Constructivism in Nizhny Novgorod is an architectural movement of the late 1920s through the first half of the 1930s that left the city housing-cooperative apartment blocks, communal houses (doma-kommuny), buildings of government and communications, hotels, palaces of culture, and an entire residential district — the Sotsgorod of the Automobile Plant. Individual buildings of this period are scattered across the historic center, on Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street, Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, and Ilyinskaya streets, and a few more stand on Upper Volga Embankment and in Sormovo (disambiguation), but the most complete statement of the era was not a single building but a settlement built alongside the automobile plant itself, constructed together with it in the early 1930s.

A City Being Rebuilt

Constructivist buildings appeared in Nizhny Novgorod not in isolation, but as part of a broader rebuilding of the city. These years saw the opening of the permanent Kanavinsky Bridge across the Oka (1933), the formation of the Nizhny Novgorod Union of Architects, and the reconstruction of Sovetskaya Square — now Minin Square; the reconstruction cost the city two churches, the Annunciation Cathedral and the Church of Metropolitan Alexy [7].

Local historians count among the major new buildings of that time [7]:

  • Lenin Palace of Culture (1924);
  • the House of Soviets in the The Kremlin (1929—1931);
  • the Palace of Culture in Sormovo (1930);
  • the Railwayman's House on Revolution Square in front of the station building, notable for its rounded corner (1934);
  • the school named for the 10th Anniversary of October on the Otkos — now the building of NIITO.

Housing-Cooperative Apartment Blocks

The first post-revolutionary residential buildings appeared on Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street: in 1926—1927, to a design by architect L. D. Agafonov, experimental houses of the "Novator" housing cooperative were built here — today's buildings No. 16-a and 18. These are low-rise residential buildings of the early Soviet architecture period, distinguished by an original structural solution [1].

In 1928—1930, on the same street, at house No. 30, a three-story sectional residential building of the Society of Former Political Prisoners was built to a design by architect K. D. Blokhin; in 1939 a fourth floor was added to the building. Sources describe its style as imitating constructivism [1].

In the Ilyinskaya Street area, the same circle of buildings includes a three-story, three-section residential building of the workers' housing-construction cooperative "Inzhenerny Rabotnik" (Engineering Worker) (Ilyinskaya, 57), built in the late 1920s to a design by architects V. V. Medvedev and A. A. Yakovlev [2].

Cooperative construction was a new form for the city: the building was erected by an association of future residents united by profession or shared fate — engineers, former political prisoners. Hence both the modest size of these buildings and the fact that architectural experiment in them coexists with a quite traditional sectional layout.

Communal Houses (Doma-Kommuny)

In the late 1920s — early 1930s, five complexes of communal houses were built in Nizhny Novgorod, two of them in the Bolshaya Pokrovskaya area. On Piskunova Street, to a design by architect V. V. Medvedev, the The "Cultural Revolution" Communal House was built, whose blocks came to dominate the surrounding development. On Vorobyov Street, now Malaya Pokrovskaya Street, the "House of the Chekist" was built [3].

A communal house was not simply a residential building with shared services, but an attempt to restructure daily life: the kitchen, dining room, children's rooms, and club were moved out of the apartment into shared blocks. This is precisely why such complexes were built not as single buildings but as groups of blocks, and precisely why their scale noticeably exceeded the surrounding development.

The "House of the Chekist" (Malaya Pokrovskaya, 16) was built in 1929—1932 to a design by architect A. N. Tyupikov and is included in the unified state register of cultural heritage sites as a monument of regional significance [4]. The city newspaper "Den Goroda" devoted a separate feature to the building, calling it a monument of Soviet constructivist architecture and a communal house built for NKVD employees [11].

The architect's own fate is set out in this feature in more detail than in reference works: in the late 1920s Tyupikov was accused of sabotage and sentenced to be shot, then the sentence was overturned, after which he designed for the same agency — the main GPU building, the "House of the Chekist," and the "Dinamo" stadium. Full trust in an architect of the pre-revolutionary school was, however, lacking: architect Voronkov was appointed to assist him [15].

