The Trade Fair Packhouses on the Strelka are fireproof warehouses built in 1900–1902 on the Siberian Wharf of the Nizhny Novgorod Fair from the dismantled structures of the Main Building of the 16th All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition of 1896[1]. They were built by the Saint Petersburg company Nadezhda ("Hope"), which had bought the pavilion from the treasury[1]. They stand on the far bank in Kanavino, on the spit where the Oka meets the Volga — the Strelka), at 21 Strelka Street[7]. In 1929 the fair was closed, the site was taken over by a cargo river port, and the packhouses became part of its holdings: enclosed in walls of silicate brick, their lacework frames concealed their origin from the townspeople for decades[3][5].

An exhibition pavilion bought by steamship owners

After the 1896 exhibition, no one planned to move the round Main Building any further: dismantling and re-erecting its parts would have cost too much, and the pavilion was slated to be sold for scrap unless the Nizhny Novgorod fair merchants bought it[1]. Occupying five desyatinas of city land, the building stood in the way of the final layout of the Exhibition Garden — today's Park of 1 May[1]. In July 1900 the newspaper Nizhegorodsky Listok) ("Nizhny Novgorod Sheet") reported that the central building had been sold to the Nadezhda company for 115,000 rubles; in the documents the purchase is invariably recorded as made directly from the Ministry of Finance, on whose books the pavilion stood[1].

The reasoning was practical: the building regulations for the Siberian Wharf required wooden sheds to be replaced with fireproof warehouses by 15 July 1905 and limited a warehouse to 40 sazhens in length, 10 sazhens in width and 2 sazhens in height, while the ready-made parts of the exhibition frame, as the company itself wrote, made it possible "to carry out the whole construction in a year and a half or so"[1]. The first design, prepared under engineer-technologist A. I. Ventskovsky, who headed Nadezhda's economic and technical department, proposed several giant galleries 23 sazhens wide, joined into a single building under a common dome. Governor P. F. Unterberger flatly rejected the petition filed on 14 August 1900: the plan conflicted with the Highest-approved layout of the Siberian Wharf, with the commission's ruling that had fixed the maximum warehouse width at ten sazhens, and with the mandatory regulations on the intervals between warehouses[1].

Revised drawings by A. A. Zeveke were submitted to the fair office on 5 September 1900. On 7 September the fair committee authorized the construction of only nine small warehouses, and the building permit of 5 December 1900 allowed the company only "single-storey iron packhouses"[1]. The dispute over the five large warehouses reached the Ministry of Internal Affairs: on 1 February 1901 its Technical and Construction Committee, chaired by the architect E. I. Zhiber, had no objections to the design itself but judged the large warehouses a fire hazard and limited the height of stored goods to two sazhens. On 17 March 1901 the company's board undertook not to stack goods in the packhouses higher than two sazhens and not to build a second storey in them, after which in May 1901 the fair office issued a second permit — for the "temporary erection" of the large packhouses, following a telegram from the Ministry of Internal Affairs[1].

Layout and dimensions

Fourteen packhouses of two types were assembled from parts of the pavilion; the company apparently completed all the construction by the 1902 fair season[1]. The nine smaller ones had a width along the foundation axes of 7.05 sazhens (about 15 m) and a length of 21 to 35 sazhens[1]. The five large ones were, by the company's own description, sheds on iron columns 23.4 sazhens wide, about 50 m; the ridge of the central section rose 7.71 sazhens above floor level — nearly 16.5 m, and measurements taken by restorers a century later gave a maximum height of 16.57 m[1][9].

The frames were made by the Saint Petersburg Metal Works in 1882 for the 15th All-Russian Exhibition in Moscow, from where the building passed to Nizhny Novgorod as a legacy and was assembled for the 1896 exhibition[1][2][7]. The columns are built up from angle irons and metal strips joined by rivets[2]. Technical supervision of the construction was initially carried out by the railway engineer K. I. Karas and the city architect I. I. Bukovsky, and from March 1901, in place of Bukovsky, by the academician of architecture V. P. Tseidler[1].

Part of the Gorky River Port

On 24 May 1908, by a decree of the Council of Ministers, a liquidation commission for the Nadezhda company was set up and given all its property, and the fireproof warehouses received new owners[1]. In 1929 the fair was closed as a socially alien phenomenon, and its place was taken by the Gorky River Cargo Port, which for eight decades became a strategic transport hub[3]. In the early 1930s port construction got under way on the Strelka: the Volga's first modern-standard berths appeared here, with a vertical wall of monolithic concrete on a pile foundation[3]. For more, see the article Gorky River Port.

The iron packhouses became ordinary warehouses within the port's holdings: the lacework frames were enclosed in walls of silicate brick, and from the outside the buildings looked like ordinary port sheds[5]. In the 1930s two reinforced-concrete packhouses, designed by the architectural bureau of Narkomvod (the People's Commissariat of Water Transport) under A. Z. Grinberg, were built along the Oka[3][6]. The number of exhibition-hall buildings dwindled, but sources disagree on how quickly: according to some, four sections of the pavilion were moved to the port and by 1943 only two remained[5], according to others, six packhouses still stood here in the 1940s[8]. After the 1960s reconstruction two survived: they were moved about a hundred metres and partly dismantled[5][8].

Identifying the structures and their present condition

The lacework structures hidden inside the unremarkable warehouses of the by-then defunct port were discovered in 2015. The first to notice the mismatch between "form" and "content" was the Nizhny Novgorod architect D. V. Plekhanov: comparing surviving illustrative material, he concluded from a comparative analysis that sections of the central building of the 1896 exhibition had once been moved to the Strelka, to the former Siberian Wharf[1]. The hypothesis was supported by T. P. Vinogradova, I. S. Agafonova and other researchers, and archival research by V. V. Krasnov in the Central Archive of the Nizhny Novgorod Region (fond 489, inventory 286) confirmed the theory with files from the fair office[1].

In late December 2016 the structures were placed on the state heritage register as "Metal structures of the pavilions that formed part of the Main Building of the 16th All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition of 1896"[4]. In 2017 they received the status of identified cultural heritage sites; at the same time the frames were freed of their brick walls and slate roofs[5][7], and the two reinforced-concrete packhouses along the Oka were demolished[3]. The fate of the two surviving buildings is described in the article Packhouses on the Strelka[7].

Sources

  1. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — V. V. Krasnov. On the history of the packhouses on the Nizhny Novgorod Strelka (based on documents from TsANO, fond 489, inventory 286) (archive)
  2. archi.ru — Archi.ru — Steel lace on the Strelka (archive)
  3. strelkahistory.tilda.ws — Open Strelka — About the Strelka: history of the territory, the fair wharves and the Gorky River Port (archive)
  4. NIA "Nizhny Novgorod" — NTA-Privolzhye — Packhouses on the Nizhny Novgorod Strelka placed on the state register as possessing the features of cultural heritage sites (archive)
  5. travelblognn.ru — Lacework packhouses on the Strelka — a 19th-century cultural heritage site (with photographs of the river port) (archive)
  6. archi.ru — Archi.ru — The Strelka for Nizhny Novgorod residents: the next chapter (archive)
  7. packhouses.strelkapark.ru — "Packhouses" Cultural Center — an exhibition center and concert hall in Nizhny Novgorod: history and address
  8. zem-nn.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Land — In line with the Eiffel Tower
  9. prorus.ru — Project Russia — Restoration and adaptation for contemporary use of the packhouses on the Strelka in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)