Nizhny Posad (Nizhny Bazaar) — a collective name for the settled area at the foot of the The Kremlin.

Development of the Posad

Colonists from the Vladimir-Suzdal principality began settling the area of Nizhny Posad (Nizhny Bazaar) along the coastal strip between the Oka and the escarpment in the 13th–14th centuries.

On the site of the former trading ground between Chasovaya and Ilyinskaya Hill, where the Pochainsky Ravine opens onto the Volga, a center of city self-government had already taken shape by the 16th century. At the end of the 17th century, development began to the east of the trading ground (in the area within today's Kozhevennaya and Magistratskaya streets and Rybny and Kozhevenny lanes). Alongside residential buildings, there were slaughterhouses and the archbishop's fish ponds here.

From the second half of the 19th century, this locality acquired the ironic name Milliyoshka (a play on "million," referring to the social standing of the local population, the poorest strata, which contrasted sharply with the rest of Nizhny Posad's residents — mostly clerks and merchants of the Volga trade). At the same time, nearly all of the resulting development was of stone and aesthetically unassuming, owing to its commercial-warehouse purpose. The one- and two-story former warehouse and trading buildings had plain facades and, unlike the buildings of, for example, Rozhdestvenskaya Street, were mostly left unplastered, with a minimum of architectural detail.

In the 19th century, the Nizhny Novgorod local historian Nikolai Khramtsovsky wrote of this place: "In the Posad Market, along Zhivonosnovskaya Street, all sorts of odds and ends are traded: old iron, balalaikas, plain tobacco, and books. A little above the barracks, right by the Kremlin wall, stands the Church of the Life-Giving Spring. A little below the barracks, on the Volga, are the wharf offices of the Kama-Volga Steamship Company and of the firm known as "Merkury," which steamships call at from the opening of navigation until the fair. Beyond the barracks the Volga bank is unimproved and empty; only beneath the ruined section of the Kremlin wall, like birds' nests, cling a few small, decrepit little houses slated for demolition under the new plan — here, at the start of the 17th century, stood one of the Streltsy settlements."

Among Bathhouses and Trading Shops

The busiest streets of Nizhny Posad between the Kremlin and the embankment were the two Zhivonosnovskaya streets — Upper and Lower. They were laid out at the start of the 19th century on the site of haphazardly arranged archbishop's fish ponds, slaughterhouses, and mostly wooden houses belonging to Nizhny Novgorod's poor. The 1819 fire destroyed the old buildings, and the architect A. A. Betancourt was forced to hastily draw up the district's first regular development plan, which became part of the confirmed 1824 plan of Nizhny Novgorod.

While drafting the city's redevelopment plan in 1834–1839, architects I. Ye. Yefimov and P. D. Gotman altered the block layout and street alignment and, taking their bearing from the Church of the Life-Giving Spring, designed four enormous blocks of the Red Barracks (Nizhny Novgorod). The streets running along the bank were named Upper and Lower Zhivonosnovskaya and began to be actively built up with income properties belonging to merchants (F. Perepletchikov, P. Maleyevsky, and others), which remain significant historical and architectural landmarks of the first half of the 19th century to this day.

Nikolai Khramtsovsky wrote of these streets: "From the Church of the Life-Giving Spring to the Posad Market, alongside the Kremlin wall, runs Upper Zhivonosnovskaya Street, lined with stone houses, of which the house of the merchant's-councillor's wife Perepletchikova, standing opposite the Posad Market itself, is remarkable for its architecture. For its design, Mr. Kiesewetter, who served in Nizhny as city architect, received the highest commendation.

On the same street stands the merchant Frolov's inn, better known as the "police-master's rooms." It is preferred by visiting merchants over other Nizhny Novgorod inns. Between it and the Posad Market lies the Gluttons' Row [Obzhorny Ryad], where in springtime bargemen and other laborers drink an immeasurable quantity of kvass and eat thousands of pounds of salted beef, liver, ox heads, dried pike-perch, and the like."

