Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street is one of the oldest streets in Nizhny Novgorod: it runs through the upper part of the city from Piskunova Street east to Sennaya Square and is named after the Voznesenskiy Pecherskiy Monastery, to which it led. The street is already described as existing in the cadastral book of 1621–1622, and it probably originated as part of an ancient road to the Ponizovye (the lower Volga lands), running from the kremlin toward Kazan [3]. Two centuries ago Bolshaya Pecherskaya was the main, central street of the city, populated by nobles and wealthy merchants, and only over time did it cede first place to Bolshaya Pokrovskaya [13].
After the Revolution the street changed names several times, and from 1944 until the 1990s it bore the name of the revolutionary Martyn Lyadov [3]. Today nearly fifty buildings on it have the status of cultural heritage sites of federal and regional significance [3], and the street itself, together with the adjoining blocks, is described as a place of interest called "Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street" [1]. All of it lies in the Nizhegorodsky District, in the Historic Center of the city [1].
The monastery that gave the name
The street took its name from a monastery on the bank of the Volga below the city. At the turn of the 1320s–1330s, Dionysius, a monk of the Kiev Caves Monastery, came here: in the limestone slope he dug himself a cave, and when brethren began to gather around him, a wooden Church of the Ascension of the Lord was built higher up the slope, which gave the monastery its main name. The monastery received the epithet "Pechersky" in memory of the first caves — "pechery"; the generally accepted dates of its founding are 1328 or 1330 [5].
The street led to the monastery and its settlements and served as the road to the "Ponizovye" — the future Kazan Highway; it received its name from the monastery [1]. Descents ran down to the monastery from the upper part of the city, one of which is the present-day Pechersky Descent [4].
There were two Pecherskaya streets in the city. Parallel to Bolshaya, closer to the escarpment, ran Malaya Pecherskaya: its place was taken by the present-day Piskunova and Ulyanova streets [10][11]. Malaya Pecherskaya on its left side, from the district school building to Zhukovskaya Street, was occupied by the garden of the bishop's house [4].
The beginning of the street also remembers medieval fortifications: in the Middle Ages the Pechyory fortress gates of the timber-built Small Ostrog stood on the site of building No. 1 [3], and the boundary of the sixteenth-century Large Ostrog ran roughly along the line of Semashko Street [1].
The Regular Plan and the Red Lines
The regular layout of the northeastern part of the city was set by the first regular plan of Nizhny Novgorod, dating from 1770: the territory between the brow of the Otkos and the Kovalikha Ravine was divided into blocks of geometrically regular shape. Two more long streets were planned parallel to Bolshaya Pecherskaya, and five cross streets perpendicular to them, while roughly in the middle of the new blocks a rhombus-shaped square was to be laid out, whose "placement" was later changed more than once [1].
Most of this territory lay in the "okolograd'ye" (the zone outside the city proper), beyond the line of the former fortifications of the Small Ostrog, and only wooden buildings were permitted to be built on it. On the fixation plans of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, behind the surviving earthen rampart one can see sparse residential buildings interspersed with "kitchen-garden plots" and wasteland, while the inhabited territory was closed off by a small sloboda (suburban settlement) on the site of present-day Semashko Street [1].
From the 1810s part of the rampart was demolished, development became more regular and spread eastward; Bolshaya Pecherskaya was built up most actively of all, as reflected in the topographical description of the city of 1830 [1].
The design plan of 1824 and the general plan of 1839 pushed development further east, to the line of present-day Frunze Street. The plan of 1839 envisioned the square between the Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment and Zhukovskaya Street, but the site was chosen for the building of the Mariinsky Institute for Noble Girls, and the square "shifted" to the south [1].
