Bolshaya Pokrovskaya: Two Centuries of the Main Street

Bolshaya Pokrovskaya is the main street of Nizhny Novgorod, which over two centuries has traveled from a gentry suburb to a commercial corridor and the city's pedestrian showcase. This study traces how the street acquired its course and its name, which merchant families bought up the gentry estates and built them over with apartment buildings, who designed those buildings, what was traded on the street, and what happened to its buildings after 1917. The material is gathered from archival records, local-history publications, and registers of cultural heritage sites; every fact is supported by a source reference.

From Nikolskaya to Pokrovskaya

The street is older than both its present name and its present course. Its first name was Bolshaya Nikolskaya: it ran in the direction of the Nikolskaya Tower of the New Ostrog ^[1].

The name rested on two landmarks — the tower and the Verkhneposadskaya Church of St. Nicholas that stood opposite it, one of the oldest and richest in the city ^[2]; in the 17th century a street led from the tower that ran almost parallel to the present Bolshaya Pokrovskaya ^[3]. The present route appeared later and replaced two ancient Nikolskaya streets ^[2]. In other words, the future grand thoroughfare was not laid out on empty ground: it straightened an already settled line of travel.

This line was given a regular form by the city's first general plan of 1770, drawn up by the architect Andrey Kvasov after Catherine II's visit in 1767 ^[4]; the plan was approved by the empress herself, and under it the street was to be straightened and widened ^[1]. It was aimed at the Dmitrievskaya Tower of the kremlin, but was actually cut through only during the General Land Survey of the city's territory in 1784–1787, on the site of the two ancient Nikolskaya streets ^[2].

At that same time, toward the end of the 18th century, after the general plan was approved, the street was named Bolshaya Pokrovskaya — after the Church of the Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos that stood on it ^[2][1]; T. Kucherova dates the appearance of the name to the same period ^[5]. The plan long remained on paper: the first rebuilding got under way in the early 1790s — the street changed its course toward the Dmitrievskaya Tower and houses began to be built along a single line, though they were mostly wooden and not grand ^[1]. By the end of the 18th century the grid of blocks had taken shape that has survived to this day ^[5].

The Street of Gentry Estates

Orienting toward the Dmitrievskaya Tower — the main entrance to the kremlin, where the governorate authorities sat — determined the social profile of the street. In the 18th century Bolshaya Pokrovskaya was "noble": the houses of the governorate's dignitaries stood here — the viceroy, the vice-governor, generals, and princely families ^[2].

The estates differed little from country ones: a main house, one or two outbuildings, service buildings, and a garden, separated from the neighbors by a stone fence with a wicket gate and a gate for carriages to pass through

State Archival Service of Nizhny Novgorod Region^[2]

The estates differed little from country ones: a main house, one or two outbuildings, service buildings, and a garden, separated from the neighbors by a stone fence with a wicket gate and a gate for carriages to pass through ^[5]. A concrete trace of that period is property No. 17: a two-story stone house with seven windows, built during the regular replanning of the late 18th century for the vice-governor; in the 1830s the military governor lived in it, until a new building was erected for him in the kremlin ^[6].

Straightening and merchant development

The street was redefined a second time by the will of the emperor.

• 1834: Nicholas I, who personally drew up the plan for yet another reconstruction of the city center, outlined a straightened street leading to the square that would later bear the name of Gorky ^[1].
• 1839: the emperor again visited Nizhny Novgorod and ordered the city to be built up according to the plan; it was then that it was decided to straighten Bolshaya Pokrovskaya and to end it with a square ^[7]. Under the 1839 plan, a New Square (now Gorky Square) was created at the end of the street, and the street itself was cut through to the Krestovozdvizhensky Monastery ^[2].
• 1842: the outlines of the square were laid out by the architect G. I. Kizevetter ^[7].
• 1857: the exit of Bolshaya Pokrovskaya onto the New Square was straightened according to a design by N. I. Uzhumedsky-Gritsevich — an earthen dam was built across the two Pokrovsky Ponds in place of the old bridge ^[2].

The stone development of institutions and mansions, begun in the first decades of the 19th century, gradually grew denser, until by the beginning of the 20th century the buildings merged into an almost continuous line ^[5].

The street became a trading corridor not by plan, but by market forces.

Kucherova T.^[5]

The street became a trading corridor not by plan, but by market forces. The turning point came in the mid-19th century: merchant-industrialists and trading peasants began actively buying up noble estates, and instead of small, cozy noble mansions, the new owners built imposing stone apartment buildings and hotels ^[2].

The ground floors were given over to commerce: in the buildings of the Nikolsky clergy (Nos. 9a and 9b), from 1844 the merchant S. Grebenshchikov rented the ground floor for haberdashery shops, while the upper floor remained reserved for the clergy's apartments and an almshouse ^[2]. An example of the next, fully commercial stage is the trading house "K. P. Polushkin and N. M. Ershov" at 11 Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, identified as a cultural heritage site in January 2015 ^[8].

The prestigious half of the street was held by government and public buildings: on the site of the vice-governor's house, the District Court was built in 1894–1896 to a design by Provincial Architect V. N. Bryukhatov (after his death in August 1894, construction was supervised by the architect N. P. Ivanov). For the duration of the 1896 All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition, the building was converted into the Tsentralnaya Hotel, with a restaurant hall and an assembly hall ^[6].

In the same years, 1894–1896, the city theater was built on the street, a spacious square was laid out around it, and Bolshaya Pokrovskaya took on its modern boundaries ^[2]. Also in 1896, one of the city's first tram lines ran along Bolshaya and Malaya Pokrovskaya streets, from Minin and Pozharsky Square to the end of Pokhvalinskaya Street ^[9][1].

