The 1930-s Unrealized Projects on Development of Gorky City (Nizhny Novgorod)

Abstract

The article deals with little-known unrealized projects shaping the image of the socialist Gorky city, its river panoramas, squares and highways in accordance with the first Soviet master plan of 1935-1937, made by the creative collective of Leningrad Giprogor, under theleadership of N.A. Solofnenko. The development of the master plan of alarge city was based on the principles of reconstruction of the General plan of Moscow in 1935. The architecture of a post-avant-garde epoch allowed to clearly demonstrate the architectural searches of the period, identify their characteristics, their mistakes and achievements.
 A radical reconstruction of an ancient city assumed a demolition of historic buildings. Instead of the lost town­planning dominants - churches that adorned the river facades of the city for many centuries, architects offered new high-rise accents in the form of monumental public buildings. Projects with classical compositions of central squares contributed to the formation of a fundamentally new image of the city. The tendencies of monumentalism appeared under the influence of well-known projects of accomplishment and organization of urban spaces in the capital cities - Moscow and Leningrad. This was an important phase of the new appeal to historicism, namely the development of the classics, which began in the mid 1930-ies and ended in the mid-1950s Archival photographs of 1930-ies complement the history of Russian Soviet architecture and urban planning and disclose the concept of the planned ambitious reforms.