Description of the attraction
In 1879 the city architect Salko A. M. proposed a plan: to improve the wasteland at the intersection of Dvoryanskaya (now Rabochaya), Astrakhanskaya, Konstantinovskaya (now Sovetskaya) and Tsareva (now Pugachevskaya) streets, making it Poltava square in honor of the 170th anniversary of the victory at Poltava. I liked the victorious name and successfully existed for almost 60 years.
Ten years later, in 1889, on Poltava Square, Prince Vladimir Cathedral was consecrated, built with donations from Saratov residents and also designed by Alexei Salko. The Orthodox church, opened on the anniversary of the 900th anniversary of the baptism of Russia, was 77 meters high and was one of the tallest in Russia, the architecture of which has become a symbol of Orthodoxy for many years. In 1934, the unique work of the architect was completely destroyed.
The date of birth of the park itself can be called 1903, when P. A. Stolypin, who took office as governor, together with students from gymnasiums and schools planted 1000 seedlings of trees and shrubs around the church. A little later, the ennobled square was surrounded by a fence, displacing the horse-drawn railway, which passed along the central alley of the current park. The peak of beauty and decoration of the park was in the short year 1917: the shadow of the grown seedlings, cozy wooden benches, gravel paths of alleys, the evening chime of bells - all this was just an oasis in dusty Saratov.
In 1936, on August 6, the grand opening of the "Children's Park" with a tennis court, a football field (on the site of a destroyed temple), a cinema platform for nine hundred seats and a corner for young naturalists took place. The children, with the permission of the administration, dug a hole in the middle of the park for a pond and lined it with bricks. The first inhabitants of the beautiful pond were fish, later - turtles and waterfowl. Until 1941, the corner of young people turned into a small menagerie with foxes, wolves and pigs. In wartime, until the 60s, the park was abandoned and slowly died out. In the 1970s, the Romashka fountain was built on the site of the pond, the stadium was reconstructed and the green area was renewed. In the nineties, the park again became useless and abandoned.
Now, only the building of the parish school and the almshouse where the Children's Art Center is located, reminds of the old buildings in the Children's Park. April 14, 2010 consecrated the newly built Knyazhe-Vladimirsky temple, leaving in the past all the beauty and grandeur of the old temple, but giving hope for the restoration of the good glory of the oasis in the center of Saratov. The main entrance to the park is stylized as the gates of a temple, taking you into the depths of shady alleys with semi-antique benches and lanterns.