The Church and the Names of the Street

The street got its name from the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos that stood on it ^[2][1]: a wooden church is mentioned as early as the land registry books of 1621, a stone one was built in 1709, and in 1823–1824 the church was expanded with a refectory and topped with a high dome ^[10].

The church was closed by a resolution of the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Executive Committee on March 16, 1930, and finally in October 1935, after which the building was converted into a dormitory; it stood on the site of the present-day building No. 30A ^[10].

The colloquial name "Pokrovka" took hold in the nineteenth century, and the street's unofficial second name was "the noble street" ^[11][12]. From 1918 to 1992 the street bore the name of Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, who was born here in 1885; in everyday speech it was "Sverdlovka" ^[11][12][5]. The section from Minin Square to Gorky Square became pedestrian-only in 1982 ^[12], and the historical name returned along with the end of the Soviet-era name, in 1992 ^[11][12].

From nobles to merchants: the owners of building No. 22

Bolshaya Pokrovskaya took shape as a street of noble estates, and merchant property ownership arrived here not on empty ground but through the buying up of old plots. This change of hands is most fully visible in the record for building No. 22:

• in 1806 the estate was registered to Court Councilor F. O. Massary
• in the late 1830s it passed to Court Councilor V. S. Pomerantsev
• in the mid-1860s it was bought by the peasant G. E. Efremov, who owned the plot for more than thirty years
• in early 1895 it went to the heirs of the merchant E. E. Paltsev
• then, in the same year, 1895, to the civil engineer K. G. Ivanov

In 1905–1907 Ivanov demolished the old two-story buildings and built in their place a three-story stone apartment building of his own design; the City Duma approved the new valuation of the rebuilt building in the spring of 1907. In 1918 the building was municipalized and converted into apartments and commercial premises. ^[13][11]

The First Merchant Houses

The earliest merchant house on the street is the property of Mikhail Andreyanovich Kostromin (Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, 4A). Kostromin came from the peasants of the Pechersky Monastery in Nizhny Novgorod; in 1764 he received the status of "economic" peasant and enrolled in the merchant estate of the town of Chyorny Yar, although he lived in Nizhny Novgorod. The two-story stone house, built over vaulted cellars and fronted by a four-column portico with a triangular pediment, was designed in the late 18th century by the first Nizhny Novgorod governorate architect, Yakov Ananyin; two wings flank the main house.

the clock was presented to Catherine II in Saint Petersburg on April 1, 1769, for which the merchant received a thousand rubles and a silver mug bearing the empress's portrait

In the town of N^[11]

Kostromin is known above all for supporting the family of the self-taught mechanic Ivan Kulibin and for paying for the work on a clock shaped like a duck egg: the clock was presented to Catherine II in Saint Petersburg on April 1, 1769, for which the merchant received a thousand rubles and a silver mug bearing the empress's portrait. Kostromin died on January 7, 1829, in his 79th year; in 1990 the house was handed over to the theater school, and since 1998 it has housed the Training Theater of the Nizhny Novgorod Theater School named after E. A. Evstigneev. ^[14][15]

A merchant income-property house in its purest form is the property of the first-guild merchants T. A. and S. I. Frolov. In July 1885 they submitted to the city board the drawings for the construction of a stone house, and in 1885–1887, to a design by the architect V. M. Lemke, a three-story plastered brick building was erected with a symmetrical main façade of eleven window bays (Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, 7).

The house was built as an income property: the basement held a wine cellar, the first floor held M. A. Skvortsov's linen shop, and the second and third floors held offices; later fish was sold here. ^[16][1]

The Rukavishnikovs, Bugrovs, and Blinovs

The Rukavishnikovs' main estate stood on the Verkhnevolzhskaya Embankment, and their bank and income-property complex on Rozhdestvenskaya; on Pokrovskaya they owned just one house, and that one was bought ready-made. The two-story stone house on the main street was built in 1864–1865 by the engineer Aleksey Ivanovich Uzatis, who for twenty years headed the Sormovo Plant. The building was purchased by Ivan Mikhaylovich Rukavishnikov, one of the sons of the "iron old man": according to Nizhny Novgorod local historians, the merchant intended to marry a noblewoman and wanted to underline his status with a mansion in the center of the city. The Rukavishnikovs leased the house to the Nizhny Novgorod Public Assembly and the city club, and it became the center of the city's musical life.

In 1911 the estate was bought by the peasant and major property owner Anton Frolov — a namesake of the merchant Frolovs of house no. 7 — who commissioned Fyodor Shekhtel to design a three-story annex with mezzanines in Russian Art Nouveau forms; the work was completed in 1913, and the new wing housed the Palace electric theater (now the Orlyonok cinema, Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, 39A).

From 1937 part of the estate's premises was occupied by the regional philharmonic, where Shulzhenko, Utyosov, and Shostakovich performed, and in 1976 the reconstruction of the Uzatis house into a puppet theater began, to a design by the architect Timofeevsky, preserving the historic façade (Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, 39B). ^[17][18]

The Bugrovs are associated with the beginning of the street. In 1851 Pyotr Yegorovich Bugrov bought a plot near Blagoveschenskaya Square and in 1852–1854 built a three-story stone house to a design by the architect N. I. Uzhumedsky-Gritsevich: the lower floors were occupied by shops, and the second floor was rented, at the request of Governor Prince M. A. Urusov, by the city theater, which had lost Prince Shakhovskoy's wooden building. In 1862 the house was bought by the governorate marshal of the nobility A. A. Turchaninov, after which the building fell into disrepair and burned more than once.

on the condition that it would not permit "any theater or, in general, any place of entertainment," nor a commercial establishment for the sale of strong spirits

DomostroyNN^[18]

The founder's grandson, Nikolay Aleksandrovich Bugrov, offered the City Duma 200,000 rubles for a new theater in 1894, then bought the old building from the bank for 50,000 and in 1897 gave it to the city — on the condition that it would not permit "any theater or, in general, any place of entertainment," nor a commercial establishment for the sale of strong spirits, and that the building's income would go into a special fund for distribution to the city's poor; for Bugrov, an Old Believer, the anti-alcohol clause mattered no less than the anti-theater one. On January 27, 1898, the building burned down because of worn-out electrical wiring; in 1899 the architect V. P. Zeydler drew up a new design with a budget of 236,000 rubles, and Bugrov covered more than 70 percent of the cost. In 1904 the City Duma moved into the new building and named it the "Bugrov Charitable Building" (now the Palace of Labor, 1 Bolshaya Pokrovskaya).

