Red Rows

Inside the stone rectangle of the trading court stands the Church of the Savior in the Rows: the church appeared here before the surrounding buildings and remained in place when the marketplace was rebuilt. From the Volga, a ceremonial passage beneath the bell tower leads to it, while from the square the building is encircled by a continuous arched gallery. In the nineteen thirties, the belfry and domes were dismantled; restorers returned the present silhouette using old photographs and surviving traces of the structure.

Each arched bay contained a separate merchant's shop. Customers were received downstairs, goods were kept in the basement and on the second floor, and an office was set up there as well. The Gostiny Dvor was designed for eighty-six such sections. Later it came to be called the Red Rows: merchants used the term “red goods” for fabrics, furs, leather, and books. The shops and market still operate here.

When the city magistrate decided to build a stone Gostiny Dvor in seventeen eighty-seven, a church stood in the way of the proper rectangle. It had appeared on the marketplace before the rows. Kostroma merchant Stefan Belov wanted to replace the old wooden church with a durable one and paid for the stone building, which was consecrated in seventeen sixty-six. The word “Savior” in its name refers to Christ. After the fire, the magistrate did not remove the church from the site: the architects were to enclose it within the new market building.

The chief architect of the Kostroma Viceroyalty, Karl Kler, drew up the design with its overall dimensions and sought to have the approved plan carried out. Stepan Vorotilov received the construction contract. He was not in provincial service: he began as a stonemason, taught himself geometry and drafting, and earned his living from construction commissions. Together with his brothers and son, Vorotilov was responsible here for the entire contract.

During the work, he altered Kler's design. Vorotilov surrounded the building with an exterior arched gallery, added a portico on the Volga side, and created a base above the passageway for a new church bell tower. Thus the trading court acquired ceremonial gates, while the church, enclosed within the rectangle, gained access to the city square and a descent to the Volga.

Kler arrived in Kostroma toward the end of construction and found an already altered version of his design. He declared that Vorotilov had ruined the concept and had calculated the bell tower so badly that it might collapse. Kler sued the contractor, seeking recognition that the changes made were dangerous. For Vorotilov, the lawsuit called into question precisely the work for which he and his family had received the contract.

The proceedings never took place. In November seventeen ninety-two, Vorotilov died. His brothers and son soon left the construction site, and in seventeen ninety-six the Gostiny Dvor was completed by Ivan Gove, the acting provincial architect. Kler did not obtain a court ruling, but Vorotilov did not see the completed rows either. The exterior arcade and the passageway with the bell tower that he devised remained in the built ensemble.

In the late nineteen thirties, the bell tower and the church domes were dismantled. In nineteen seventy-four to nineteen seventy-six, restoration architects Leonid Vasilyev and Vadim Shaposhnikov restored them from two photographs from nineteen oh eight, remains of the base in the attic of the rows, and one surviving section of the iron fence.

The present bell tower has been partly reconstructed, but beneath it runs the very passageway over which Kler went to court. Beside it stands the church paid for by Belov, while the arched shops around it are still occupied by trade. Here, the words “Church of the Savior in the Rows” serve as the church's literal address.