The Assumption Old Believer Chapel is a house of worship of the Beglopopovtsy denomination in Gorodets, Nizhny Novgorod Region, founded in 1786; the stone building was erected in 1893. It is located at 12 Krasnoflotskaya Street, on the so-called Chapel Hill (Chasovennaya Gora). It was closed in 1935 and has not functioned as a religious site to this day.[1]
History
From the seventeenth century, Gorodets was one of the main centers of Old Believer life in the Volga Region. Most of the local faithful belonged to the Beglopopovtsy — a branch of Old Believers that accepted priests who had defected from the official Orthodox Church.[2] Through its representative, the peasant I. S. Osokin, the Gorodets community petitioned the government for permission to build a chapel by the cemetery, where mass prayer gatherings had long been held. Permission was granted; a wooden chapel was opened in June 1786 and soon supplemented with a bell tower above the refectory. That same year the building burned down, was laid down anew in December, and was consecrated again in March 1790.[1]
The Gorodets chapel became the center of the Beglopopovtsy movement in the region and was linked to the Rogozhskoye Cemetery in Moscow, the main all-Russian center of the priestly Old Believers (Popovtsy).[1] After the fire of 1893, the wooden building was rebuilt in stone with funds from the Nizhny Novgorod millionaire merchant Nikolay Aleksandrovich Bugrov.[2] At the same time, two almshouses were built beside the chapel with his money: a small men's almshouse for 22 residents directly adjoining the chapel and a separate women's almshouse for 100, as well as a school for 300 pupils.[2][1]
Despite being officially called a "chapel," the complex in fact functioned as an Old Believer monastery, "competing" with Gorodets's Orthodox Feodorovsky Monastery. The extensive grounds, with the almshouse, the cellarer's building, and the clergy house, were called a chapel out of necessity — because of the ban then in force on new construction and renovation of Old Believer places of worship.[1]
Fate in the Soviet Era
In 1935 the chapel was closed; its cupolas were dismantled the same year.[1] The cemetery around it was destroyed. In 1964 a section of silicate brick was added to the eastern façade of the main building of the former chapel. The stone buildings of the former Old Believer almshouse came to house School No. 5.[2]
The main building of the chapel has survived to the present day — without the domes, which were lost in 1935. In the register of monuments of urban planning and architecture of Nizhny Novgorod Region, the site is listed as the "Old Believer Chapel."[1] An installation dedicated to the chapel's lost appearance has been set up in the A. V. Vorozheykin Square in Gorodets.[1]
Sources
- sobory.ru — Gorodets, Church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos (archive)
- ruvera.ru — Gorodets — the Old Believer Capital of the Volga Region — Russian Faith (archive)