Nizhny Novgorod Fair

Main article: Nizhny Novgorod

History

1896: XVI All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition

View of the Main Fair House (Main Exhibition Building). XVI All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod, photographer: Maxim Petrovich Dmitriev, Nizhny Novgorod province, Nizhny Novgorod, from June 9 (May 28, old style) to October 13 (1 old style), 1896.

1817: Reconstruction of the Fairgrounds complex after a fire managed by Augustine Betancourt

On August 16 (28), 1816, a fire broke out, which destroyed the living room in Nizhny Novgorod, with all the temporary booths.

Realizing the importance of building a new economic center, Emperor Alexander I postponed the reconstruction of the Winter Palace, directing the money allocated for this to build a fair. In total, 6 million rubles were allocated from the treasury for the construction of the living room. Construction was led by Augustine Betancourt.

The basis for the creation of an architectural ensemble was a plan developed back in 1804 by architect Andreyan Zakharov.

On February 15, 1817, construction began, which lasted 4 years. On July 15 (27), 1822, trade was opened in a stone living room and wooden temporary premises.

The fair occupied an area of ​ ​ almost 8 km ² on the left low bank of the Oka River, on a large cape (Strelka), formed at the confluence of the Oka into the Volga.

Old fair house before perestroika in Nizhny Novgorod

A unique part of the fair was the built living room, designed by Augustine Betancourt, consisting of 60 separate buildings with 2530 shops. The main house in the spirit of classicism and the side administrative buildings formed the central front square. To protect against the spring waters that flooded this place, a base 3.5 meters high was poured.

A horseshoe-shaped bypass channel 100 meters wide on three sides surrounded the central part of the architectural ensemble. A unique hydraulic structure, named after the Betankurovsky Canal, was connected to Lake Meshchersky and the Pyrsky Canal.

More than 40 stone large buildings for trade and a warehouse of goods were built along the banks of the bypass canal.

The scale of the complex was comparable to the hydraulic structures of Tsarskoye Selo and Peterhof. Currently, nothing remains of the canal and the bridge system.

Particular attention was attracted by the unique for that time flat-coat (floating) bridge over the Oka. With 510 meters in length, it was the longest floating bridge of that time.

For the first time for Russian fairs of that time, sanitary facilities were developed on the territory - an underground vaulted sewage system. Two circular turrets between the outermost rows of the drawing room served as entrances to two underground galleries. The underground galleries were long corridors with stone walls and vaults and brick floors. The length of each gallery is 640 meters, the width is 2.1 meters, the height is 2.5 meters. A trough ran along the back wall of the corridor, above which urinals separated by partitions were installed. The cleanliness of the premises was maintained daily using water from a pipe connected to the bypass channel. For Russia of that time, these were unique structures, underground work until that time was carried out only in Moscow (1816-1829). Much later, similar underground galleries appeared in Paris.