Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment

Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment (Otkos, Volzhsky Otkos; former names — Upper Embankment of the Volga, and during the Soviet years, Zhdanov Embankment) — a street in the historic part of Nizhny Novgorod, laid out in the 1830s along the edge of the Volga escarpment from Minin and Pozharsky Square to Sennaya Square ^[1][2][8]. It is built up on one side only: in place of the other there is a steep drop, Alexandrovsky Garden on terraces, and Volga with the distant trans-Volga plains — and it is precisely this that, for nearly two kilometers, has made the street the city's grand riverfront façade ^[1]. It should not be confused with the Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment: that one runs below, at the water's edge, while the Verkhne-Volzhskaya runs along the top of the slope, whose foot is reached by the 85-meter The Chkalov Staircase ^[1].

Boundaries and surroundings

The embankment stretches along the top of the Volga escarpment from the Chkalov Monument near the Georgievskaya Tower of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin to the Ski Jump at Sennaya Square. To the south, Minin Street runs right up to it; to the west lie the Kremlin boulevard and the Chkalov Staircase; further down the slope are the Nizhny Novgorod Otkos and Alexandrovsky Garden, reached by Georgievsky Descent and Kazansky Descent (formerly Pechersky) ^[1][2].

The panorama from the embankment takes in the floodplain shore of the Zavolzhye bank, the Rowing Canal at the foot of the slope, the helipad of Robinson Restaurant, and the outskirts of the city of Bor. In clear weather, one can see Tolokontsevo, the railway bridge across the Volga, the Strelka, and even Balakhna.ru. The embankment itself bends in plan: from the point of the bend toward Minin Square, the view opens onto Georgievskaya Tower and the Chkalov Monument, while in the opposite direction, toward Sennaya, the ensemble of Pechersky Monastery gradually comes into view ^[1].

The reverse view is no less celebrated: the ensemble of the embankment and gardens reads beautifully from the Bor-side bridge, from the Volga fairway, and from the Rowing Canal dam — the panorama of the slope is visible from virtually every point in the surrounding area ^[1].

What stood here before the embankment

The territory where the slope meets the Volga was part of the Upper Posad of the medieval city and lay within the fortifications of the Maly Ostrog, whose line ran roughly along present-day Piskunova Street. At the junction of the future embankment and that street stood, according to some accounts, one of the ostrog's gateway towers, to whose gates two steep descents climbed up from the Volga bank. Yegorievskaya Street ran into the tower at an angle from the Proiskhozhdenskiy (Krestovozdvizhenskiy) Monastery — which stood near the Georgievskaya Tower of the Kremlin, on the site now occupied by the Chkalov Monument ^[1][3].

A wooden Church of St. George also stood here, built around the mid-sixteenth century; in the early eighteenth century the dilapidated church was rebuilt in stone and greatly enlarged, becoming the dominant landmark of the entire area. The remnants of the ostrog's log walls were dismantled at the same time, though the earthen rampart survived for much longer — it was only removed around 1875 ^[1][3].

Building right at the edge of the bluff was hampered by the terrain: the high bank was cut through by ravines, and only the fences of properties fronting the parallel Zhukov, or Zhukovskaya, Street (now Minin Street) reached this far. The slope was taken up by kitchen gardens with bathhouses and outbuildings, while on the terraces of the half-hill clung the dwellings of Nizhny Novgorod's poor, including the ancient Panskaya Sloboda. A broad, straightened embankment had been proposed as far back as the general plans of 1770, 1787, 1799, 1804, and 1824, but until the 1830s the project never advanced beyond paper ^[1][3].

"Works commanded by Imperial decree"

The building lines of the future Upper Volga Embankment were established during a sweeping construction programme of "imperially decreed works," set in motion by Emperor Nicholas I's first visit to the city in October 1834. The Volga slope was addressed as a separate item in the list of prescribed changes ^[3].

The embankment design, prepared by provincial architect I. E. Yefimov and engineer P. D. Gotman, received imperial approval in 1835; direct supervision of the works was carried out by engineer A. I. Podnozov. The ravines cutting across the bank were filled in, the slopes were levelled and turfed, Georgievsky and Kazansky descents were laid down to the river, and Alexander Garden was laid out at the centre of the slope. By autumn 1839 the embankment surface had been graded and paved with cobblestones. At its upper end, a small Seminary Square took shape — now part of Minin and Pozharsky Square ^[1][2][3].

