"Brick Style" of the Turn of the XIX–XX Centuries in the Architecture of Small and Medium-Sized Cities of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

On the example of small and medium-sized historical cities of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast (former county towns and commercial-industrial villages) the article deals with regional varieties of “brick style” of the turn of XIX–XX centuries. The preconditions of its wide distribution connected with the original traditions of brick production on the basis of local raw materials and aesthetic preferences of customers from merchants and peasants are revealed. The regularities of the use of “brick style” in the architecture of county towns, where it is represented by separate public and industrial buildings, and large commercial-industrial villages, in the residential development of which it has become a mass phenomenon, are determined. It is established that the local features of the “brick style”, due to the traditions of decorativeness, rooted in folk architecture and artistic crafts of the Nizhny Novgorod Province, clearly manifested in the architecture of estates and mansions of commercial-industrial villages. Most of these objects were built without the participation of architects with academic education, by the forces of hereditary builders-contractors, collecting artels. Having developed a certain range of decorative forms, the master-masons created many new options for the design of facades that determined the morphological and stylistic diversity of the houses. The construction of public and industrial buildings in the “brick style”, on the contrary, was the sphere of activity of professional architects, which confirms the authorship of architects of Nizhny Novgorod established for a number of objects. Here the predominance of rationalistic tendencies dictated by considerations of practical usefulness and utility is revealed. The singularity of church buildings is noted (in contrast to provincial cities and ordinary villages). The relevance of studying the “brick style” in connection with the preservation of regional traditions of red brick construction is emphasized.

A.V. LISITSYNA, Candidate of Architecture (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Nizhny Novgorod State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering (65, Il’inskaya Street, Nizhny Novgorod, 603950, Russian Federation)

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