Government, Communications, Hotels

The even-numbered side of Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street, before Gorky Square), ends with the House of Communications (Dom Svyazi) (building No. 56), built to a design by architect M. Gintsberg from 1929 to 1936. The building is a monument of Soviet architecture of the constructivist era; its façades are decorated with pilasters and a cornice by architect Ye. M. Michurin, a member of a dynasty of Nizhny Novgorod building contractors and architects [5].

On the same street, in 1929—1932, the building of the Red Cross Society was constructed to a design by architects K. D. Blokhin and F. P. Sheloumov [3].

Hotel construction in these years is associated with the name of Moscow architect A. Z. Grinberg, who worked together with M. T. Smurov. On Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, in 1933—1935, they built the "Intourist" hotel, later known as the "Moskva" hotel [3]. Their second work has survived: the "Tsentralnaya" hotel, later "Rossiya," now "Volzhsky Otkos," at Upper Volga Embankment, 2a, was built in the first half of the 1930s and today holds the status of a cultural heritage site of regional significance [8].

The scale of Grinberg's work in the region extended beyond a single city: by the time he took on rebuilding the Nizhny Novgorod People's House into a theater, he already had Houses of Soviets to his name both in the regional center and in Dzerzhinsk; the theater's reconstruction — enlarging the auditorium and rebuilding the main façade — took four years [14].

Next to the hotel, at the intersection of Semashko Street and the Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment (building 2/10), the Railwayman's House was built in 1937—1938 to a design by architect D. P. Silvanov — a building placed under state protection by order of the regional committee for the protection of historical and cultural heritage in 1999 [9][10].

The "Flatiron House" on Revolution Square

The similarly named Railwayman's House on Revolution Square in front of Moskovsky Station is a different building with a different story. Built in 1934, it is known to residents as the "flatiron house" and remains one of the square's architectural dominants [7][12].

A newspaper feature adds a detail absent from reference works: the house was built as a communal house for railway workers, who were meant by design to live right next to the main line, and it was placed directly opposite the Tsar's Pavilion of 1896 — a building whose purpose the new era denied by the very fact of its proximity [12].

Sormovo and the Working-Class Outskirts

Factory districts received not residential experiments but large-scale public buildings. In 1930, a Palace of Culture was built in Sormovo (disambiguation) at the Krasnoye Sormovo Plant [7]. The palaces of culture of this generation solved the same problem as the communal houses, but from the other direction: while the communal house moved daily life out of the apartment, the palace of culture gathered a club, library, auditorium, and hobby groups for an entire factory district under one roof.

The factory newspaper "Krasny Sormovich" also described another building in the center of Sormovo — the former Sormovo Hotel of 1934, which it classifies as already post-constructivist. Its most recognizable element is the superstructure above the central entrance [13].

In principle, this could also be called a balcony. But if you don't want to start an argument, you write "little tower" or "tower volume."

— architect Vladimir Pegov on the superstructure above the entrance of the former Sormovo Hotel, "Krasny Sormovich" [13]

The Sotsgorod of the Automobile Plant

The largest-scale embodiment of the era's ideas was the residential settlement built simultaneously with the Gorky Automobile Plant. Its planning basis was formed by the avenues of Kirov and Ilyich together with the adjoining streets and blocks [6]. Unlike the city center, where constructivist buildings were inserted into an already-formed historical fabric, here the district was designed as a whole: housing, transport, hospital, school, culture — all at once and together.

The district's appearance was determined by a competition, and the winning project was not the only one: among the entrants in the competition for the development of the Avtozavodsky district was Moscow architect Georgy Golts, whose project did not win — the surviving drawings and sketches make it possible to imagine what the Sotsgorod might have become under a different outcome [16].