In the shops on Upper Zhivonosnovskaya Street, by the mid-19th century trade was mostly in old iron, as well as tea, sugar, grocery goods, soap, game, and so on. "In the lane running from this street straight from the Gluttons' Row to the Volga," wrote Khramtsovsky, "are the live-fish shops of the Nizhny Novgorod merchant Vodovozov, who conducts a substantial trade in live fish to Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Between Upper Zhivonosnovskaya Street and the embankment lies Lower Zhivonosnovskaya Street, where the bathhouses facing the embankment stand. Bathhouses existed in this place as early as the start of the 14th century, as is evident from the Cadastral Charter. From Lower Zhivonosnovskaya Street, between the embankment and Rozhdestvenskaya Street, lie rows: fish, meat, flour, and others; there they also trade in loose salt, leather goods, and the like."

Years later, Lower Zhivonosnovskaya Street was lost, while Upper Zhivonosnovskaya today bears the name Kozhevennaya.

Houses of Charity

In house No. 11 on today's Kozhevennaya Street stood the famous "Stolby" ["The Pillars"] tearoom, set up through the efforts of the writer Maxim Gorky for the city's poor. This house has its own history…

In January 1837, the Nizhny Novgorod first-guild merchant and city mayor Fyodor Petrovich Perepletchikov, together with his wife and brother, petitioned the Nizhny Novgorod Building Committee for permission to erect a three-story house "over cellars" on Upper Zhivonosnovskaya Street, with two wings on either side. The design was drawn up by the architect G. I. Kiesewetter, but without an estimate, since the owners wished to build it at their own expense and with their own workers. On 10 March 1837 the facades were sent to St. Petersburg for the highest approval, but since a claim had been lodged against the land for the future house, they were returned without review.

In February of the following year the Perepletchikovs filed a repeat petition. This time they held the land grant in hand, so the design was sent to St. Petersburg. On 26 March 1838 it was approved by Nicholas I, who ordered that "Kiesewetter be informed of the sovereign's pleasure at the beauty of this facade." According to the design, six columns spanning the upper stories rested on the risalit's central projection above the basement level. Rusticated block work and a meander-pattern interfloor band served as the unifying decorative element of the building's facade, which was indeed perceived as majestic.

Construction began in the summer of 1838, and by the end of the following year the house was counted among those completed, with exterior and interior finishing still under way. On 16 May 1844 the house burned down and the interfloor beams cracked, but the building was restored by Kiesewetter to its former facade. In 1845, shortly before his death, F. P. Perepletchikov bequeathed the house to the city. At first a coaching inn was set up in it. Then in 1901, after another fire, the house was acquired by the well-known Nizhny Novgorod entrepreneur D. V. Sirotkin. On 18 January 1902, on Maxim Gorky's initiative, the "Stolby" tearoom for the down-and-out of Nizhny Novgorod's underclass was opened in the renovated building. Funds for this charitable cause were provided by the leading Nizhny Novgorod entrepreneur Nikolai Bugrov. At "Stolby" a free outpatient clinic, pharmacy, and library for the destitute were set up, a piano was installed, and concerts were occasionally held.

The choice of location for the tearoom was due to the nearby, notorious Milliyoshka — a district where the inhabitants of Nizhny Novgorod's slums huddled: tramps, dockworkers, beggars, and the unemployed, known among the people as the "golden company." Brawls, drunkenness, and debauchery were commonplace here, but the denizens of the underclass came to frequent "Stolby," where tea with a pound of bread sold for two kopecks and where one could make use of the library.

House No. 11, traditionally called the Perepletchikov house, still stands out today among the Classicist residential buildings preserved on Kozhevennaya Street. It is the largest and most expressive in architecture among the three-story income properties of this district. The facade faced the Posad Market, which lay near the Ivanovsky Descent, in the most bustling part of Nizhny Posad. Such an important position for the building called, by the architect's design, for large-scale architectural forms, including a grand six-column portico, the only one in the trading zone.

