Maxim Gorky Street (until 1958 Polevaya Street, earlier Novaya) is one of the longest and busiest streets in the center of Nizhny Novgorod: almost four kilometers long, with twenty-five intersections with other streets and several squares [1]. It runs through the Nizhegorodsky and Sovetsky Districts, connecting the Belinsky area near Kovalikha Ravine with the Oka escarpment and passing through Gorky Square and Freedom Square. A century and a half ago this was the edge of the city: beyond the last houses the fields began, hence the old name [2]. Today the four kilometers of this former outskirts hold the only church in the country built in memory of the rescue of Alexander III's family, the oldest surviving provincial prison castle in Russia, a park on the site of a closed cemetery, a block of wooden buildings from the first half of the 19th century, and the construction site of a new section of the Metro [1][7][12].
Polevaya: a street on the edge of the city
The street first appeared on a city plan in 1839, and building along it began in the 1830s–1850s, mostly with one- and two-story houses. There were no luxurious mansions here: the residents were minor officials, craftsmen, and merchants [1]. At first the street was called Novaya (New), later Polevaya (Field Street), and the second name was perfectly accurate — beyond the last houses the fields really did begin [2].
The section running downhill from Ostrozhnaya Square was commonly known as Polevaya-Ostrozhnaya, after the prison castle around which the square took shape [1]. The proximity of the ostrog (jail) also explains one of the old names of the square at the other end of the street — Arestantskaya (Convicts' Square) [2].
The street is linked to the childhood of Alexey Peshkov, the future Maxim Gorky. After a fire in his workshop and the division of property with his sons, his grandfather Vasily Kashirin bought a house here, with a tavern on the ground floor [2]. The family's earlier home on Postal Descent survives as the "Kashirin House", but the house on Polevaya has not survived to the present day.
The street received the writer's name in 1958 [2]. What Polevaya looked like before the redevelopments can now be seen above all in the photographs of the Nizhny Novgorod photographer Maxim Dmitriev [1] — they are collected in the selection "The Old Center in the Photographs of Karelin and Dmitriev".
| Location | Former names | Current name |
|---|---|---|
| The street itself | Novaya, Polevaya; the lower section — Polevaya-Ostrozhnaya [1][2] | Maxim Gorky Street, since 1958 [2] |
| The square at the start of the street | Novaya, Novobazarnaya, Sennaya, Arestantskaya, Polevaya; in the 1930s — May 1 Square [2][8] | Gorky Square, since the early 1950s [2][8] |
| The square by the prison fortress | Ostrozhnaya [1] | Freedom Square [1] |
The Writer's Name on the Map
Gorky's name was not the first to come to the street: from 1932 the whole city bore it, and the writer himself took no pleasure in this. In a letter to the Nizhny Novgorod journalist and local historian Fyodor Khitrovsky, he confessed how strange it felt to address an envelope this way, and immediately joked about his early pen name, Iegudil Khlamida [8].
The city's former name was restored in 1990 after one of the first referendums in the country, while the street and the square kept the writer's name [8].
Today for the first time I wrote on an envelope "Gorky" instead of "N. Novgorod." It is very awkward and unpleasant
If I had kept my first pen name, Iegudil Khlamida, I wonder how the name would have sounded?
Gorky Square
At the beginning of the 19th century there was no square in the usual sense here — it was an outskirt of swampy ravines. Change began after Nicholas I's visit in 1834: the architect Georg Kizevetter drew up a plan to fill in the ravines and lay out a new square [2]. It was planned on the site of two ponds near the present-day House of Communications; they were filled in by the end of the 19th century, with earth and refuse hauled in, and previously an embankment-dam about 150 meters long ran across the ponds, connecting the Arzamas road with the entrance to the city [8].
By the 1860s this was already a bustling place: peasants from the surrounding villages brought hay, food, and household goods here, and a bazaar was held on Wednesdays, of which the Srednoy Market became the heir [2][8]. In the 1930s the square was considered the largest in the city — five hectares against the three of Moscow's Red Square — and demonstrations were held on it; it was then called May 1 Square [8].
The bronze Gorky was installed in the center of the square on November 2, 1952. The figure, about seven meters tall, was created by Vera Mukhina, while the architectural part of the project was carried out by Vladimir Lebedev and Pavel Steller; together with its rock-shaped pedestal, the monument rises fourteen meters [2][8]. An all-Union competition for designs of monuments to the writer for Moscow, Leningrad, and Gorky was held back in 1939; Mukhina's work won, but the war postponed its realization [2].