The timeline of the district's development can be traced year by year [6]:

  • 1933 — construction completed of the tram line from Lengorodok, now Lenin Avenue, to the Automobile Plant; the first tram of route 12 ran;
  • 1934 — the road from the main office to Lengorodok was completed, the village of Gnilitsy and the hamlets of Nagulino and Strigino were joined to the district, and the first polyclinic and surgical hospital opened;
  • 1935 — the Automobile Plant and the Sotsgorod were visited by Maxim Gorky;
  • 1936 — the first M-1 passenger car came off the assembly line, the district's first automatic telephone exchange began operating, and the "radial house" was built;
  • 1937 — a cinema-concert hall opened, the future "Mir" cinema, and construction began on a children's railway from Kanavino to the Sotsgorod.

The Sotsgorod Today

It was in the Automobile Plant district, not the old city, that the idea of the sotsgorod was carried through to completion: the district received not individual showcase buildings but a coherent structure in which housing, work, transport, and leisure were planned as a single whole.

Yet this nearly century-old ensemble remains little known even today. "Den Goroda," reporting on a research project that invited longtime residents to share memories of life in the district, put it directly [17].

The Sotsgorod is a historic district of Nizhny Novgorod… How many people come out to the last metro station just to stroll through an ensemble of buildings nearly a century old?

— "Den Goroda," on the project "Riddles of the Sotsgorod" [17]

Legacy and Losses

The fate of these buildings varied. Some hold the status of cultural heritage sites and are recorded in the state register:

  • the "House of the Chekist" at Malaya Pokrovskaya, 16 [4];
  • the "Volzhsky Otkos" hotel at Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment, 2a [8];
  • the Railwayman's House at the intersection of Semashko Street and the Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment [9][10].

Rebuildings and Losses

Other buildings were rebuilt: the Society of Former Political Prisoners' house had a floor added as early as 1939 [1], and the postwar detailed planning project for the center of Gorky, 1948—1953, envisaged rebuilding and widening a number of streets in the historic core [2].

There are direct losses as well: the "Intourist" — "Moskva" hotel on Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, the 1933—1935 work of A. Z. Grinberg and M. T. Smurov, was demolished in 1997 [3]. Together with the churches lost during the reconstruction of Sovetskaya Square [7], this shows that the 1930s rebuilding of the city later became, in its turn, a subject of rebuilding.

Sources

  1. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — Landmark: Bolshaya Pecherskaya (archive)
  2. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — Landmark: Zapochainye (archive)
  3. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — Landmark: Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street (archive)
  4. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — List of Cultural Heritage Sites Included in the Unified State Register (archive)
  5. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — Kucherova T. Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street (archive)
  6. lib-avt.ru — Avtozavodsky District Library System — Timeline of Events of the Avtozavodsky District (archive)
  7. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — Kucherova T. Stages of Urban Planning Activity in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
  8. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — Landmark: Volzhsky Otkos (archive)
  9. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — List of Cultural Heritage Sites: Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment (archive)
  10. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — Materials of the State Historical-Cultural Expert Review of the Railwayman's House (archive)
  11. biblmr.r52.ru — "Den Goroda. Nizhny Novgorod" — The House of the Chekist on Malaya Pokrovskaya: a Monument of Soviet Constructivism (archive)
  12. biblmr.r52.ru — "Den Goroda. Nizhny Novgorod" — The Railwaymen's House (the "flatiron house") on Revolution Square (archive)
  13. biblmr.r52.ru — "Krasny Sormovich" — Why a Tower Above the Hotel: the Building of the Former Sormovo Hotel (archive)
  14. biblmr.r52.ru — "Den Goroda. Nizhny Novgorod" — Constructivist Architect Alexander Grinberg and the Rebuilding of the People's House (archive)
  15. biblmr.r52.ru — "Den Goroda. Nizhny Novgorod" — Architect A. N. Tyupikov: from a Death Sentence to Projects for the GPU (archive)
  16. biblmr.r52.ru — "Den Goroda. Nizhny Novgorod" — Georgy Golts, Entrant in the Competition for the Development of the Avtozavodsky District (archive)
  17. biblmr.r52.ru — "Den Goroda. Nizhny Novgorod" — Riddles of the Sotsgorod: a Research Project about the Avtozavodsky District (archive)