By the early 1850s, Bolshaya Pecherskaya had extended to the Kazan Gate (zastava) — later Sennaya Square — and continued on into the Soldatskaya Sloboda (Soldiers' Settlement), becoming one of the longest streets in the city [1]. This is how it was described by the local historian Nikolay Khramtsovsky [4].
| Former name | Current name |
|---|---|
| Zhukovskaya | Minin Street [1] |
| Tikhonovskaya | Ulyanova Street [1] |
| Osypnaya, Malaya Pecherskaya | Piskunova Street [1][11] |
| Bolnichnaya | Nesterov Street [1] |
| Martynovskaya | Semashko Street [1] |
| Proviantskaya | Proviantskaya Street [1] |
| Spasskaya | Trudovaya Street [1] |
| Kizevetterovskaya | Frunze Street [1] |
From the gates of the bishop's residence, or Theatre Square, heading east, begins Bolshaya Pecherskaya; it runs between Tikhonovskaya and Zhukovskaya and, crossing Sennaya Square, ends at the Kazan Gate. The buildings along it are neat but almost all wooden: there are fewer than ten stone houses, of which the most notable is that of the Appanage Office
The garden that kept the street from reaching the Kremlin
The street could have been noticeably longer and could have reached Blagoveschenskaya Square: under the 1784–1787 plan of Nizhny Novgorod, a through street was projected across the bishop's garden, as a continuation of Bolshaya Pecherskaya to the Kremlin. One of Nizhny Novgorod's bishops objected to the street passing through his garden, and the project was never carried out — but as a result a green tract survived in the center of the city [11].
The Bishop's Garden is the oldest in Nizhny Novgorod: it was laid out in 1706 by Nizhny Novgorod Metropolitan Isaiah when he founded his own house monastery, the Ioannovsky Monastery, and after the monastery was removed from the clerical rolls in 1764 it became the bishop's garden. At the spot where the tram turns from Bolshaya Pecherskaya onto Piskunova Street, the bishop's gates stood until the early 1960s; people tried to take them down with crowbars and sledgehammers, then used explosives — the gates split into three pieces, and the remnants survive to this day [11].
The city's first theatre
At the beginning of Bolshaya Pecherskaya, in front of the Bishop's Garden, a small square was laid out at the end of the 18th century, and on it was built a complex of wooden buildings housing Prince N. G. Shakhovskoy's public theatre [1].
The theatre opened in the fall of 1798, when Shakhovskoy brought to Nizhny Novgorod a troupe of serf actors from his family estate in Yusupovo; one of the prince's town houses, at the corner of Bolshaya and Malaya Pecherskaya streets, was remodeled into a theatre. The first public performance was D. I. Fonvizin's comedy "The Choice of a Tutor": according to the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Scientific Library, the performance took place on February 7, 1799, whereas city publications date the theatre's birth to 1798 [6][10]. For more than twenty-five years, the same operas and ballets were staged here as in Moscow and St. Petersburg [6].
After the prince's death, his heirs sold the theatre together with all the actors to two theatre lovers — an official named Rasputin and a merchant named Klimov; ten years later the owners changed again, and in 1853 the building burned down [6]. Around the same time, the small square at the start of the street was eliminated [1].
Now on this site stands the river school [10]. Historians list the Kulibin craft school among the public buildings erected on Bolshaya Pecherskaya and Zhukovskaya streets, alongside the office of the Appanage District and the building of the Nizhny Novgorod District Zemstvo [1].
The Nobles' Nest and the Merchant Estates
By the middle of the 19th century, Bolshaya Pecherskaya had become a residential area for the Nizhny Novgorod nobility: families of the district's service aristocracy settled here — the Shakhovskys, Trubetskoys, Delvigs, Averkievs, Bologovskys, Bestuzhev-Ryumins, and Annenkovs. Some twenty years later, members of the merchant estate began to settle the street in large numbers, and the entire northeastern part of the city took on a distinctly noble character — unlike the southwestern part, where merchants and townspeople (meshchane) predominated [11].