The monument was originally meant to stand on the bluff — hence the billowing coat, which on the square lacks a wind to fill it. Mukhina knew Gorky personally and portrayed him young, from his years in Nizhny, when "The Song of the Stormy Petrel" was written [8]. The park around the monument is essentially an arboretum: the plants are said to have been brought here from places where the writer lived; the city's only cork tree grows here, and the park has 1,195 trees and shrubs in all [8].
Today Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, Gorky Street, Novaya, Zvezdinka, and Piskunova radiate from the square, and beneath it lies the first metro station in the upper part of the city [2].
Prison Castle
Nizhny Novgorod Ostrog on what is now Freedom Square was designed in 1818 by the engineer Agustín de Betancourt — the same man whose designs produced the Alexander Column in St. Petersburg, the Moscow Manege, and the Old Yarmarka Cathedral in Nizhny Novgorod. Construction began in 1820 and lasted four years, until 1824; the building turned out rectangular, with four towers [1]. According to other sources, the castle was completed a year earlier, in 1823, and that was when the first prisoners entered it [7].
Betancourt departed from the standard design: he placed the towers at the corners of the prison building itself rather than on the perimeter wall, as the state prescribed, and combined the commandant's building with the gate — the ground floor was where prisoners were received, and the second floor held the warden's room and the kitchen [7]. Many such prisons were built, but only two survive — in Nizhny Novgorod and Astrakhan [7].
The castle was designed for three hundred people; after barracks were built in the courtyard, the number reached a thousand. Thirty to forty prisoners were held in a single cell, and the windows were covered with double bars and wooden shutters. Electricity was installed only in 1900, and an alarm system appeared eleven years later. A hospital was opened in 1856 with funds from the philanthropist Vasily Michurin — who later also rebuilt the prison church, which is when it acquired its cast-iron columns. Four punishment cells lay directly beneath the church, so the words of the prayer service mingled with the sounds of punishment [7].
Prisoners were issued metal mugs of water, and they used them to talk to one another: each letter corresponded to a certain number of knocks on the wall. According to one of the wardens, only seven people managed to escape over the entire history of the castle — four got out through the bathhouse and the hospital, and another walked out of the church in a monk's habit, handed to him by a townswoman who had come to a festive service [7].
Many political prisoners passed through the ostrog: Aleksey Peshkov, Vladimir Korolenko, Pyotr Zalomov, Yakov Sverdlov, Felix Dzerzhinsky, and Dr. Nikolay Semashko, who spent nine months here and was released on substantial bail because of tuberculosis [1][7].
By the start of the 20th century the building had fallen into disrepair, but the authorities chose not to invest in repairs — a new prison was being built on the Arzamas Road. They did not manage to demolish the castle: the First World War began, and German and Austro-Hungarian soldiers started arriving here. In 1918 the makeup of the prisoners changed again; according to some accounts, seventy people were shot in the courtyard at that time, and soon afterward the prison was closed [7].
Further on, the premises were occupied by warehouses; during the Great Patriotic War an evacuation hospital was located here, and in 1981 the prison castle was transferred to the Nizhny Novgorod Museum of History and Architecture. In 2009 the building was closed for restoration and then reopened to visitors [1][7].
Maxim Gorky visited here twice, and he even had a "cell of his own"
According to the recollections of contemporaries, even Fyodor Chaliapin visited him and sang for him in his cell
Petropavlovskoye Cemetery and Kulibin Park
For a century and a half, the southern side of the street was occupied by Petropavlovskoye Cemetery. It all began with a Senate decree of November 17, 1771: burials at churches were banned, and it was ordered that they be carried out on common pasture land outside the city — thus Nizhny Novgorod acquired its first burial ground outside the city [1].
A significant portion of the city's residents of the time were buried here, including Ivan Petrovich Kulibin — his grave by the chapel is considered authentic — and Maxim Gorky's grandmother Akulina Ivanovna [1].
The cemetery existed until 1937: it was closed, the family vaults were broken open, the gravestones were smashed and hauled away, and the site was leveled to the ground; in 1939–1940 a park named after the mechanic was laid out on the spot [1].
