The Dormition Church was an Orthodox church that stood in the Nizhny Novgorod district of Zapochainye. The exact dates of its construction and closure are not given in the sources, but the church is mentioned in documents from the early 19th century. It is first mentioned in written sources in 1606 — in a charter of Tsar Vasily IV Shuysky, which speaks of a wooden monastery with a tented Church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos; already by 1621, according to the Sotnaya charter, the monastery had been abolished and the church became a parish church.[1] and it served as a notable landmark in the historic part of the city.

Location and urban context

The church stood in Zapochainye — a historic district of Upper Part, west of the Pochainsky ravine. The house of the famous mechanic Ivan Kulibin stood between the house of the merchant Olisov and the Dormition Church; Kulibin lived there until 1770 and again from 1801 to 1813. Uspensky Lane, known since the early 17th century, served as the passage to the Dormition Church from Ilyinskaya Street. The Dormition Church is the only surviving monument of 17th-century stone architecture with the main volume covered by a four-sided "krechataya bochka" (cross-vaulted barrel) roof — an architectural device going back to the wooden-building traditions of the Russian North.[2] The stone church was built in 1672 with funds from the Nizhny Novgorod merchant Afanasy Firsovich Olisov, who had promised to build a church on Ilyinskaya Hill before leaving for Astrakhan to manage the tsar's salt and fishing enterprises; the new church was covered with silvery aspen shingles, and gilded wrought crosses were set on its cupolas.[1]

Land holdings Strelitsa

In the early 19th century the Dormition posad church owned separate plots of land at Strelitsa — a sandy spit at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga. Neighboring owners there included the The Ascension Pechersk Monastery for Men, and the noble families of Stroganov, Shakhovskoy, Vsevolozhsky and others. It was precisely these lands that later became part of the territory allotted to the Nizhny Novgorod Fair.

Memory

The Olisov Chamber — a surviving 17th-century architectural monument in Zapochainye — stood next to the site of Kulibin's house, and the Dormition Church stood nearby as well. The Dormition Church is mentioned in encyclopedia articles as a link in the "See also" section describing the Olisov Chamber, testifying to its historical role in shaping the development of this quarter. During the Soviet period the church was closed and plundered: in 1934 the refectory and bell tower buildings were demolished, and only the foundation of the church itself survived; the first scholarly restoration took place in 1965–1967 under a project by the Nizhny Novgorod architect Svyatoslav Leonidovich Agafonov, and the church was finally restored in 2004.[2] In 1715 a major fire broke out in the church, after which it was restored over a long period; at the end of the 18th century the dilapidated barrel-vaulted roof was replaced with an eight-sloped covering, in 1834 the refectory and bell tower were rebuilt anew, and in 1852–1856 the provincial architect Afanasy Yermilovich Turmyshev erected a new bell tower in the pseudo-Byzantine style; in 1899 the altar space was significantly enlarged.[1] A Dormition Church of the same name is preserved in Bogorodsk, included in the city's list of landmarks.

Sources

  1. putidorogi-nn.ru — The Dormition Church is first mentioned in written sources in 1606 — in a charter of Tsar Vasily IV Shuysky, which speaks of a wooden monastery with a tented (archive)
  2. nn-grad.ru — The Dormition Church is the only surviving monument of 17th-century stone architecture with the main volume covered by a four-sided cross-vaulted barrel roof (archive)
Material used from articles (4)

Bogorodsk, Nizhny Novgorod Fair, Kulibin House, Olisov's Chamber