The Blinov`s Arcade

The Arcade building was constructed in 1876-1878 by Robert Kilevein, architect from Nizhny Novgorod, according to the design of St. Petersburg architect Alexander Bruni.

The Russian term "passage" is derived from a similar French word (in French – passage or transition). It is believed that the first multi-level shopping "passage" was built in the ancient Rome by the order of the Emperor Trojan and accommodated over 150 stores. So in Russia the term "passage" was commonly used for buildings hosting several tiers shops and offices on both sides of a wide glassed-in passage.  By the end of the XVIII century this type of public buildings came into fashion in Europe. The first passage-type shopping arcade appeared in Paris in 1788, and another famous arcade Petrovsky opened in Moscow in 1906.

Not a single place in town hosted so many various institutions in one building: here were 23 big stores, 49 minor shops, a hotel, two taverns, a restaurant, warehouses, offices, and a post office with a telegraph office, a bank and a stock exchange, all in one. This Arcade hosted the office of Petroleum Stores of the Nobel Brothers, and the upper floors offered apartments for rent.

Russian artist Konstantin Makovsky once stayed at the Blinov`s Arcade Hotel during when making preparations for his most famous painting named "Appeal of Minin" (although he did most of the work on this patriotic canvas in France). From the restaurant of The Blinov`s Arcade the intellectual community of Nizhny Novgorod came to see Maxim Gorky off to Crimea, in 1901.

By the early 2000s the Blinov`s Arcade for a while became a place of pilgrimage for the people seeking to research paranormal phenomena. The surveillance cameras in the building allegedly detected a female ghost in one of the vacant rooms. Later, to the utter disappointment it was established that the cameras detected no more but a flying piece of polyethylene in the hot air jets coming from heaters. So the olden Arcade lost its own ghost