Developers were subject to a firm requirement: only stone buildings were to be erected on the embankment, and only to the "finest" façade designs. One of the first structures to appear here was the mansion of the Rukavishnikov industrialists. The embankment's composition was planned around the tiered Georgievskaya Church as its dominant feature; a square in front of the church was earmarked for a city theatre building, and in the mid-1850s there were plans to erect the provincial government offices east of the church and relocate the city's administrative centre there — neither scheme was ever realised ^[1].

The strict development regulations had the unintended consequence that peripheral plots remained wastelands for decades: stone construction far from the centre was considered unprofitable. Even in the first half of the 1870s, city authorities were describing with frustration what the outer section of the embankment had become ^[3].

to permit no… wooden structures; and to halt construction of any wooden houses being erected on the slope, compensating the owners by granting them a plot elsewhere as a gift

those parts of the Upper Embankment adjoining the more central blocks have long been built up with stone buildings, while its parts more distant from the city centre have, for nearly forty years, remained unbuilt, forming… rows of wastelands fenced off by more or less unsightly hoardings

The city's ceremonial face

From the early 1840s the embankment began to be built up with stone houses, and by the mid-nineteenth century the most notable structures here were the buildings of the Martynov (provincial zemstvo) hospital and the complex of the Mariinsky Institute for Noble Maidens, as well as several privately owned houses of "respectable architecture." The most densely developed stretch ran from Blagoveschenskaya (now Minin and Pozharsky) Square to Martynovskaya (Semashko) Street. The final landscaping of the embankment along its entire length dates to the 1890s ^[1][3].

From the mid-nineteenth century, the embankment became a favorite leisure spot for Nizhny Novgorod residents — everyone who came to the city made their way here. The streetscape at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was photographed many times by Dmitriev, and his images were used to produce scenic picture postcards ^[3].

The buildings along the embankment are connected with names known far beyond the boundaries of the governorate. In the tenement house of titular councillor P. N. Grigoryev (house 2, now the House of the Architect), Taras Shevchenko lived and worked at the turn of 1857 and 1858: here he prepared a collection of poems for publication, completed the novella "The Sailor," and wrote "Dolya," "Muza," "Slava," and the poem "Neofity." At house 5, the Nizhny Novgorod Radio Laboratory operated from 1918 to 1928, where V. K. Lebedinsky, V. V. Tatarinov, V. P. Vologdin, M. A. Bonch-Bruyevich, and O. V. Losev worked; in 1928 the laboratory was visited by Maxim Gorky.

The building of the former Red Cross hospital, constructed with funds provided by the merchant Rukavishnikov (identified in lists of monuments as M. M., and in research documentation as S. M.), is associated with the work of surgeon A. N. Kunyayev, while the building of the steamship company "Volga" — into which the medical institute moved in 1930 — is linked to the name of the physiologist academician P. K. Anokhin, commemorated by a memorial plaque on the façade, a work by sculptor L. F. Kulakova ^[1][2].

Rukavishnikov Palace

The most striking building on the embankment is Rukavishnikov Estate at house 7, anchoring the sharp corner where it meets Piskunova Street. The plot came to the family not through the romantic legend of an unrepaid debt: a two-storey stone house with a mezzanine belonging to the merchant Yakov Vezlomtsev had been seized for debts and sold at auction, and it can be stated with near certainty that in December 1868 it was purchased by M. G. Rukavishnikov. In 1875 his son Sergei Mikhailovich began the reconstruction ^[3].

Formally this was not new construction but a renovation: the old Vezlomtsev house was entirely absorbed into the volume of the new palace, and in the western section the building still retains the floor plan of its predecessor. The completion date — 1877 — was placed above the main entrance, but the interior finishing dragged on longer: in December 1879 the owner acknowledged that the house was "fully completed only on the outside," and he was living in just the upper storey ^[3].

The literature names the Moscow architect P. S. Boytsov as the designer of the project — for him the Nizhny Novgorod palace was virtually his first major undertaking; Boytsov did not hold the right to supervise the construction work itself, and the credit for the actual building belongs in large part to the engineer-architect R. Ya. Kilevein. The sculptural decoration of the façades is attributed to M. O. Mikeshin — the author of the monument "The Millennium of Russia." The painted ceiling panels above the main staircase, in the ballroom, and in the antechamber were executed by Foma Gavrilovich Toropov, a graduate of the Academy of Arts: his signatures were discovered during restoration work ^[3].

The City Duma assessed the house at 75,000 roubles — four times more than the owner had anticipated, and still, in the words of the city mayor, "impossibly low." The commonly cited figure of one million roubles, taken from a novel, is an artistic exaggeration ^[3].

After the revolution the estate was nationalized, and as early as March–June 1918 the gubernatorial museum moved into the main house; the official opening took place on 29 June 1924. Today it is the main building of the Nizhny Novgorod State Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve; the restored palace opened to visitors in September 2010 ^[3].