The Blinovs, the Bugrovs' partners in their trading partnership, built at the other end of the street. Opposite the Exaltation of the Cross Monastery, with the joint funds of the Blinovs and Bugrov, a stone four-story (with a semi-basement) Widows' House in the pseudo-Russian style, of red brick, was built to a design by the Nizhny Novgorod architect N. A. Frelikh. The City Duma approved its charter on October 23, 1887, and the almshouse was maintained on the interest from 65,000 rubles deposited in a bank by the Blinov brothers. The house's official name was the Blinov and Bugrov Widows' House (now 2 Lyadov Square, an NSTU dormitory). ^[19][20][21]

Owners of the Trading Blocks

House No. 10, at the corner of Osypnaya Street (now Piskunov Street), shows how merchant capital remodeled a noble's residence for commerce. The building, erected in 1825–1837 to a design by the provincial architect I. E. Efimov for the titular councilor's wife Elizaveta Zakharovna Alekseeva, was refitted in 1847 to a design by L. V. Fostikov. In 1884 the lot was bought by Aleksandr Grigoryevich Kudryashov (son of the peasant Grigory Pavlovich Kudryashev, who had founded a freight-shipping business on the Volga) and the meshchanin Nikandr Stepanovich Chesnokov. In 1884–1886 the house was radically rebuilt in the eclectic style, probably to a design by N. D. Grigoryev, and the city's most expensive shops opened on the ground floor, including Gorshkov's textile store and Popov's bookstore; the complex also includes a residential wing from the late 19th century.

The neighboring block was held by the Paltsevs. The apartment building of the merchant Egor Egorovich Paltsev (21/5 Bolshaya Pokrovskaya) was designed in 1873 by the architect I. K. Kostryukov and built between 1875 and 1879. The main building came out three stories tall, the wing along Oktyabrskaya Street two stories; the facades received atlantes and caryatids, and on the ground floor, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Savoy restaurant operated. In the same block, on Osypnaya (now 9 Piskunov Street), stood the estate of the merchant's wife Avdotya Yakovlevna Paltseva — a main house of 1828–1830, to which a third story was added in the 1880s. ^[22][11][23]

The later layer of development consists of apartment buildings and commercial wings of the 1890s–1910s.

• The merchant F. E. Prispeshnikov bought a two-story stone house of the 1840s (24 Bolshaya Pokrovskaya), added a wing in 1873–1875, and in 1894 expanded the property with a three-story red-brick building: from 1895 to 1917 the second floor housed the editorial office of the Nizhegorodsky Listok, where Maxim Gorky worked in 1896–1902.
• The trading house "Mitrofan Nikanorovich Smirnov and Sons" built House No. 23 in the 1910s in the forms of rational Art Nouveau, facing the facades with white ceramic brick; in Soviet times it housed the editorial office of Nizhegorodskaya Kommuna.
• The commercial wing of the merchant's wife Olga Nikolaevna Kameneva (House No. 38), originally one story with large display windows, was rebuilt in Art Nouveau style in 1914–1915, its facade adorned with molded griffins; since 1967 it has housed the regional children's dental clinic.
• The steamship owner Dmitry Nikanorovich Kolchin began construction of mansion No. 57 in 1910, but after his death the unfinished building passed to the city in 1916.

Of the families listed, the Ermolaevs are not confirmed on Bolshaya Pokrovskaya: the brewing dynasty owned the Novo-Lyskovsky plant, founded in 1882, in Pochaina Ravine, its own houses on Alekseevskaya and Pochainskaya streets, and more than a dozen beer shops — on Malaya Pokrovskaya, Rozhdestvenskaya, Oshara Square, and other addresses, but not on the main street. ^{[11][24][1][25][26]}

Classicism and the first architects

The stone core of Bolshaya Pokrovskaya took shape through the efforts of governorate and city architects working in the language of classicism. The oldest surviving building is the mansion of the merchant Kostromin (no. 4a), from the 1770s, designed by Yakov Ananin; in it the mechanic I. P. Kulibin assembled his famous clock in the shape of a duck egg ^[27][5].

The street acquired its strict classicist appearance in the 1820s–1830s: the governorate architect I. E. Efimov built the Nobility Assembly building (no. 18) in 1822–1826, with a six-column loggia on a high white-stone base; the gallery of the second-floor columned hall, where the orchestra was seated, is supported by twenty columns — this is the only surviving classicist-era interior in Nizhny Novgorod, and the first ball was held in it in December 1826. He is also the author, together with A. L. Leer, of the design for the Verkhneposadsky stone shops (no. 2) of the 1830s ^[27][5].

The ordinary buildings of the street were shaped by Georg Ivanovich Kizevetter (1808–1857), a graduate of the Academy of Arts, architect of the governorate Treasury Chamber from 1829 and the first city architect of Nizhny Novgorod: the post was created in 1836, and he was the one who filled it; in the city Kizevetter built more than a hundred buildings, mostly private houses and apartment buildings on the central streets ^[28]. On Pokrovka, to his design, a pair of income-generating apartment buildings for the clergy of the Nikolskaya Verkhneposadskaya Church (nos. 9a and 9b) were erected in 1842–1844, while the outbuilding of the same estate (no. 9) was built in 1865 by the architect Aleksey Pakhomov ^[5].