Only the Church of Saints Peter and Paul survived — the first cemetery church in the city's history. In the Soviet years it housed the Pioneer cinema, but the building was preserved; the church was returned to believers in the 1990s [1]. Next to it stands the complex of clergy houses.
Church of the Most Merciful Savior
At building 177A stands the Church of the Most Merciful Savior, known to locals as Spas na Poltavke ("Savior on Poltavka") after the neighboring Poltavskaya Street. It is the only surviving church in the country built in memory of the rescue of the family of Emperor Alexander III in the train wreck of October 17, 1888, on the Kursk–Kharkov Railway. A separate reason for building the church specifically in the name of the Image of the Savior Not Made by Hands was that during the wreck the emperor had with him a copy of the ancient Vologda icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands [1][3].
The Nizhny Novgorod merchants decided to build it, and a site was chosen near the city ostrog (fortress-prison). Fundraising began in 1888; the commission included Nikolay Bugrov, N. E. Bashkirov, A. A. Blinov, A. M. Gubin, V. A. Sobolev, and others. In 1897 a building committee was formed, headed by Ya. E. Bashkirov, and a year later a competition was announced among the members of the Imperial Saint Petersburg Society of Architects: eighteen recognized architects took part, and the first prize went to the design by Aleksandr Mstislavovich Kochetov (1861–1912), who had shortly before received the title of academician [3].
The church was founded on June 7, 1899, Old Style. The stone five-domed church with a tiered bell tower was built in the Russian style, drawing on seventeenth-century Old Russian traditions and on the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Ostankino; the work was supervised by the academician of architecture Vladimir Tseydler. On August 26, 1903, the last large bell was raised onto the bell tower, and on October 12 of the same year Bishop Nazarius consecrated the church [3][9].
The church's murals were executed from cartoons by Semiradsky, Nesterov, Vasnetsov, and other artists, and in part repeat the murals of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow and St. Vladimir's Cathedral in Kyiv [3].
After the revolution, the Savior Church remained one of the few functioning parishes in the upland part of the city. From the early 1920s it housed the bishop's see, headed by Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky); from 1924 to 1926 he was listed among the clergy of the church [3].
Services ceased on November 21, 1937; the building was handed over to the city authorities, the clergy were arrested, and the church was turned into a warehouse for the Vesna garment factory [1][9]. During the Great Patriotic War, the bell tower served as one of the city's air-defense posts [1].
Services resumed in the winter of 1990–1991, and the first liturgy was held on March 31, 1991; the church was reconsecrated in 1992, and was consecrated with the full episcopal rite on October 30, 2003 [9]. Among its holy objects are the wonder-working icon of the martyr Paraskeva Pyatnitsa, the icon of the Most Merciful Savior, and relics of the venerable Seraphim of Sarov and Sergius of Radonezh [3].
The Quarter of 1833
What Polevaya looked like before the high-rises is shown by the quarter bounded by Gorky Street, Reshetnikovskaya Street, and Granitny Lane — a tract of wooden manor-style buildings first mentioned in documents in 1833, which is how it got its name [1][11]. Tatyana Kazanskaya, the director of the museum here, called the quarter an enclave: surrounded by tall buildings, it seemed to her a future museum islet [11].
Two houses of the quarter stand right on the street. House 123 is known as the mansion of the meshchanin (townsman) Fyodor Stolyarov, built in 1880; House 127 belonged to the merchant Viktor Pyatov [12]. According to some sources, House 127 was built in 1890 [12], according to others, as early as 1842, to a design by the architect Afanasy Turmyshev [10].
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, House 127 was rented by the sisters Sofya, Zinaida, and Avgusta Nevzorova, participants in the Social Democratic movement; Nevzorov Street was later named after them. In 1900 the sisters were visited by Vladimir Lenin and his family, and he held a meeting here with local Social Democrats, at which he raised the question of publishing the newspaper Iskra abroad; some of the articles for it were prepared in this house [10].
In 1967, for the fiftieth anniversary of the revolution, a museum-apartment of the Nevzorov sisters was opened on the second floor, and since 1993 it has been called the Museum of the Nizhny Novgorod Intelligentsia — the only museum devoted to the everyday life of the Russian intelligentsia. The collection of seven hundred items was assembled over ten years by the director Tatyana Kazanskaya (1922–2015) and her staff; some of the items were brought in by residents of the historic quarters, and some were rescued from houses being demolished [10][11]. The very word "intelligentsia" is associated with the Nizhny Novgorod writer Pyotr Boborykin, who began using it in publications in the 1860s [11].
