Qualla: Alexandrovskiye Trade Rows

Alexandrovskiye Trade Rows: Introduction

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alexxx1979, CC BY-SA 4.0. Most shopping arcades try to look inviting. This one tried to look eternal. The Alexandrovskiye Trade Rows, raised in Taganrog in the 1840s, curved around a public square behind a colonnade of austere Doric columns, its long line of steps and heavy stone cornice giving the whole structure the solemn air of a Greek temple. Behind the columns, though, was pure commerce: rows of small shops, each with a front door and two windows, a back door to a shared yard, and cellars dug deep beneath. It was a marketplace dressed as a monument - and in one of its modest stalls, a future master of world literature spent some of the unhappiest hours of his boyhood.

Image: Alexxx1979 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Alexandrovskiye Trade Rows: A Temple for Trade

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alexandr Meshkov, CC BY 2.0. The design came from an architect recorded as M. Campinioni, and it was unusually ambitious for a provincial port. Two identical single-story buildings swept in concave arcs around Alexandrovskaya Square, today's Red Square, split by the street that now bears Chekhov's name. The ...

Image: Alexandr Meshkov | CC BY 2.0

Alexandrovskiye Trade Rows: Chekhov's Purgatory

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alina Vozna, CC BY-SA 4.0. From 1874 to 1876, one of those stalls, near the corner by Soborniy Pereulok, was rented by Pavel Chekhov, and here his son Anton was pressed into service behind the counter. Pavel was a devout, exacting father who ran a grocery and expected his boys to mind it, and the young Ant...

Image: Alina Vozna | CC BY-SA 4.0

Alexandrovskiye Trade Rows: Layers of a Century

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sparusa68, CC BY-SA 4.0. Time did not treat the temple gently. Many stalls stood empty, so trade concentrated in the right-hand gallery while the rest was converted to lodging. In 1911 a two-story leather-goods shop broke the integrity of the colonnade. After the revolution, in 1921, a sculptural group s...

Image: Sparusa68 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Alexandrovskiye Trade Rows: The Square Remembers Its Writer

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ISasha, Public domain. As the arcade weathered, the city increasingly bent it toward memory. In 1935, marking the 75th anniversary of Chekhov's birth, the grounds were reshaped into a public square. In 1960, for the centenary, a monument to Chekhov was unveiled right on Red Square, facing Chekhov Stree...

Image: ISasha | Public domain