Where should such a palace stand? Surely not on a narrow street, with houses on both sides. But on the upper embankment

Neoclassicism and Art Nouveau

In the 1910s, buildings in the retrospective and Art Nouveau styles were added to the eclectic streetscape, and it is these that gave the embankment its present appearance. The mansion of D. V. Sirotkin (No. 3, 1913–1916) — the first independent work of the brothers L. A., A. A., and V. A. Vesnin, and the finest example of pre-revolutionary architecture in the city — yielded an Old Believer prayer room during restoration. Today the Sirotkin house holds the foreign collection of the Nizhny Novgorod Art Museum ^[1][8].

Nearby stands the house of O. I. and F. M. Kamensky (No. 11, 1913–1914, architect B. A. Korshunov) and the office building of the Volga Steamship Company (No. 1, also by the Vesnin brothers), which became one of the largest neoclassical structures in Nizhny Novgorod. The Art Nouveau category includes the Red Cross Hospital (1911–1913), the house of I. M. Gribkov (1912), and the most expressive of all — the mansion of engineer N. V. Kabachinsky (1912–1913, No. 12), whose construction was supervised by N. M. Veshnyakov ^[1][2].

The Soviet Decades

During the Soviet period the layout of the embankment changed noticeably, above all at its beginning: the Georgievskaya Church was demolished, and its site together with the surrounding square was taken over by the five-storey block of the Tsentralnaya Hotel — later renamed Rossiya, now Volzhsky Otkos — built in 1932–1935 to a design by A. Z. Grinberg and M. T. Smurov. The main architectural vertical shifted toward the middle of the embankment: it became the House of Railway Workers, with its tower at the corner of Semashko Street (1937–1939, architect D. P. Silvanov) ^[1][2].

Among the buildings of the 1920s, the School of the Tenth Anniversary of October stands out (1925–1927, architect A. A. Yakovlev) — the first school building erected in the city after the revolution; it is now occupied by the Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedics. During the 1930s–1950s the embankment and the adjacent blocks were built up with large-scale residential and public buildings: an entire block was taken up by the complex of the Industrial (Chemical and Technological) Institute, now the Technical University (1931–1936, architect D. N. Chechulin, decorative design by I. F. Neyman). The striving for grandeur sometimes led to an overloading of façades with ornament — as in No. 6, built in 1954 to a design by Yu. N. Bubnov. At the same time, additional floors were added to the former radio laboratory building, the former Red Cross Hospital, and the Grigoryev house, greatly distorting their original appearance ^[1].

The embankment parapet received a continuous cast-iron railing in 1949, designed by D. P. Silvanov, and in 1968 the Chayka café (architect V. Lapin) was erected at the widest point where the embankment opens toward the terraces. The eastern end of the embankment at Sennaya Square was completed by a ski-jump viaduct (1958). In the second half of the 1980s, the Oktyabrskaya Hotel was built on the site of the former Martynov Hospital (architects A. E. Kharitonov, V. Kovalenko, A. L. Gelfond); a garden square was laid out beside it, and in 1987 a monument to military aviator P. N. Nesterov was unveiled ^[1].

During those same decades, the street bore the name of Party official A. A. Zhdanov: it is precisely as "Zhdanov Embankment, 3" that the address of the Sirotkin house is recorded in the all-union list of cultural monuments of state significance. The former name was restored after the dissolution of the USSR ^[8].

The Chkalov Monument and staircase

The platform by the Georgievskaya Tower, where the statue "Girl with an Oar" once stood, was chosen by Valery Chkalov during his lifetime, together with his friend the sculptor Isaak Mendelevich, as the site for a monument to Maxim Gorky. After the pilot's death, the residents of Gorky decided to erect a monument to him there instead: the ceremonial laying of the foundation took place on 18 August 1940, on Aviation Day ^[4][5].

The commission was entrusted to Mendelevich and architects Viktor Andreyev and Ivan Taranov. The bronze figure of Chkalov in a flight suit was cast at the Leningrad factory Monumentskulptura and placed on a cylindrical granite pedestal, on whose polished surface the outline of the map of the Northern Hemisphere was engraved, showing the routes of two flights — from Moscow to Udd Island and from Moscow via the North Pole to Vancouver. Moscow was marked with a ruby star, and the crew's route with a dotted line of nickel-plated plates. The inscription read: "1904–1938. To Stalin's Falcon. To the great pilot of our time, Valery Chkalov"; after the denunciation of the cult of personality, the first two words were removed. The unveiling on 15 December 1940, on the second anniversary of the pilot's death, drew around 50,000 people. By a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR dated 30 August 1960, No. 1327, the monument was placed under state protection, and in 1975 it underwent major restoration ^[4].

