Gorky River Port was a cargo river port that operated from 1932 on the Strelka), the cape where the Oka and Volga meet in Kanavino, on land that had belonged to the closed Nizhny Novgorod Fair. It was established by order No. 94 of the People's Commissariat of Water Transport on 7 March 1932 as the Nizhny Novgorod River Port, and renamed Gorky in November of the same year [1]. Until the early 1990s the port held the title of one of the country's most powerful river ports [1] and was an important strategic node on the "north-south" and "west-east" routes [2]. It was shut down in the 2010s; a stadium for the 2018 World Cup was built on its site, and the territory was landscaped [1][2].

From the Siberian wharves to a port

The cargo shore of the Strelka existed long before Soviet power: the wharves on the Volga side were called Siberian, and those on the Oka side Petersburg; every summer and autumn the waterways to the cape were crowded with barges of goods [5]. In the 1920s there were more than 30 unimproved berths here, with cargo handling done by hand or with the simplest mechanisms — conveyors and winches [1]. In 1929 the fair was closed as a "socially alien phenomenon," and the Gorky river cargo port was set up on its site [2].

Berths and warehouses of the 1930s

In the early 1930s two reinforced-concrete warehouses (pakgauzy) rose along the Oka — experimental structures using new technologies, part of the Volga's transport infrastructure; they were built to a design by the architectural bureau of "Narkomvod," headed by A. Z. Grinberg, the architect of the House of Soviets in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin [2]. In 1934 the Strelka began building the first improved berths on the Volga, with a vertical mooring wall of monolithic concrete on a pile foundation; in 1939 a 440-metre wall was put into service together with two covered two-storey warehouses and rail access lines [1].

Mechanization of loading operations in the early years was handled by a team led by engineer N. N. Kabachinsky. In 1936 the Siberian wharves received their first three steam floating cranes, the "Staryi Burlak," with a capacity of 1.5 tonnes; in 1939 four "Kirovets" gantry cranes rated at 2 tonnes were put into operation, and the port became a transshipment point for cargo between rail and water and back [1].

Heyday: "port of five seas"

After the war the Gorky port received the lion's share of reconstruction funds: of the 22,600,000 roubles allocated for restoring the ports and wharves of the Volga, it was given more than two-thirds — 15 million [1]. By 1957 the port had 18 berths, including four large ones with reinforced-concrete walls totalling about 450 running metres, and the total mooring front exceeded 1,800 running metres; as of 1 January 1957 the port had 228 loading machines and mechanisms, 41 of them cranes. The cargo turnover of the Gorky water hub grew from 1.5 to 5 million tonnes between 1925 and 1956 [1].

In 1967 a "Derrick" crane with a 100-tonne capacity was installed at the port; by the spring of 2017 it remained the last crane on the Strelka [1]. In the 1960s the port warehouses with metal structures were rebuilt and renovated — these are the Trade Fair Packhouses on the Strelka (nnov.ec) [2]. The port remained a closed restricted-access enterprise and, at the same time, a crucial node of an international transport corridor, a "port of five seas" [2]; the word "Strelka" was laid out on the mooring wall in 1967 on the initiative of the port's workers, for the 50th anniversary of Soviet power [2][6].

Decline and closure

The inexpediency of an industrial zone on the Strelka was already noted in urban-planning documents in the 1960s, but the port's closure only became possible once the stadium for the 2018 World Cup began to be built [2]. In 1994 the enterprise was converted into the joint-stock company "Nizhny Novgorod Port" [1] at 20 Strelka Street [3]; the port, once the largest in the Soviet Union, did not survive the privatizations of the 1990s — its cargo cranes stood idle for years amid wastelands and derelict buildings [5]. The last entry in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities was made on 27 February 2016: the court declared it bankrupt and opened insolvency proceedings, and in 2017 the enterprise was going through liquidation [1].

In early August 2017 workers began demolishing two reinforced-concrete warehouses of the former port — a parking lot for the stadium was to be built on the site — and an excavator partially destroyed another landmark, the 1901 Fair Water-Intake Station. The "Open Strelka" movement came out against the demolition: its coordinator Mikhail Orlov said the dismantling had started from the rear of the buildings so it would not be visible from the city's panoramic views, while architect Zoya Ryurikova assessed the warehouses as nearly ready-made 13,000 square metres of exhibition space; architecture critic Marina Ignatushko accused the authorities of hypocrisy. The regional government responded that both buildings had been declared unsafe and at risk of collapse, had never been cultural-heritage sites, and no one had promised to preserve them [4].

What remains

Surviving from the port are the concrete mooring walls that gave the cape its geometrically regular outline, the "Strelka" inscription, and the anchor of the Gorky River Port [2]. The ornate metal warehouses have also survived: in 2015, following an architectural tour of the Strelka, it was suggested that they had originally been built as exhibition halls, and in 2017 this was documented — they are a monument of Russian engineering thought from the last third of the 19th century [2]. The buildings were restored for the city's anniversary, transparent walls were erected inside, and today it is a concert hall and exhibition space [5].

Sources

  1. rus-shipping.ru — Russian Shipping — Nizhny Novgorod River Port: a retrospective (Sergei Viktorov, 6 April 2017; based on the book by S. I. Prokhorov, "Industry and Transport of Gorky Region, 1917…" (archive)
  2. strelkahistory.tilda.ws — Strelka: History of the Place (IRGSNO) — About the Strelka (archive)
  3. book-hall.ru — Kanavino District Library System — JSC "Nizhny Novgorod Port" — a tour of the district: Strelka (archive)
  4. Kommersant (Volga region) — Kommersant (Nizhny Novgorod) — Things did not go smoothly at the Strelka: heritage activists protest the demolition of the former port's warehouses (2 August 2017) (archive)
  5. Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — 10 facts about the Strelka, the place where the past, present, and future of Nizhny Novgorod meet (archive)
  6. V Gorode N — The Nizhny Novgorod Strelka: Between Past and Future (archive)