The eclecticism of the apartment buildings

The second half of the 19th century turned the street into a corridor of apartment buildings, and academic eclecticism became the dominant language. The house of Prince B. N. Yusupov (no. 19/6) was completed in the summer of 1848 to a design by L. V. Fostikov. I. K. Kostryukov built the women's diocesan school (no. 30, 1861–1874) — a plot of land with a garden and vegetable patch was donated to the diocese in perpetuity by Princess Anna Georgievna Tolstaya ^[5] — and the Paltsev apartment building (no. 21, 1873), with figures of atlantes and caryatids on its facade, erected on the site of the former estate of P. B. Grigoryev ^[5].

The Chesnokov and Kudryashov apartment building (No. 10), dating from the 1890s, was considered the most luxurious on the street: its premises were occupied by the city's best shops.

Kucherova T.^[5]

The building of the trading firm "Frolov Brothers" (No. 7), with M. A. Skvortsov's linen shop, was erected by the architect V. M. Lemke — in the 1870s ^[27] or, according to T. Kucherova, in the 1880s ^[5]; from 1887 to 1904 the city's first public library operated here. In 1877–1878 N. B. Feldt built the clergy house of the Pokrovskaya Church (No. 28). The Chesnokov and Kudryashov apartment building (No. 10), dating from the 1890s, was considered the most luxurious on the street: its premises were occupied by the city's best shops. ^[27][5]

A significant part of the merchants' properties was built without the involvement of renowned architects and remained anonymous. The estate of M. S. Serebrennikova (No. 68, also 14 Vorovskogo Street and 16 Arkhangelskaya Street) took shape in 1898–1902: permission for a wooden shop was obtained in 1895, for a two-story stone house with a basement in 1902, and running water was connected in 1903; the 1902 drawing, however, is not signed by an architect. Researchers describe the main facades as eclectic and ornate, and since 1993 the estate has been a monument of architecture of regional significance ^[29].

Another typical case is the house at the corner of Malaya Pokrovskaya (No. 22), which from 1806 belonged to F. O. Massari, then to V. S. Pomerantsev and the peasant G. E. Efremov, and in 1895 passed to the civil engineer K. G. Ivanov: in 1905–1906 the owner rebuilt it to his own design into a three-story brick house with a basement — with plank rustication on the ground floor, profiled framed window surrounds and three-quarter columns on the second floor, a crowning cornice on curved brackets, and dormer windows ^[13].

a rich residential house in the eclectic spirit

Government Buildings and the Theater

Government buildings of the late 19th century gave the street a new scale. The building of the District Court (No. 17) was designed in 1889 by the Nizhny Novgorod governorate architect Vasily Nilovich Bryukhatov (1852–1894); the foundations were laid on June 14, 1894, the author of the design died in August of the same year, and construction was supervised in 1894–1895 by the architect N. P. Ivanov. The main facade is strictly symmetrical: two projections (rizalits) with arched carriageways at the edges and a central pilastered portico with a triangular pediment; S. M. Shumilkin defines the building's stylistic orientation as academic eclecticism ^[6].

For the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition of 1896, the building was converted into a 50-room hotel for honored guests, and the court occupied it only after the exhibition closed. The Vladimir Realschule (No. 37) was built in 1881–1885 to a design by the St. Petersburg architect K. K. Lygin, revised by the Nizhny Novgorod architect N. D. Grigoryev. ^[27][6]

The City Theater (No. 13) was built to a design by Viktor Aleksandrovich Schroeter, chief architect of the imperial theaters: the first stone was laid on July 17, 1894, and the work on site was supervised by a young Nizhny Novgorod architect, Pavel Petrovich Malinovsky ^[5][30]. The building is executed in late Renaissance forms; the grand opening took place on May 14, 1896, with Mikhail Glinka's opera "A Life for the Tsar," featuring Fyodor Chaliapin ^[30] — local-history publications give the date as May 15 ^[5][31].

At the beginning of the street, the St. Petersburg architect Vladimir Petrovich Zeidler built the City Duma building (No. 1) in 1899–1904 ^[27]; the site had been occupied by the house of P. E. Bugrov, which his grandson Nikolay Aleksandrovich Bugrov bought out in 1894 in order to donate it to the City Duma ^[31]. The style of the building is defined as "French Baroque."^[31]

Art Nouveau and Neo-Russian Style

Art Nouveau came to Pokrovka around 1903 and remained in vogue until World War I.

• Dmitry Aleksandrovich Verner, together with Nikolay Veshnyakov, rebuilt the Verkhniy Posad Public Building (no. 2, 1903–1904) in the "new style," placing busts of Russian writers in the niches of its facade ^[5]; in 1912 he converted house no. 12 into the restaurant and coffeehouse of the Rozanov brothers — an early example of decorative Art Nouveau, with an owl with outspread wings above the entrance door ^[5][31]; he was also responsible for the 1910s remodeling of the house of the merchant V. A. Medvedev (no. 11) on the corner of Theatre Square, built in 1858 to a design by N. A. Frelikh, where the main decorative motif became the grilles of the cornices and gates ^[27].
• S. A. Levkov built the income house of M. I. Sizova (1904–1905), the estate houses of D. I. Kazansky behind the city theater (1907–1908), and the mansion of the steamship owner Dmitry Nikanorovich Kolchin (no. 57), begun in 1910 ^[27][5].
• The rationalist wing of the style is represented by the trading house "Mitrofan Nikanorovich Smirnov and Sons" (no. 23) from the 1910s, where white ceramic brick facing was used for the first time in Nizhny Novgorod ^[31], and by the commercial outbuilding of the merchant's wife Olga Nikolaevna Kameneva (no. 38), rebuilt in 1914–1915, with molded winged griffins on its facade ^[5][31].
• In 1912–1913, Fyodor Osipovich Shekhtel, under a contract with the Nizhny Novgorod Public Assembly, erected for the property owner Anton Frolov a building adjoining house no. 39, containing the Palace movie theater and the city's largest concert hall ^[17].