Later, the holdings of the largest merchant dynasties — the The Bashkirovs and the Rukavishnikovs — were added to the noble estates [3]. Buildings No. 11, 11a, and 13 were part of the Bashkirov city estate, buildings No. 17 and 18 belonged to the Rukavishnikov estate complex, and building No. 35 was the main house of the estate of one of the major building contractors of the second half of the 19th century, the merchant P. D. Klimov [1]. At the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, from 1896 to 1916, the Bashkirov estate stood at the intersection of Bolshaya Pecherskaya and Semashko Street [19].
The development had the character of an estate district, much of which has survived to this day: the main houses stood along the red lines (the building lines fronting the street), and behind them lay extensive gardens and vegetable plots. Bolshaya Pecherskaya was more impressive than the neighboring streets because it served as one of the main entrances to the city from the direction of Kazan and lay next to the Upper Volga Embankment, which was becoming the city's "grand façade" [1].
The most common type of main estate house was a small one-story building, often with a mezzanine, with three windows on the main façade and a porch at the side. Such houses were designed by local architects on the basis of "model" designs approved at the "highest" level, which gave ordinary development a solid architectural standard [1].
Houses Worth a Closer Look
The Veselovsky House at the intersection of Malaya and Bolshaya Pecherskaya Streets was built in 1839 to a design by the city's first municipal architect, Georg Kizevetter. As designed, the two-story stone building had vaulted cellars; the side windows of the second floor received casings with small triangular pediments, and the first floor received rusticated pilasters. In 1902 the house was thoroughly renovated: the entrances from both streets were given two-column porticoes and the pattern of the window casings was altered, and in the Soviet period the building was raised by additional floors [1].
The land on which the house stands is also of interest. The owners' son, Mikhail Pavlovich Veselovsky, left memoirs about the start of construction [3].
In 1901 the house was bought by the Ministry of Finance to house the Nizhny Novgorod Treasury Chamber. In the Soviet years one of its rooms was home to the wife of Yakov Sverdlov, and in the 1930s the mansion was raised by two more floors; of the entire estate, only the main house and the outbuilding have survived to the present day [3].
The building of the Appanage Office (house No. 25) was one of the largest buildings in Nizhny Novgorod in the mid-19th century: a three-story brick structure — raised by two more floors in the Soviet period — nine windows wide along Bolshaya Pecherskaya and eleven along Semashko Street. The long facades are divided by rusticated pilasters into bays of three windows each; beneath the second-floor windows are paneled recesses with rows of turned balusters, and a band of Greek meander runs along the facade [1].
From 1849 to 1859 the head of the Appanage Office, Vladimir Ivanovich Dal, lived and worked in this house — it was in this period that he began his systematic work on the "Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language." In 1990 a memorial plaque with a bas-relief of the writer, the work of A. Rukavishnikov, was installed on the building. For a time his son, the architect and restorer Lev Dal, and the poet and translator M. I. Mikhailov also lived here [1]. Later the house held a Suvorov military school, and it is now the main academic building of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Higher School of Economics [13].
The house of the merchant M. A. Zaitsev (1904–1907) on the corner with Semashko Street is one of the most expressive and beautiful on the street, a magnificent example of architectural eclecticism. The main facade is marked by a flat three-axis projecting bay and is crowned by a mezzanine; its grandeur is emphasized by the tall triple window of the second floor, the powerful segmental arch on caryatids at the top of the mezzanine, and numerous stucco decorations. The facade facing Semashko Street looks more modest [1].
The city estate of A. Ya. Bashkirov (house No. 20) joins two eras. The original Classicist composition of the street facade has survived from the early 19th century, while in the second half of the century the elements of Classicist decor were replaced with smaller, more fragmented eclectic forms — pediments above the windows and a row of blind arches under the cornice. In the courtyard stands a brick stuccoed stable building, cruciform in plan and covered with semicylindrical vaults; its unusual entrance portal, clearly visible from the street, is a striking example of early "decorative" Art Nouveau [1].
