The 1770 Regular Plan of Nizhny Novgorod is an urban-planning document adopted during Catherine the Great's era of municipal reforms, and it became the city's first regular plan. It set the direction of the main streets of the upland part of the city and laid the geometric foundation of the historic centre, a layout that survives in the structure of its blocks to this day.
Role in shaping the street network
Under the plan, a series of straight streets was laid out in the Upper Part, running perpendicular to Minina Street (at the time called Zhukovskaya) and Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street. These streets were designed to run from the Otkos down to the steep banks of the Kovalikhinsky Ravine, which served as the natural western boundary of the central blocks' development. The red lines of the corresponding blocks were marked out as the plan was put into practice.
The direction of Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street was likewise determined by this very plan. In the late 18th century, mansions began to appear along the newly laid-out thoroughfare: in particular, the estate at 14 Bolshaya Pecherskaya (later known as the Rudinsky–Sergeyev Estate) took shape in connection with the laying of the street, whose direction had been set by the 1770 plan.
Significance for the city's history
The 1770 plan belongs to the nationwide wave of urban-planning regularisation initiated by Catherine II, during which most provincial and district towns of the empire received regular plans. For Nizhny Novgorod, the document marked the starting point of regular planning: it was this plan that produced the system of parallel-and-perpendicular streets characteristic of the historic centre's upland part, a system that has survived to this day despite later redevelopment.
Sources
Based on materials from articles (2)
Kovalikha Ravine, The Rudinsky–Sergeyev Estate on Bolshaya Pecherskaya)