The culmination of the street's pre-revolutionary development was the State Bank ensemble (no. 26) in the Neo-Russian style ^[31], built in 1911–1913 to a design by the Academician of Architecture Vladimir Aleksandrovich Pokrovsky, who worked mainly in the pseudo-Russian style ^[27]. The occasion for its construction was the 50th anniversary of the State Bank, celebrated in 1910, and the forthcoming celebration of the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov.

The work proceeded on a tight schedule: the contract for the stonework was awarded on May 5, 1911, and by November 10 of the same year the main building and the wing were ready for final finishing. The decoration consisted of ornamental and figural carved stone and wrought-metal details; the sketches for the murals of the interiors and the ceiling were made by Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin, while the painting itself was done by the invited Moscow painters, the brothers Nikolay Pavlovich and Georgy Pavlovich Pashkov. A thanksgiving service marking the opening was held on May 14, 1913, and three days later the branch's new premises welcomed Nicholas II. ^[27][32]

Shopping Arcades and Ground Floors

Bolshaya Pokrovskaya secured its commercial role in the first half of the 19th century, when its upper end, adjoining the Kremlin, received permanent shopping arcades. The Upper Posad shopping arcades building at the corner of Minin and Pozharsky Square (Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, 2/1) was built in 1840–1844 to a design by the governorate architects I. E. Efimov and A. L. Leer ^[33]: a continuous, elongated structure with shops on the ground floor, its facades facing the square, Pokrovskaya, and Alekseevskaya all at once; it is the only large public and commercial building of its kind to survive in the city, and until 1904 the City Duma itself rented premises in it ^[5].

It was then that the pattern took shape by which the street was built up over the following half century: a shop or store below, offices, apartments, or hotel rooms above. The same principle governed the P. E. Bugrov apartment building at the start of the street (Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, 1), erected in 1853–1854 to a design by the architect N. I. Uzhumedsky-Gritsevich, with retail shops on the ground floor and the city theater on the second ^[5]. At the upper end of the street, trade was of the display-window, "refined" kind — textiles, books, tableware, perfumery — while the city's wholesale and grain trade remained down below, on Rozhdestvenskaya and at the Yarmarka.

The core of retail trade was the apartment building of the trading house "Chesnokov and Kudryashov" at the corner of what is now Piskunova Street (Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, 10/7). A stone house on this site was built in 1825–1837 to a design by I. E. Efimov for the titular counselor's wife E. Z. Alekseeva, was rebuilt in 1847 by L. V. Fostikov, and received its final appearance in 1884–1886, when the estate was purchased by the merchants A. G. Kudryashov and N. S. Chesnokov ^[22].

The ground floor housed the city's largest textile store, that of V. N. Gorshkov, and A. I. Popov's bookstore, along with shops selling European tableware, porcelain, and French perfumery, shoemaking and jewelry workshops, an insurance office, and a notary ^[22]; the second floor was occupied by luxury hotel rooms, the third by cheaper rooms that were nonetheless meant for a well-to-do clientele ^[5].

Operating nearby were:

• the income building of the trading company "Heirs of Frolov" (7 Bolshaya Pokrovskaya; 1880s, architect Vladimir Lemke) with M. A. Skvortsov's linen store on the ground floor and offices and business premises on the upper floors — the Frolovs themselves also owned wine cellars, a vodka distillery, and buildings in various parts of the city ^[5]
• the house of the merchant V. A. Medvedev (no. 11), built in 1858 to a design by N. A. Frelikh and rebuilt in the 1910s in the Art Nouveau style to a design by D. A. Verner, which housed the trading house of the partnership "K. P. Polushkin and N. M. Ershov" ^[5][27]
• the income building of M. I. Sizova (no. 52, 1904–1905, architect S. A. Levkov), where the new owner, the Kostroma meshchanin (townsman) A. I. Vikengeyzer, widened the window openings of the store in 1909 ^[5][27]
• the commercial annex of O. N. Kameneva (no. 38), rebuilt in 1914–1915 from a one-story house with display windows ^[5][27]

Banks, Hotels, Restaurants

The financial side of the street rested on two institutions. The Alexander Nobility Bank occupied premises on the Pokrovskaya side of the Nobility Assembly building (no. 18) ^[5][11]. The State Bank received its own building on Pokrovskaya: in 1910 a decision was made to build it, in 1911 an all-Russian competition was held, won by the Academician of Architecture V. A. Pokrovsky (his rivals included A. V. Shchusev and F. O. Shekhtel), and work began on May 5, 1911 ^[34][5].

The ensemble at the corner with Gruzinskaya Street (listed in the register of cultural heritage sites as 26/17 Bolshaya Pokrovskaya) included the main building, a two-story attendants' house on Gruzinskaya connected to the main building by a gallery, a clock bell tower, and a brick fence; the interiors were worked on by icon painters, the Palekh masters the Pashkov brothers, who realized the designs of I. Ya. Bilibin ^[5][33][11]. The building was erected with funds from the Nizhny Novgorod merchantry in the Neo-Russian style, in honor of the victory over the Polish interventionists and for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty ^[5][27]. It was consecrated on May 14, 1913, and three days later the bank was inspected by Nicholas II, who had come to the city with his family ^[34][11].

