Nizhny Posad Market (Nizhneposadsky torg) was a trading square and market zone at the The Kremlin, in the Nizhny Posad district (the Lower Bazaar). It existed from at least the 17th century and was one of the main trading centers of Nizhny Novgorod in the pre-industrial period.
Trading activity
The Nizhny Posad Market concentrated wholesale and retail trade in various goods. Among the major merchants who owned shops here were the merchant-industrialists Stepan and Ivan Bolotov, who settled in this district in 1683. They owned 11 shops and shop plots at the market; they specialized in selling iron, copper, and pewter goods, selling their wares both in Nizhny Novgorod and at the Makaryev Fair.
Connection to urban development
Proximity to the market shaped where affluent townspeople chose to live. Thus, the second-guild merchant Pavel Vasilyevich Vyakhirev decided in 1860 to move closer to the Nizhny Posad Market and to build a stone house with outbuildings at the start of Ilyinskaya Street — the design for a two-story building with basements and a mezzanine was commissioned from city architect N. I. Uzhumedsky-Gritsevich and approved by the Nizhny Novgorod Construction Commission on 16 August of the same year.
Present-day state of the site
The territory of the former market, which lay between Chasovaya and Ilyinskaya hills, gradually lost its market functions over time. Today it is part of the historic Nizhny Posad district at the foot of the Kremlin hill.