Assumption Church was an Orthodox church that existed in the Nizhny Novgorod Zapochaine district. The sources do not give exact dates of its construction and closure, but the church is mentioned in documents from the early nineteenth century. It is first mentioned in written sources in 1606, in a charter of Tsar Vasily IV Shuysky that speaks of a wooden monastery with a tent-roofed Church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God; already in 1621, according to the Sotnaya Charter, the monastery had been abolished and the church became a parish church.[1] It was a prominent landmark in the historic part of the city.

Location and Urban Context

The church stood in Zapochaine, a historic district of the upper part of Nizhny Novgorod, west of the Pochaina Ravine. The house of the famous mechanic Ivan Kulibin was located between the house of the merchant Olisov and Assumption Church; Kulibin lived here until 1770 and again from 1801 to 1813. Uspensky Lane, known since the early seventeenth century, served as the approach to Assumption Church from Ilyinskaya Street. Assumption Church is the only surviving monument of seventeenth-century stone architecture with a roof over its main volume in the form of a cross-shaped barrel vault with four faces, an architectural device that goes back to the traditions of the wooden architecture 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 forged gilded crosses were placed on its domes.[1]

Landholdings Strelitsa

In the early nineteenth century, the Assumption parish church of the posad owned separate plots of land on Strelitsa, the sandy spit at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga. Neighboring landowners there included the Pechersky Monastery, the noble families Stroganov, Shakhovskoy, Vsevolozhsky, and others. It was precisely these lands that became part of the territory later allotted for the Nizhny Novgorod Yarmarka.

Legacy

The Olisov Chambers, a surviving seventeenth-century architectural monument in Zapochaine, stood next to the site of Kulibin's house, and Assumption Church was nearby as well. Assumption Church is mentioned in encyclopedia articles as a link in the "See also" section of the description of the Olisov Chambers, which attests to its historical role in shaping the development of this quarter. In 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 remained; the first scholarly restoration took place in 1965–1967 under a design 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 eighteenth century the dilapidated barrel roof was replaced with an eight-pitched covering, in 1834 the refectory and bell tower were rebuilt, and in 1852–1856 the Provincial Architect Afanasy Ermilovich Turmyshev erected a new bell tower in the pseudo-Byzantine style; in 1899 the altar area was significantly enlarged.[1] In Bogorodsk there survives a church of the same name, Assumption Church, which is on the list of the town's landmarks.

On August 30, 2023, the Great Consecration of the Dormition Church in Bogorodsk took place: the rite was performed by Archbishop George of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas.[3] The interior decoration of the Bogorodsk Dormition Church was completely lost during the Soviet period; the church was repainted by specialists of the "Kovcheg" icon-painting workshop under the direction of Alexey Antsiferov in the style of Old Russian canonical painting, taking as a model the works of the late 15th to early 16th century Moscow icon painter Dionisius.[3] During the years of Soviet persecution of the Church, the Dormition Church in Bogorodsk remained the only undestroyed church in the town, but in 1938 it was closed and converted into a bakery; the revival of the shrine began in 2014, and from 2017 restoration work was carried out in the ruined building.[3] The Dormition Church in Bogorodsk was built in 1816 with funds from Vasily Sheremetev, the owner of the village of Bogorodskoye, and constructed in the Neo-Gothic style with elements of the Moorish style: the pointed shape of the windows indicates the architect's orientation toward models of Eastern architecture.[3]

Sources

  1. putidorogi-nn.ru — The Dormition Church is first mentioned in written sources in 1606, in a charter of Tsar Vasily IV Shuisky, 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 cross-shaped barrel vault with four faces (archive)
  3. nne.ru — The Dormition Church in Bogorodsk was built in 1816 with funds from Vasily Sheremetev, the owner of the village of Bogorodskoye, and constructed in the Neo-Gothic style with elements of the Mauritanian (archive)
Materials from the following articles (4) were used

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