The hotel and restaurant part of the street served visiting merchants, fair crowds, and theatergoers. The upper-floor rooms of the Chesnokov and Kudryashov building effectively operated as a hotel in the middle of the street ^[5]. In 1912 the new owners of the neighboring building at No. 12, the brothers Nikolay and Alexander Rozanov, commissioned architect D. A. Werner to draw up a plan to reconstruct it as a restaurant and café: a stone residential building with shops had stood here as early as the 18th century and belonged to the merchant's wife Maria Grigoryevna Ostatoshnikova, and after the rebuilding it became a monument of early decorative Art Nouveau ^[5].

The district court building (No. 17) was designed in 1889 by the Governorate architect V. N. Bryukhatov; the foundation was laid on June 14, 1894, and the work was completed in 1895, with the architect N. P. Ivanov supervising construction in 1894–1895 ^[6]. For a full year, the building, constructed for the judicial department, served as the Tsentralnaya Hotel for honored guests of the 1896 All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition: 50 rooms, a large restaurant hall with private rooms, and an assembly hall; the district court occupied the building only after the exhibition closed, from 1897 ^[11][6]. In the Soviet period the hotel function on the street was taken over by Intourist (later Moskva), built in 1933–1935 to a design by the Moscow architects A. Z. Grinberg and M. T. Smurov on the site of the demolished Nikolskaya Verkhneposadskaya Church; it too was demolished in 1997 ^[27].

The Nobility Assembly, the Theater, the Duma

The secular center of the street is the building of the Nobility Assembly (18 Bolshaya Pokrovskaya). The Nizhny Novgorod nobility resolved at a general assembly in 1785 to build a "special house" for estate business, elections, balls, and concerts; the plot at the intersection of Bolshaya Pokrovskaya and Voznesenskaya streets was bought from Princess Cherkasskaya, and in 1815 the Governorate Marshal of the Nobility, Prince G. A. Gruzinsky, commissioned a design. In 1822–1826 the building was constructed with voluntary contributions from the nobility to a design by the Governorate architect I. E. Efimov, and the first ball was held in December 1826 ^[5][11].

In 1861, the manifesto abolishing serfdom was read aloud in the hall

In the city of N^[11]

Besides noble assemblies and formal dinners, the building hosted amateur theatricals, art exhibitions, and club activities, and for half a century the colonnaded hall was the city's main concert venue: the young Milii Balakirev played here, and A. D. Ulybyshev conducted ^[5]. In 1861, the manifesto abolishing serfdom was read aloud in the hall ^[5][27][11]. After the revolution, the house was given over to workers' clubs; from 1922 it housed the light industry workers' trade union, and the building was renamed the Ya. M. Sverdlov House of Culture ^[5][11].

The city's public institutions gathered on the street in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The City Theater (13 Bolshaya Pokrovskaya) was founded on July 17, 1894, and opened on May 14, 1896: the design was drawn up by Academician V. A. Schröter, chief architect of the Imperial Theaters, and construction was supervised by the Nizhny Novgorod architect P. P. Malinovsky ^[30][35].

The three-tiered hall held 705 seats; of the 300,000 rubles at which the construction was valued, 200,000 were given by the Old Believer merchant N. A. Bugrov — just so that no entertainment establishment would remain in its former place, at the corner of Bolshaya Pokrovskaya and Pozharsky, in a house built by his grandfather ^[35]. The theater opened with Glinka's opera "A Life for the Tsar," with the leading parts sung by the twenty-three-year-old F. I. Chaliapin and N. I. Zabela-Vrubel, and on July 18, 1896, the theater was visited by Nicholas II and his wife ^[5][35].

In 1901–1904 the City Duma erected a new building at the start of the street (no. 1) to a design by the St. Petersburg academician V. P. Tseydler (the cultural heritage register names N. M. Veshnyakov as co-author) ^[27][33]. Here too the Duma did not give up commerce: the part of the building facing the square was occupied by the Duma itself and the city board, the ground floors along Bolshaya Pokrovskaya were rented out to shops, and the side facing the Zelensky Descent housed the court institutions ^[5]. In Soviet times the building was taken over by the regional trade union committee and came to be called the Palace of Labor ^[5].

Library, Newspaper, Tram

The street's public and business infrastructure complemented its trade and government offices. The first city public library operated from 1887 to 1904 on the second and third floors of the Frolov house (no. 7); its holdings were assembled from private collections, and for the first two years it was run by Ye. I. Ragozin ^[5]. The library then moved to the Verkhny Posad building: the part of it facing Pokrovka (now no. 2) was rebuilt in the Art Nouveau style in 1903–1904 by the architects D. A. Werner and N. M. Veshnyakov, and busts of Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky were placed in niches of the façade; the library remained here until the 1920s ^[5][11].

House no. 24 at the corner with Gruzinskaya is composed of buildings from different periods: the left part is the house of the Basov brothers, the middle is the residential house of Fyodor Yefimovich Prispeshnikov, a townsman of Makaryev, and the right is his rental house; it was in the right part that, from 1895 to 1917, the editorial office of the newspaper "Nizhegorodsky Listok" was located, to which Maxim Gorky contributed for seven years, and where Korolenko, Garin-Mikhailovsky, and Leonid Andreyev gathered at the editor S. I. Grinevitsky's ^[5][24]. In the Frolov rental house (no. 39), built in 1912 to a design by F. O. Shekhtel at the same time as Moscow's Khudozhestvenny cinema, the Palace cinema opened on the first floor, and a film and concert hall on the second ^[5].