The idea of a staircase descending to the river was raised at the very acceptance of the monument: it was proposed by the chairman of the Gorky City Executive Committee Aleksandr Shulpin, who also suggested landscaping the slope and embankment, which at the time were occupied by an industrial zone. The idea was first rejected in 1939 on grounds of cost, but in 1943, when the city began receiving funds for reconstruction after the bombing raids, it was approved ^[4][5].

The task was not merely ceremonial: getting from Minin Square and the Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment down to the river was only possible by a roundabout route, via the Georgievsky Descent and Zelensky Descent, and by the 1940s the slope was suffering severely from landslides, so the staircase also took on a reinforcing role. The competition was won by Leningraders Lev Rudnev and Vladimir Munts, who were joined by the Nizhny Novgorod native Aleksandr Yakovlev, who served as both construction supervisor and chief engineer. The staircase, 85 metres high, was built by the city's residents and German prisoners of war: according to conservation records, work ran from 1943 to 1949, though other sources place the start in 1944; it cost the treasury more than 7 million rubles, and in 1949 Shulpin was accused of embezzlement — he spent several years in labour camps and was released after Stalin's death ^[1][5].

The staircase had three names: first Stalingradskaya — in honour of the victory at Stalingrad — then Volzhskaya, and finally the popular name "Chkalovskaya" stuck. The semicircular upper flights and the straight lower flight are interpreted as the encirclement rings at Stalingrad and the breaking of the siege; in 2021, people began to see in the outline of the staircase a figure-eight and the infinity symbol. There are 560 steps counting the circular landings, and 442 if counted along the right side only. In 1985, the gunboat Geroy ("Hero"), which had served in both the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War — including the Battle of Stalingrad — was installed at the foot of the staircase. The uphill sprint record is 1 minute 22 seconds, set by Nizhny Novgorod native Nikolay Burda, who won the Chkalovskaya Staircase competition eight times ^[5].

The Slope: Landslides and Underground Infrastructure

The Volga Escarpment is part of Dyatlov Hills, and its slopes slide by their very nature: the strata alternate like a layered pastry — impermeable clays and water-bearing sands — and as soon as one layer becomes oversaturated with water, the next begins to move ^[7].

In the nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth century, the most dangerous sections in the city were considered to be the Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment and the adjacent Georgievsky and Kazansky Descents. The fact that the embankment was built upon at all is attributed by local historians to slope-reinforcement works skillfully carried out by contractor P. E. Bugrov — one of the largest builders in the governorate during the first half of the nineteenth century; the Volga Escarpment is regarded as something of a monument to him ^[1][6].

From the early 1920s, ground movements resumed, and a commission drew up a landslide-prevention plan calling for the sinking of new drainage adits. In the area of what is now the Chkalov Staircase, the fifth and sixth adits were constructed in 1925–1927, measuring 498 and 324 metres in length respectively; the daily water yield of the fifth adit alone was 612,500 litres. Today the tranquility of Dyatlov Hills is safeguarded by some fifty landslide-prevention adits with a combined length of nearly 15 kilometres ^[6].

The radial drainage systems and collection galleries installed in the 1970s were, by the early 2010s, largely in unsatisfactory condition, and specialists insisted on their regular cleaning at least before the spring thaw period ^[7].

The escarpment beneath the staircase made itself known once again in the late 2010s: water flowing down the steep slope had undermined the supporting structures, and following the collapse of a section of the retaining wall on one of the flights, emergency repair works were carried out in 2019–2021 — steps were dismantled, and the slope and retaining walls were reinforced ^[5][11].

Cultural Heritage Sites

The embankment and escarpment are exceptionally rich in monuments: of the 73 objects within the boundaries of the heritage site "Volga Escarpment," 27 (36%) hold the status of cultural heritage sites of regional or federal significance, a further 14 (19%) possess the characteristics of such sites, and 5 (7%) are classified as valuable elements of the historic urban environment — meaning nearly two-thirds of the built fabric is considered significant ^[1].

The escarpment itself lies within the boundaries of the historic territory "Old Nizhny Novgorod," established by Resolution No. 370-M of the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Council of People's Deputies dated 30 November 1993, and part of it falls within the protected zone of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin (Decree No. 232 of the Governor of Nizhny Novgorod Region dated 11 September 2000) ^[1].