Another house connected to the sphere of charity and public education was No. 4 on Kozhevennaya Street. This is the three-story building of the former Nazarievsky Children's Shelter, built with funds from various benefactors in 1902–1906. The shelter for the poorest of the population was organized by Nazary (Kirillov), Bishop of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas, who held the episcopal see from 1901 to 1910.

Perepletchikov's Holdings

On today's Kozhevennaya Street, the merchant Perepletchikov also owned two other houses — No. 11 A and No. 12.

To the left of the income property built in 1839, in which the "Stolby" tearoom was later located, Perepletchikov built a two-story wing with two windows and shops (today house No. 11 A). The building's ground floor received a relief board-rustication that determined a similar treatment for the neighboring buildings as well. After Perepletchikov donated the house with its wings to the city (in 1845), the shops began to be leased out, and at the start of the 20th century passed into the ownership of the merchant Vasily Mikhailovich Postnikov. In 1910 he decided to renovate the building and to build an infill section between the shop and the house. During the work the merchant proposed replacing the gable roof with a mansard with a broken roofline. The architect N. M. Veshnyakov drew up a new facade, approved on 6 October 1910, and the building was completed the following year. In its surviving form it carries features of both early-19th-century and early-20th-century architecture.

House No. 12 on Kozhevennaya Street was designed and built for Perepletchikov by the architect G. I. Kiesewetter. It was a warehouse block with a residential second floor and three vaulted cellars. On 16 March 1839 the merchant asked the Nizhny Novgorod Building Committee for permission to erect a three-story stone house on an arcade. The design, created by Kiesewetter, was approved in St. Petersburg on 1 April 1839. During construction the architect persuaded Perepletchikov to build the house at the same height as the neighboring buildings. The facade's distinguishing feature became the arcade of gateways into the ground-floor warehouses, small windows on either side, and a side stair up to the courtyard gallery.

Work begun in spring was largely completed by the end of the building season, and by 1840 the house was already counted among those built. It remained in Perepletchikov's ownership until his death in 1845. His heirs sold the building to the merchant V. K. Michurin, who carried out a renovation preserving the earlier architecture, to a design by R. Ya. Kileveyn approved on 20 October 1867. In 1885, after a fire, the architect V. M. Lemke, now working for a different owner (the merchant S. I. Frolov), redesigned the left wing of the building and relaid the vaults of the cellar and both upper floors.

Preserved and Lost

House No. 14 on Kozhevennaya Street belonged to Pyotr Maleyevsky, a state peasant from Gorodets. On 28 February 1839 he applied to the Nizhny Novgorod Building Committee requesting permission to erect a two-story house with cellars on Zhivonosnovskaya Street, submitting a design created by the architect G. I. Kiesewetter for an elongated block with 15 windows on the main facade. The ground floor was broken up with board-rustication grooves, and a Greek meander band ran between the floors. Above the central gateway into the courtyard, marking the building's main axis, a balcony with a cast-iron railing and a three-part exit was designed.

After review in Nizhny Novgorod, the plans and facades of the house were sent to St. Petersburg, where they received the highest approval on 18 March 1839. The foundations were laid that summer. In the process, Maleyevsky ran into a dispute with his neighbor, the merchant N. F. Chuzhestrantsev, who demanded a gap be left between the foundations of their buildings. But on 30 November 1839 Kiesewetter proved before the provincial board that the merchant's demand was unfounded. The following year Maleyevsky's house, along with a bathhouse and a brick wall in the yard beneath the Kremlin hill, were completed. This house's facade was G. I. Kiesewetter's most successful design in the development of Zhivonosnovskaya Street "with a single facade," and he subsequently repeated it with minor variations.

Other former residential houses have survived on Kozhevennaya Street to this day — No. 10 and No. 14 A, built in the first half of the 19th century, and house No. 18 (second half of the 19th century), along with hotel rooms and wine cellars. But the church dedicated to the icon of the Mother of God "the Life-Giving Spring," which once gave its name to the two streets beneath the Kremlin, has not survived — it was demolished a few years after the revolution.

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