The street also acquired its own building capital: the civil engineer K. G. Ivanov, who became the owner of estate no. 22 in 1895, built a three-story stone rental house to his own design in 1905–1907, and in the spring of 1907 the City Duma approved its new assessment by profitability — 49,920 rubles ^[13]. In 1896, for the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition, passenger tram service opened in Nizhny Novgorod, the second in the Russian Empire after Kyiv's: one of the first three lines, built by the von Hartmann company, linked Minin and Pozharsky Square with what is now Gorky Square, that is, it ran along the route of Bolshaya Pokrovskaya ^[36].

After 1917

After the October Revolution the street changed both its name and the owners of its buildings. In 1918 it was named after Yakov Sverdlov, a native of Nizhny Novgorod; the historical name returned only in 1992, although "Sverdlovka" remained in everyday use for decades ^[11][5].

The large public buildings were the first to pass to new institutions:

• in 1919 the former City Duma (No. 1, 1901–1904, architects V. P. Zeidler and N. M. Veshnyakov) housed trade union bodies, and the building became known as the Palace of Labor ^[11][33][5]
• the building of the Nobility Assembly (No. 18, 1826, architect I. E. Yefimov) was given to workers' clubs, and from 1922 to the light industry workers' union, while the building itself was renamed the Ya. M. Sverdlov House of Culture ^[5][33]
• the women's diocesan school (No. 30) passed to the military department — courses for Red commanders were opened there, and the headquarters of the 17th Nizhny Novgorod Rifle Division was installed ^[5]
• the realschool (No. 37) was closed in 1918, and its building was handed over to the newly created Nizhny Novgorod University ^[11]

Private estates and trading houses were nationalized in 1918–1919, and their subsequent fate was determined by the departmental affiliation of the new owner. The property of I. I. Muratov — the Serebrennikova estate (No. 68) — was nationalized in 1918 and remained predominantly residential, receiving the Soviet address "68/14" at Sverdlov and Vorovsky Streets in place of Bolshaya Pokrovskaya and Arkhangelskaya ^[29].

The trading annex of O. N. Kameneva (No. 40, 1914–1916, a rare example of romantic Art Nouveau in the city, with figures of winged monsters on its facade) was confiscated in 1918; in the 1920s it housed Avtopromtorg and construction organizations, and a reconstruction plan of the 1930s called for demolishing the annex — the project was never carried out; today it is home to a children's dental clinic ^[37]. The trading house "Mitrofan Nikanorovich Smirnov and Sons" (No. 23), one of the first in the city faced with white ceramic brick, was occupied from 1920 to 1930 by the editorial office of the newspaper Nizhegorodskaya Kommuna, the predecessor of Nizhegorodskaya Pravda; M. Gorky and V. Mayakovsky visited the editorial office ^[38].

The Frolov apartment building (No. 39) was given over to entertainment: the Palace cinema opened on the ground floor — now the Orlyonok children's cinema — and in 1937 a philharmonic hall opened in the film-and-concert hall on the second floor, where K. Shulzhenko, L. Utyosov, S. Richter, D. Shostakovich, and Van Cliburn performed; in 1968 the philharmonic received a new building in the Kremlin, and in 1978 the former building was thoroughly reconstructed as a puppet theater — architects S. Timofeev and V. Shimon kept only the walls, and the neighboring former apartment building of A. I. Uzatis and I. M. Rukavishnikov (No. 39a) was given over to the foyer and vestibule ^[5].

Losses and Soviet construction

The main losses fell on the churches that defined the street's skyline: the Nikolskaya Verkhneposadskaya Church was demolished in the late 1920s, and the Pokrovskaya Church, which had stood here since the 17th century, was destroyed in the 1930s (a memorial plaque at house No. 30a commemorates it); the Lutheran kirche was closed in 1931, its organ carted off piece by piece, and demolished in 1962, even though it was listed in the register of architectural monuments of the RSFSR ^[5][27]. The vacated sites were built over: on the site of the Pokrovskaya Church the building of Bakery No. 1 was erected in 1952–1954 ^[1], and on the site of the kirche the Oktyabr cinema was built in 1963 to a design by architect L. B. Rozhdestvenskaya ^[5].

The street acquired its own Soviet architecture in the 1930s: the "Cultural Revolution" residential complex (No. 15, at the corner of Piskunov Street, architect V. Medvedev), one of five communal houses in Nizhny Novgorod, with passageways between buildings, shared kitchens, a kindergarten, showers, and laundries, and the House of Communications (No. 56), built in 1929–1936 to a design by architect M. Ginzberg, a monument of Constructivism ^[5].

Monuments appeared at the same time: the monument to A. M. Gorky by V. I. Mukhina on Gorky Square (November 2, 1952) and the monument to Ya. M. Sverdlov in the square on the street itself (1957, sculptors P. Gusev and N. Chugurin) ^[5].

The pedestrian street and museums

For a long time a trolleybus route ran along Sverdlovka, and only in the 1980s was the street made pedestrian-only ^[5]. The Memorial Museum of Ya. M. Sverdlov was established by order of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR No. 1747 of July 28, 1946, and opened to the public on November 6, 1947, in the single-story wing of M. I. Sverdlov's former stamp-engraving and rapid-printing workshop. In 1970 the museum received the adjoining apartment building from the 1880s, and in 1991 it was repurposed as the exhibition hall "Pokrovka, 8." In the basement level, a family space, the "Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors," opened in 2007; in 2020 it was transformed into the "Toy Museum" ^[39] — a joint project of the museum-reserve and the artist Aleksandr Lavrov, first shown to the public in 2011 and now comprising more than 800 exhibits ^[40].

In 1992, next door, in the house of the merchant's wife A. Ya. Paltseva at 9 Piskunov Street, where the photographers A. O. Karelin and M. P. Dmitriev kept their studios, the State Russian Museum of Photography opened ^[5]. In 2006 the street was reconstructed, with the asphalt replaced by cobblestones ^[11].