The income house of the estate of Anna Ignatyevna Bashkirova (No. 11) was built by the architect Feldt in the summer of 1882 — a one-story wooden building on a stone foundation. In 1894 Bashkirova decided to renovate the facade in time for the opening of the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition, and the design was commissioned from the engineer Lemke. After the revolution the estate was expropriated: first it housed the mounted police, then residential quarters; the original facade has survived to the present day almost intact, which cannot be said of the interior spaces [3].
House No. 14 arose on the site of the wooden house of Titular Counselor Bogdanov: in the 1860s a stone mansion belonging to Collegiate Secretary Rudinsky and his wife appeared, and the estate reached its heyday in the early 20th century under a new owner — the merchant, timber industrialist, and patron of the arts Alexander Prokopyevich Sergeyev. The estate was considerably expanded and richly decorated with stucco ornament in the spirit of eclecticism, with touches of Baroque and Classicism [3]. A weather vane bearing the owner's initials "A. S." survives on the roof, and the courtyard holds stables and a carriage house [11]. In 1918 the mansion was expropriated; for a time it housed the Lyadov Party Club, and then the house became residential — which it remains today [3].
The house of P. D. Klimov (1870) was built by the Governorate architect Robert Kilevein; it is the only house on the street included in the federal register, listed by Decree of the President of Russia No. 176 of February 20, 1995, under the name "Residential House (wooden), 1870" [7][2].
The house of the guild craftsman P. F. Lyapunov (1882, No. 19) is a characteristic example of a late-19th-century urban residential building in the "brick style": the flanks of the main facade are marked by pilaster strips, and the central axis is accented by a gable. It was first a residence, then an ambulance station, and today it houses offices [17].
The complex of buildings of the Nizhny Novgorod Uyezd Zemstvo Board (No. 28) took shape in the late 1850s and early 20th century, based on designs by N. I. Uzhumedsky-Gritsevich [2]. Deep in the courtyard, clearly visible from the street, stands a red-brick arrest house of the late 19th century, built in the eclectic style: before the Revolution, people detained for minor offenses — vagrancy, petty hooliganism, nonpayment of a fine — were brought here [10][11].
Alongside the old buildings stand later echoes of them. The residential building with offices at 37 Bolshaya Pecherskaya (1998, architect E. Karmazina) was built from an unrealized design by the first city architect, and the mansion of the merchant's wife Bashkirova at 5 Bolshaya Pecherskaya was recreated in 1999–2000 by the architect I. Goltsev: a multilayered, stepped composition arose between the surviving gates of the mansion with an old linden tree and a multistory building of the 1970s [1].
For a long time they could not dig down to the bedrock: they kept pulling out loose earth full of human bones. In olden times there must have been a moat here, filled with corpses after some battle
Troitskaya Square, the church, and the fire watchtower
To replace the square that had been eliminated at the start of the street, a new one was laid out not far from the city limits of the time — between Zhukovskaya and Bolshaya Pecherskaya streets. In 1856–1867 a stone church, the Troitskaya Verkhneposadskaya Church, was raised at its center, and the square took the name Troitskaya from it; later a tall bell tower was added to the church, and the whole complex became the architectural landmark of the surrounding streets [1].
On the east side of the square, in 1858, the complex of the Second Kremlin Police and Fire Station was built — a so-called "sezzhy dom" (police-and-fire station house) following a standard design developed back in 1836 by Georg Kizevetter. The center of the composition was a two-story stone building topped by a wooden fire watchtower [1]; it survives at the address 34a Bolshaya Pecherskaya [2].
Both landmarks are gone. In 1927, during a major renovation of the fire station's main building, the tall wooden watchtower was dismantled. Later the Troitskaya Church was demolished, and a standard school building was put up in its place — now one of the buildings of the Linguistics University — while Troitskaya Square itself ceased to exist, turning into a courtyard area [1].
The memory of the church is preserved by building No. 34 — the 1840s house of the clergy of the Troitskaya (Verkhneposadskaya) Church [2]; the priest of the Troitskaya Church lived in it [11].
Who Lived Here
Within the historic buildings of the street, a number of structures remain that are tied to the lives of people whose names became known far beyond the city, and several houses bear memorial plaques [1].