In 2013, the exhibition was moved to the "Pokrovka, 8" exhibition hall [10][11]. In 2021, the building was restored in time for the city's 800th anniversary: the contractor was to put the facade and roof in order, install new window units, replace the utility systems, and set up lighting; the initial contract price was 8.5 million rubles from the federal budget [10]. In May 2026, both buildings — nos. 123 and 127 — were reinforced next to the metro construction site: the subcontractor completed preservation and emergency-prevention work [12].
Theater for Young Audiences
The Nizhny Novgorod Theater for Young Audiences occupies building 145 on the street. The theater came about on the initiative of the actor, director, and impresario Nikolay Sobolshchikov-Samarin: in 1927 he wrote to the graduates of the Nizhny Novgorod theater technical school, proposing that they prepare a production on their own, without his involvement [13].
The young actors responded, and on November 28, 1928, the theater opened with Fonvizin's "The Minor." For its tenth anniversary it was named after Nadezhda Krupskaya and given its first building of its own, on Gruzinskaya Street, where the Komediya theater now operates. For its fiftieth anniversary, in 1978, the theater was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor and moved into a new building on Gorky Street, where it remains today [13].
Make a start, out of which you will in time create a young branch of the Nizhny Novgorod Theater
Tram, trolleybus, metro
Nizhny Novgorod's first tram lines were launched in 1896 for the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition, but the upper town did without Polevaya Street at that time. The street received rails in 1901, when the Pokhvalinsko-Ostrozhnaya line opened — from Ostrozhnaya Square to Novo-Bazarnaya Square and Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street [15].
Trolleybus service in the city was launched on June 27, 1947: the sole route, No. 1, "Minin Square — May 1 Square," was 2.6 kilometers long. At the end of the same year it was extended to Freedom Square along Figner Street — today's Varvarskaya. In 1948 the tram tracks were removed from the former Polevaya Street and trolleybuses were run along it, and Route No. 1 became a loop [14].
Later the street repeatedly served as a route terminus: in September 1971, when a line was built along Vaneev Street, Route No. 17, "Gorky Street — Construction Site," appeared [14].
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1901 | The Pokhvalinsko-Ostrozhnaya line of the tram opened: Ostrozhnaya Square — Novo-Bazarnaya Square — Bolshaya Pokrovskaya [15] |
| June 27, 1947 | The city's first Trolleybus route, No. 1 "Minin Square — May 1 Square," 2.6 km long, was launched [14] |
| late 1947 | Route No. 1 was extended to Freedom Square along Figner Street (Varvarskaya) [14] |
| 1948 | The tram tracks were removed from the street and the trolleybus began running along it; Route No. 1 became a loop [14] |
| September 1971 | A line was built along Vaneev Street, and Route No. 17 "Gorky Street — Construction Site" was introduced [14] |
| 2020s | An extension of the Avtozavodskaya metro line from "Gorkovskaya" to Freedom Square and Sennaya is being built under the street [16][18] |
The 1970s Reconstruction and the "Chinese Wall"
The largest reconstruction of the street began in the 1970s: part of the old buildings was demolished, and in their place rose multistory apartment buildings with shops on the ground floors [1].
The long blocks of these buildings acquired the nickname "Chinese Wall" in local usage — it survives in the everyday speech of Nizhny Novgorod residents and never made it into official documents. The demolition of historic buildings on the street continues to this day [1].
Five Corners
The intersection of Gorky Street with Ilyinskaya, Vorovskogo, and Arzamasskaya streets is known in the city as Five Corners — after the number of directions that meet here. The name has stuck to the buildings on the corner and serves locals as a landmark: addresses here are given not by number but as "at Five Corners."
Maslyakova Street, which connects Gorky Square with Ilyinka, also leads to the intersection.
The street today
Beneath the street, builders are constructing an extension of the Upper Town Metro line: the Avtozavodskaya branch is being extended from Gorkovskaya through Freedom Square to Sennaya. The cost of the extension is estimated at 48 billion rubles, and ridership is expected to grow to 12.5 million passengers a year once it opens; the two stations were originally due to be completed by 2026, but the deadline was later pushed back to 2027 [16].
