Sennaya Square — a square connecting Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street, Belinsky, and Rodionov Street streets.

History of the Square

From the 18th century, the hay market in Nizhny Novgorod was held on Minin Square in front of the Dmitrievsky Gates of the Kremlin. However, due to the mountains of refuse left behind, the hay market was relocated in 1828 to a specially laid-out square between Zhуkovskaya and Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street streets (the site now occupied by the building of NGLU named after N. A. Dobrolyubov).

After a decision was made to build the Mariinsky Women's Institute complex on the square's main axis, closer to the Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment, the hay market was moved — at the suggestion of engineer A. I. Delvig — to the point where Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street met the ancient Kazan Tract, beyond the city boundary of 1839. Despite repeated attempts by the authorities to change the square's name, it proved resilient and has survived in the everyday speech of Nizhny Novgorod residents to this day. The historic frontage along the building line of Sennaya Square was lost in the first decade of the 21st century due to the construction of a high-rise residential complex. At the beginning of the 20th century, on the corner of Sennaya Square and Soldatskaya (Kazanskaya) Embankment stood the estate of the peasant Nikolai Yegorovich Chilin, who in 1907 erected a two-story wooden house with eclectic decorative detail — the design was approved in March of that same year.

In the 2000s, the research enterprise "Ethnos" conducted a study of the historic buildings in the Sennaya Square district; some of the identified structures were deemed valuable and recommended for documentation prior to any possible demolition. In 2022, construction began at Sennaya Square on the namesake station of the Nizhny Novgorod metro; in September 2023, the tunnel boring machine "Vladimir" was delivered to the construction site, tasked with boring two tunnels, each 1.5 kilometres long, to the future Freedom Square station.[1][2][2]

See Also

Sources

  1. V gorode N — Photo report: how the metro is being built at Sennaya Square in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
  2. opentextnn.ru — Davydov A.I. Historical and architectural retrospective of the development of the Sennaya Square district in Nizhny Novgorod. Description of objects in the northeastern part… (archive)