In building No. 16, from 1861 to 1870, after his return from exile, lived the Decembrist Ivan Annenkov with his wife, born Pauline Gueble; from 1861 he was the marshal of the Nizhny Novgorod nobility [10]. The couple served as the prototypes for the main characters of Alexandre Dumas's novel "The Fencing Master," and in 1994 a memorial plaque by O. Lisenkov, A. Korzhov, and A. Kessel was installed on the house [1].
In the 1930s, House No. 14 was the home of Rostislav Yevgenyevich Alekseev, the future creator of hydrofoil vessels and ekranoplans [3]. He later lived at House No. 45a on Ulyanov Street, in the same blocks where the writer and ethnographer P. I. Melnikov (Andrey Pechersky) was born and raised [1].
In the summer of 1894, Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) spent three days at House No. 47; at that time he spoke before Nizhny Novgorod activists at House No. 57 on Bolshaya Soldatskaya Street, now Volodarsky Street [12].
| House | Who and when | Why it is remembered |
|---|---|---|
| No. 14 | Rostislav Alekseev, 1930s [3] | creator of Russian hydrofoil ships and ekranoplans [3] |
| No. 16 | Decembrist I. A. Annenkov with his wife P. E. Annenkova (Pauline Geuble), 1861–1870 [1] | the prototypes of the heroes of Dumas's novel "The Fencing Master"; memorial plaque from 1994 [1] |
| No. 16b | Secondary School No. 4 [1] | associated with the name of Hero of the Soviet Union B. V. Panin; a memorial plaque on the facade [1] |
| No. 25 | V. I. Dal, 1849–1859 [1] | where he began work on the "Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language"; plaque with a bas-relief, 1990 [1] |
| No. 31 | poet and translator L. G. Grave, second half of the 19th century [1] | his poetic mastery was highly praised by A. M. Gorky and V. G. Korolenko [1] |
| No. 33 | composer Sergey Lyapunov [13] | grew up in this house [13] |
| No. 47 | Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin), summer of 1894 [12] | spent three days in the house during a visit to Nizhny Novgorod [12] |
| River School | Hero of the Soviet Union N. A. Vilkov [1] | studied at the I. P. Kulibin Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky) River School; a memorial plaque on the facade [1] |
Lyadov Street
After the Revolution the street's name changed several times: first it bore the name of Trotsky, then Karl Liebknecht, and since 1944 it has been named for Lyadov [3]. Martyn Lyadov, whose real surname was Mandelstam, was a revolutionary and Soviet Party official [11][14]. In 1931 about thirty streets and lanes across nearly the whole historic center of Nizhny Novgorod were renamed, and Varvarskaya, Alekseevskaya, Tikhonovskaya, Bolshaya and Malaya Pecherskaya, and Lykova Damba vanished from the city map for a long time [14].
There was little new construction on the street, but some of it has survived. Among the notable buildings of the first post-revolutionary years are the experimental residential buildings of the Novator housing cooperative society — the present-day Nos. 16a and 18, built in 1926–1927 to a design by the architect L. D. Agafonov: a striking example of a low-rise apartment building from the early period of Soviet architecture, with an original structural design [1].
In a style imitating Constructivism, at the intersection with Proviantskaya, a three-story sectional building for the Society of Former Political Prisoners (No. 30, architect K. D. Blokhin) was constructed in 1928–1930. The building occupies a corner position; its facade gets its plasticity from rounded corners, emphasized by long ribbons of shared balconies, from which, according to the original plan, the main entrance to the residents' communal services area was supposed to lead. The apartments were designed as one-, two-, and three-room units with all amenities; in 1938–1939 a fourth floor was added to the building to a design by the architect L. A. Nifontov [1].
From the 1960s through the 1990s, practically all the buildings on the street were used without major repairs: many outbuildings were lost, and the main facades of the residential buildings were significantly distorted [1].
