street received the same name. House No. 5B on Zvezdinka is notable as the place where Alexei Maximovich Gorky lived "among common folk" in 1880–1881 and 1883–1884. House No. 10 is the main building of the estate of the merchant's widow M. I. Sizova, built to a design by architect S. A. Levkov in 1907–1909. The outbuilding of the same estate is listed as No. 10B. No other historical or architectural landmarks have survived on Zvezdinka. Only the small garden in the center of the street has remained within the same boundaries as seen in the pre-revolutionary photograph by M. P. Dmitriev.