From Sennaya to Freedom Square, the metro builders have already driven two tunnels with a combined length of about three kilometers. The remaining section under Gorky Street consists of two more tunnels, roughly one and a half kilometers in total: each boring machine must cover 729 meters and install 485 rings of reinforced-concrete lining [16]. By September 11, 2026, the boring machine "Evdokia" was working near Kulibin Park at a depth of 18 meters and had installed 270 of the 485 rings [17].
The Freedom Square station will be located along Gorky Street, starting from its intersection with Osharskaya. The first vestibule will lead out to the buildings at Gorky and Osharskaya, to Kulibin Park, the Youth Theatre, and the Vodnik stadium; the second will lead to Gorky, Vaneev, Varvarskaya, and Semashko, to Freedom Square, the 1905 Square garden, and the opera theater. Along with the construction, the roads on Gorky Street, Bolshaya Pecherskaya, Rodionov, and Freedom Square are being rebuilt [18].
Before the boring machines were launched, building 164 was placed under monitoring and repaired. A 2024 survey found that the cracks in the facade had appeared even before the utility networks on Osharskaya were relocated; to keep them from growing during the tunneling, inclined boreholes were drilled along the foundation, a cement mixture was pumped in through injectors, and the cracks in the walls were sealed. The work was announced on May 8, 2026 [4].
At the same time, the approaches to the square are being rebuilt: from the evening of August 31 to October 1, 2026, Maslyakov Street from Gorky Square to Ilyinskaya was closed for major repairs — the roadway is being widened to three or four lanes, and two-way traffic is being introduced [5].
References
- Official website (archive) (mamadomann.ru)
Sources
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — history of the street, the ostrog, the cemetery, and the Spasskaya Church — History of Gorky Street: finding out where the ostrog and graveyards in the center of Nizhny Novgorod came from (archive)
- Newsroom24 — how Gorky's name became fixed on the square and the street — Gorky Square and Gorky Street: how the writer's name became fixed on the city map
- nne.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Metropolia — history and structure of the Spassky church — Church in the Name of the All-Merciful Savior (archive)
- Vremya N — repair of house No. 164 before the launch of the tunnel boring machines — A house on Gorky Street is being repaired before the launch of the tunnel boring machines (archive)
- Vremya N — closure of Maslyakov Street for major repairs — Maslyakov Street in Nizhny Novgorod closed until October (archive)
- pro-nn.org — photo of the corner of Gorky and Studenaya — Nizhny Novgorod. Gorky Street. The corner of Gorky and Studenaya (archive)
- V gorode N — layout, daily life, and prisoners of the Nizhny Novgorod Ostrog — Ghosts and secrets of the Nizhny Novgorod Ostrog: what the city's oldest prison hides (archive)
- nnstories.tilda.ws — the monument to Gorky, the public garden, and the history of the square — 15 facts about the creation of the monument to Gorky, the proletarian writer (archive)
- nnhram-19.cerkov.ru — Parish of the Church in the Name of the All-Merciful Savior — dates of the founding, consecration, and resumption of services — Church in the Name of the All-Merciful Savior, Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
- V gorode N — history of house No. 127 and its restoration for the 800th anniversary — The former Museum of the Nizhny Novgorod Intelligentsia will be restored for the 800th anniversary of Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
- intelligentsia-museum.ru — Museum of the Nizhny Novgorod Intelligentsia — about the 1833 block and the museum's collection — Back Home (archive)
- V gorode N — reinforcement of houses No. 123 and No. 127 near the metro construction site — Historic houses reinforced near the metro construction site in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
- tyuz.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Youth Theatre — history of the theatre and its move to Gorky Street
- transp.nnov.ru — History of the Nizhny Novgorod trolleybus, based on Yu. M. Kossoy's book "50 Years of the Nizhny Novgorod Trolleybus" (archive)
- dengoroda-nn.ru — City Day. Nizhny Novgorod — the first tram lines and the Pokhvalinsko-Ostrozhnaya line — the birthplace of trams (archive)
- Kommersant (Volga Region) — parameters and cost of extending the Avtozavodskaya metro line — Metro tunnel boring has begun on Maxim Gorky Street in Nizhny Novgorod
- Pro Gorod Nizhny Novgorod — progress of the left tunnel boring in September 2026 — The "Evdokia" boring machine has passed more than half of the metro tunnel to the Svoboda station (archive)
- GIPERNN — where the Freedom Square station will be and what is being rebuilt around it — Is the train delayed? What is happening with metro construction in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)