In August 1991 the toponymy commission of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Russian Cultural Foundation compiled a list of about sixty streets, squares, and lanes and appealed to Mayor Dmitry Bednyakov with a request to restore their historical names. At that time Lyadov Street got back the name Bolshaya Pecherskaya — together with Rozhdestvenskaya, Bolshaya and Malaya Pokrovskaya, Alekseevskaya, Sergievskaya, Varvarskaya, and Ilyinskaya [14]. The revolutionary's name remained attached to Lyadov Square in another part of the city; for the story of which names the city restored and which it did not, see a separate account [14].
Cultural Heritage Sites
The street is extremely rich in monuments. Of the 145 objects within the boundaries of the area of note, 48 (33%) have the status of cultural heritage sites of regional and federal significance, 29 (20%) show the characteristics of such sites, and another 19 (13%) are classified as valuable elements of the historical and urban environment: roughly two thirds of the buildings turn out to be of key importance [1]. The historic buildings on the odd-numbered side of the street have preserved their original architectural appearance better than those on the opposite side [1].
The documents under which the buildings were placed under state protection vary. Some of the monuments were designated by a decision of the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Council of People's Deputies dated August 31, 1993, No. 288-m [8]; the M. O. Leman house, by a resolution of the Nizhny Novgorod Region administration dated December 11, 1998, No. 331 [9]; the P. D. Klimov house, by a decree of the President of Russia dated February 20, 1995, No. 176 [7]; and the rest, by earlier lists and orders of the monument protection authority from the late 1990s and early 2000s [2].
| Address | Monument | Date | Architect | Document |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Piskunova, 47/1 (corner of B. Pecherskaya) | Estate of E. V. Veselovskaya, main house | 1839 [2] | G. I. Kizevetter [2] | No. 471, 329 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 3 | Estate of E. V. Veselovskaya, annex | early 20th century [2] | G. I. Kizevetter [2] | No. 471, 329 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 7/20 (corner of Nesterov) | Ostatoshnikov House | 1848, 1867 [2] | A. A. Pakhomov, N. A. Frelikh [2] | Order of May 12, 1999, No. 4-OD [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 8 | House of M. A. Gorinov | early 20th century [2] | — | No. 471, 329 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 11 and 11b | Estate of A. I. Bashkirova: main house with gates and fence, annex, service building | 1882, 1894–1913 [2] | N. B. Feldt, V. M. Lemke [2] | No. 288-m, 36 [2][8] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 12 | House of P. Zaremba | 1810s–1870s [2] | — | No. 471, 329 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 13 | Estate of A. I. Bashkirova: main house, annex, brick fence | mid-19th century, 1880s, 1895 [2] | N. B. Feldt [8] | No. 288-m, 36 [2][8] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 14 and 14b | Estate of I. I. Rudinsky — A. P. Sergeev: main house, two annexes | 1860s, 1905 [2] | — | No. 471, 329 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 15 | House of E. I. Lamonova | 2nd half of the 19th century [2] | — | No. 471, 329 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 16 | House where the Decembrist I. A. Annenkov and his wife P. E. Annenkova (Pauline Geueble) lived | 1861–1870 [2] | — | No. 471, 329 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 16a and 18 | Residential buildings of the Novator partnership | 1927 [2] | L. D. Agafonov [2] | No. 471, 329 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 19 | House of P. F. Lyapunov | 1882 [2][8] | — | No. 288-m, 36 [2][8] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 20/7 (corner of Semashko) | Estate of the Neustroevs — A. Ya. Bashkirovs: main house, annex, stable building | 1st quarter of the 19th century, 1902–1903 [2] | — | No. 471, 329 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 21 | House of V. M. Rukavishnikov: service building, fence | 1880s [2] | — | Order of May 12, 1999, No. 4-OD [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 23/9 (corner of Semashko) | House of M. A. Zaitsev | 1904–1907 [2] | — | No. 471, 329 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 24 | Main house of the estate of A. D. Zhadovskaya — M. M. Rukavishnikov | early 19th century, 1870s [2][8] | — | No. 288-m, 36 [2][8] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 25/12 (corner of Semashko) | Building of the appanage office and appanage hospital; V. I. Dal and L. V. Dal lived and worked here | 1849–1859 [2] | — | No. 471, 329 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 28 | Complex of buildings of the Nizhny Novgorod District Zemstvo Board: main house and almshouse | late 1850s, early 20th century [2] | N. I. Uzhumedsky-Gritsevich [2] | Order of July 26, 1999, No. 10-OD [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 30 | House of Political Convicts, built on the initiative of S. A. Akimov | 1930 [2] | K. D. Blokhin [2] | No. 471, 329 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 31 | House of A. F. Evlanov | 1st third of the 19th century [2] | — | Order of June 30, 2000, No. 13-OD [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 33 | House of T. G. Pogulyaev | mid-19th century [2] | — | No. 471, 329 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 34 | Clergy house of the Trinity (Upper Posad) Church | 1840s [2] | — | Order of April 24, 2000, No. 5-OD [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 34a | Building of the Second Kremlin Fire Station | mid-1860s [2] | — | No. 288-m, 36 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 35 | House of P. D. Klimov (in the federal register — "Residential building (wooden)") | 1870 [2][7] | R. Ya. Kilevein [2] | Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of February 20, 1995, No. 176 [7] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 41 and 41a | Estate of E. I. Bogoyavlenskaya: main house, annex, brick gates | 1871 [2][8] | — | No. 471, 329; No. 288-m, 36 [2][8] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 43 | House of I. I. Stregulin | 1883 [2] | — | No. 471, 329 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 45 | House of F. P. Dobrolyubov — M. I. Uglov | 1860s, 1903 [2] | I. K. Kostryukov [2] | No. 471, 329 [2] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 47 | House of M. O. Leman | late 1870s [2][9] | — | Resolution of the Regional Administration of December 11, 1998, No. 331 [9] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 54a | House of P. L. Chardymov | 1911 [8] | S. A. Levkov [8] | No. 288-m [8] |
| B. Pecherskaya, 56 | House of M. E. Bashkirov | 1900s [8] | — | No. 288-m [8] |
The street today
The boundaries of the notable site "Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street" are traced by Minin Street in the north, Ulyanova Street and Bolshaya Pecherskaya itself in the south, Piskunova Street in the west, and Semashko Street and Sennaya Square in the east. The most expressive vantage points are the intersections with Piskunova, Nesterova, Semashko, Proviantskaya, Trudovaya, and Frunze streets, as well as the stretch where the street meets Sennaya Square: it should be regarded as the entrance to the central part of the city from the Kazan Highway, a "gateway" opening a view onto one of the main streets of the historic city [1].
The functional role of the district has barely changed: residential buildings stand alongside complexes of 20th-century public buildings. On the street and next to it are the Water Transport Academy, the Linguistics University, the Higher School of Economics, the river school, the Radiophysical Institute, the Nizhny Novgorod design institute, the Regional State Archive of Social and Political History, and bank and office buildings. Traffic load on Bolshaya Pecherskaya is comparatively light — it is a thoroughfare of district significance [1]. There are no architectural landmarks today comparable to the lost church and fire tower [1].
The tram "city ring" runs along the street. In April 2024, track replacement began on the section of Piskunova Street from Bolshaya Pecherskaya to the Black Pond: tram service on the Black Pond – Piskunova – Bolshaya Pecherskaya – Sennaya Square – Belinsky stretch was suspended, cars on route No. 2 were rerouted along Dobrolyubova and Ilyinskaya, and electric buses on route E-17 ran along Bolshaya Pecherskaya in place of trams [18].
The historic buildings fare unevenly. Near Sennaya Square in 2022, the neighboring Samgin House and Chardymov House burned down — a striking example of Nizhny Novgorod wooden Art Nouveau with Russian Revival motifs. The Chardymov House was restored from archival photographs that recorded the details of its carved decoration; the investor put more than 150 million rubles into the work, and in 2026 the ensemble was fully recreated, with cafes opening in the buildings [15]. How this happened is covered on a separate page.