The goat has become one of the symbols of Pokrovskaya and a must-photograph spot: it has been polished to a shine by the hands and backs of those who climb on for a photo

In the city of N^[11]

The street's best-known sculpture appeared earlier than the "Nizhny Novgorod types" and stands apart from them: the "Merry Goat" was installed in 2005 on Theatre Square, by the drama theater building^[41]. The figure plays on the city's coat of arms: the deer granted to Nizhny Novgorod in 1781 was nicknamed the "merry goat" by townspeople because of the clumsy drawing, and since 1993 that name has also been borne by the all-Russian festival of theatrical kapustniks held in the city — the sculpture grew out of it^[42]. The goat has become one of the symbols of Pokrovskaya and a must-photograph spot: it has been polished to a shine by the hands and backs of those who climb on for a photo^[41]. The name has caught on beyond the square as well: Koza.Press, an independent Nizhny Novgorod publication founded by the journalist Slavina Irina, named itself after the same goat^[43].

Metal figures of "Nizhny Novgorod types" ^[11], personifying the townspeople of the late 19th century ^[5], had begun to be installed even earlier: the first, in 2005, was a photographer with a dog by the sculptor Vladimir Shikanov, which appeared at building No. 2, and in 2006 came his postman with a bicycle at the House of Communications, a shoe-shiner at the Palace of Labor, and a governess with a child at the puppet theater ^[44]. The sculptures regularly suffer at the hands of vandals: the postman's bicycle wheel was sawed off, the photographer's flash was stolen ^[44], and the boy violinist and the Annenkov couple had to be dismantled after being attacked ^[11].

Protection and restoration

The street's current protected status is that of a place of interest: the scientific research documentation, commissioned by the Ministry of Culture of Nizhny Novgorod Region, is dated December 31, 2019, and constitutes Volume 7 of a comprehensive study of the historic territory "Old Nizhny Novgorod" ^[27]. The boundaries cover the historic route of the street with the adjoining blocks — from Minin and Pozharsky Square and the Zelensky Descent to Zvezdinka and Gorky Square, and from the thalweg of the Pochaina Ravine to Alekseevskaya. Of the 270 objects within these boundaries:

• 104 (38%) have the status of monuments of federal and regional significance
• 42 (15%) show signs of a cultural heritage site and are proposed for inclusion in the register
• 55 (20%) are classed as valuable objects of the historical and urban-planning environment

The subject of protection includes the historic red lines, building lines, and height characteristics of the predominantly two- to five-story buildings; the regulations prohibit the placement of new large commercial, sports, and industrial complexes and require preserving the regime of restricted vehicular traffic, while the document judges buildings from the mid-20th century as not disrupting the overall impression of the historic street ^[27].

Among the federal-category monuments on the street itself are the City Duma building (No. 1), the city theater (No. 13, 1895–1896, architects V. A. Schröter and P. P. Malinovsky), and the Nobility Assembly (No. 18); among the regional ones are the 1876 apartment building by the architect I. K. Kostryukov (No. 4) and the main house of the G. Sverchkov estate (No. 6, 1810s, 1845) ^[33]. The Serebrennikova estate was taken under state protection by decision No. 288 of the regional Council of People's Deputies on August 31, 1993, and since 2002 it has been listed as a cultural heritage site of regional significance ^[29].

For the city's 800th anniversary in 2021, under the "Restoration 800" program, work was carried out at roughly one hundred cultural heritage sites in the historic center, 29 of which were renovated in the anniversary year ^[45][46]. On Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, the facade of the house of the merchant and patron of the arts M. A. Kostromin (No. 4) was restored, along with repairs to the auditorium, the first- and second-floor corridors, the emergency staircase, and the vestibule of the Teaching Theater of the Evgeniy Evstigneev Theater School ^[45]; the facades and roof of the Kameneva trading wing (No. 40) were restored ^[37], as were the facades of the Smirnov house (No. 23) ^[38]; on the stretch between Oktyabrskaya and Malaya Pokrovskaya, a pedestrian zone appeared with new paving, illumination, and landscaped rest areas ^[46]. The quality of the work drew complaints: houses were often painted only on the front facade ^[46].

Preservation problems remain acute. The two-story wooden house No. 44, which first appeared on the city map in 1917, lost its mezzanine after a fire: it has not been recognized as a monument, but it stands within the protection zone of a regional heritage site, the estate of I. Ya. Ravkind (No. 42) ^[47]; seized from its owner, it is listed as a valuable city-forming object, and plans are under way to sell it with an obligation to reconstruct it ^[48].

The two-story brick building at No. 42, lit. V, was declared unsafe for use in the spring of 2024; the state of emergency introduced around it remained in effect until December 25, 2025, and was lifted in early February 2026 — this building itself is not part of the heritage site, whereas lit. A and B, the main house and the wing of the Ravkind estate, are protected as monuments ^[49]. The requisition of house No. 42v was halted after repairs: the residents reinforced the foundation and plinth and put the blind area, roof, and window enclosing structures in order ^[48]. Three more houses on the street continue to be seized — No. 4, lit. A (a monument from 1876, 74% worn, with a restaurant operating on the first floor), the burned-out ruins of No. 35d, and the brick house No. 44, lit. B; the owners are contesting the seizure of the first two in court ^[48].

The study was carried out by the Encyclopedia of Nizhny Novgorod on August 21, 2026, based on archival records from the State Archival Service of Nizhny Novgorod Region, local history publications, and cultural heritage site registries. The gathering of facts, cross-checking against sources, and compilation into a single text were done by the encyclopedia's editorial team; every statement can be verified against the publications listed in the sources. Illustrations are from the encyclopedia's photo archive.

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