The photographs by Roberto Conte were taken before the dismantling of the warehouse walls in December 2017.
Structures in Nizhny Novgorod, now under the threat of destruction, are a unique monument of engineering thought and culture of Russia in the last third of the 19th century. It was then that structures with metal structures became widespread, and their openwork pattern, material, riveted connections of elements became a symbol of technological progress. Nizhny Novgorod Structures are the frame of warehouses on the territory of the former cargo port on Strelka, the confluence of the two largest Russian rivers - Oka and Volga. But they were not created for warehouses, the history of their origin is associated with two All-Russian exhibitions: the XV All-Russian industrial and art exhibition in 1882 in Moscow and the XVI All-Russian industrial and art exhibition in 1896 in Nizhny Novgorod - the most important events in the history of the country.
These load-bearing metal frames are fragments of the central exhibition pavilion of these exhibitions, the design of which was carried out by the engineers G. E. Pauker and I. A. Vyshnegradskiy (after 1882 it was dismantled and reused in 1896). At the end of the 1896 exhibition, the pavilion was dismantled, and its structures were sold in parts. For more than a hundred years, these fragments were the pillars of warehouses - first on the docks at the Nizhny Novgorod fair, then - in the port built here in the Soviet period, a closed industrial area.
And only in 2015, when the renovation of Strelka for the 2018 FIFA World Cup began, the professional community discovered the history of the origin and significance of these structures. We managed to achieve their preservation on the banks of the Volga, to obtain the status of a monument for them. However, in the course of preparing the landscaping for the World Cup, the authorities decided to dismantle the warehouses themselves, the "shell" of historical structures, leaving them without conservation. The structure of the port and the Nizhny Novgorod fair were also destroyed in order to arrange parking and driveways for football fans in their place.
The fate of the 19th century openwork frame is now uncertain - despite the assumption of Professor Tatyana Vinogradova that these structures were the first in the country created specifically for the giant exhibition building.