Other houses were less fortunate. The arrest house of the district zemstvo board (Bolshaya Pecherskaya, 28, building V) was inspected by a commission in June 2021, which recorded cracks of various sizes in the walls, crumbling brickwork in the ground floor, traces of roof leaks on the ceiling and walls, and a basement piled with garbage [16]. The house of P. F. Lyapunov has been put up for sale as office space for 80 million rubles — together with a plot of 623 square meters [17].
The street also has a seasonal hallmark: in summer and autumn the facade of building No. 18 is covered by wild grape, and passersby stop to look at it [10].
The street's tourist appeal is defined by the high degree of preservation of its historic buildings and its abundance of monuments; a relatively intact urban fabric of the historic city is complemented here by a network of cafes, restaurants, and hotels [1].
Sources
- opentextnn.ru — Open Text — research documentation "Old Nizhny Novgorod," Volume 9 — Notable Site: Bolshaya Pecherskaya (archive)
- opentextnn.ru — Open Text — list of cultural heritage sites on Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street (archive)
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — an essay on the history of the street — The History of One Street: What Bolshaya Pecherskaya in Nizhny Novgorod Is Famous For (archive)
- kostromka.ru — N. I. Khramtsovsky. A Brief Sketch of the History and Description of Nizhny Novgorod — chapter on the city's streets — Streets of Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
- pecherskiy.nne.ru — Voznesensky Pechersky Monastery for Men — chronicle of the monastery — Chronicle of the Monastery (archive)
- ngounb.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Regional Universal Scientific Library — a review of Prince Shakhovskoy's theater — "Let's Lift the Corner of the Curtain…": The History of the Nizhny Novgorod Theater of the Late 18th Century (archive)
- kremlin.ru — President of Russia — list of historical and cultural heritage sites of federal significance — Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of February 20, 1995, No. 176 (archive)
- base.garant.ru — GARANT — list of cultural heritage sites of regional significance in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
- base.garant.ru — GARANT — list of historical and cultural monuments of Nizhny Novgorod Region — Resolution of the Nizhny Novgorod Region Administration of December 11, 1998, No. 331, appendix
- NN.RU — a walk along the street with a story about the first theater and the detention house — The First Theater and the Detention House. The History of Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street in the Center of Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
- web.archive.org — "Nizhny Novgorod 800+" project — a local-history walk along the street (web archive) — A Journey Along Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street (archive)
- dengoroda-nn.ru — City Day. Nizhny Novgorod — on Lenin's addresses in Nizhny Novgorod — Nizhny Novgorod Leniniana (archive)
- nnov.hse.ru — HSE University — Nizhny Novgorod: report on a lecture by the deputy head of the Regional Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage Sites — Historical Walks Around the City: Secrets of Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street (archive)
- V gorode N — on the renaming of Nizhny Novgorod streets and the return of historical names — The Old "New" Name (archive)
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — on the restoration of the Chardymov and Samgin houses — Monument Houses in Nizhny Novgorod Given a Second Life (archive)
- GIPERNN — GiperNN — on the condition of the zemstvo board's detention house — The Detention House on Bolshaya Pecherskaya Is Falling Apart in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
- NIA "Nizhny Novgorod" — on the sale of P. F. Lyapunov's house — Lyapunov House, a Cultural Heritage Site in the Center of Nizhny Novgorod, Put Up for Sale for Office Use (archive)
- mintrans.nobl.ru — Ministry of Transport of Nizhny Novgorod Region — on the reconstruction of the tram loop — Replacement of Tram Tracks Begins on the City Tram Loop in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
- pro-nn.org — an old photograph of the intersection of Bolshaya Pecherskaya and Semashko Street — Nizhny Novgorod. Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street. Intersection with Semashko Street. Bashkirov Estate (archive)