The Sirotkin House with its painted ceiling is included in the list of cultural monuments of national (federal) significance — Appendix 1 to Resolution No. 1327 of the RSFSR Council of Ministers dated August 30, 1960, as amended by Resolution No. 624 of December 4, 1974; the Kamenskaya Mansion is included in the list of objects of federal historical and cultural heritage by Decree No. 176 of the President of the Russian Federation dated February 20, 1995 (where it is dated 1912–1913). Regional-significance monuments were placed under protection by Resolution No. 288-m of the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Council of People's Deputies dated August 31, 1993 — this resolution covers, in particular, Aleksandrovsky Garden, the Nizhny Novgorod Otkos, the Chkalov Staircase, and the Rossiya Hotel; the Railway Workers' House was placed under protection by Order No. 12-OD dated September 6, 1999 ^{[2][8][9][10]}.

The Embankment Today

The function of the place has not changed: with relatively light traffic, the embankment, together with the slope and Alexandrovsky Garden, remains a leisure area and a walking route, while the restaurants and cafés along it and on the terraces have retained their purpose. It is among the mandatory stops on city tours — alongside the Chkalov Staircase, the monuments to Chkalov and Nesterov, and the Church of the Mother of God Joy of All Who Sorrow ^[1].

Ahead of the city's anniversary, the embankment was brought into order: the Chkalov Staircase was ceremonially reopened after restoration on the evening of 1 August 2021 — a symphony orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre performed at the ceremony, and approximately 220 million rubles from the federal budget were allocated for the restoration, emergency stabilization works, and illumination ^[11].

The significance of the site has long been discussed beyond the city's boundaries: in May 2006, at the congress of the "Great Rivers" forum, local historian and professor of the UNESCO chair at the University of Architecture and Civil Engineering Tatyana Vinogradova proposed that the regional government prepare documentation to nominate the Volga slope for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List — together with the Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment, the Pechersky Monastery, the Kremlin, and the square in front of the Church of John the Baptist ^[12].

Facing the embankment are 19th- and early-20th-century mansions and homes of the Soviet elite built in the spirit of Stalinist Empire style; in the early 2000s a new high-rise building was inserted into the building line between the House of the Architect and the Volzhsky Otkos hotel ^[1].

• Among dining establishments operating on the embankment in the late 2000s were the restaurants Beer'ka, Minin i Pozharsky, Tiffany, and the Houston bar — all near the intersection with Nesterov Street.
• Through traffic on the embankment was prohibited by a "No Entry" sign, yet during those same years the street served as a popular evening gathering spot for owners of expensive cars.
• Nearby: the Historic Center, Fedorovsky Embankment, Nizhne-Okskaya Embankment, Grebeshok, and Glob-Town.

References

• Wikidata (archive) (Q4108270 — an entry in the free knowledge base)

Sources

1. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — research documentation by the Etnos Research and Design Enterprise on the historical territory "Old Nizhny Novgorod," Volume 8 — The Volga Otkos Landmark Site (archive)
2. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — list of cultural heritage sites along the Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment, Minin and Pozharsky Square, and the Nizhny Novgorod Otkos (archive)
3. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — a study by historians A. I. Davydov and V. V. Krasnov based on archival documents (archive)
4. Nizhny Novgorod News Agency — based on materials from the State Socio-Political Archive of Nizhny Novgorod Region (archive)
5. Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — an essay on the history of the Chkalov Stairs — 13 True and Mystical Facts About the Chkalov Stairs (archive)
6. MK — Nizhny Novgorod — MK in Nizhny Novgorod — the history of the fight against landslides and drainage tunnels, as told by speleologist Evgeny Medovarov — Tears of the Dyatlov Hills (archive)
7. nn.aif.ru — AiF — Nizhny Novgorod — an interview on the nature of Nizhny Novgorod landslides and the condition of anti-landslide structures — Why Are Landslides a Surprise? (archive)
8. base.garant.ru — Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR of August 30, 1960, No. 1327 (as amended by the resolution of December 4, 1974, No. 624), Appendix 1 (archive)
9. base.garant.ru — Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of February 20, 1995, No. 176 — On Approval of the List of Historical and Cultural Heritage Sites of Federal (All-Russian) Significance (archive)
10. base.garant.ru — Decision of the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Council of People's Deputies of August 31, 1993, No. 288-m, Appendix 1 (archive)
11. Vremya N — report on the opening of the Chkalov Stairs after restoration on August 1, 2021 — The Chkalov Stairs in Nizhny Novgorod Ceremonially Reopened After Restoration (archive)
12. Nizhny Novgorod News Agency — on the initiative of local historian T. P. Vinogradova at the "Great Rivers" forum, May 2006 (archive)
13. pro-nn.org — photo archive of old Nizhny Novgorod — Nizhny Novgorod. Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment (archive)