A long 115 years ago, Kharkiv residents—who were fascinated by the mysteries of our city’s history—responded enthusiastically to D.I. Bahalii’s call to share interesting facts about Kharkiv’s history in the run-up to the city’s hosting of the 12th Archaeological Congress. No doubt they, too—just like us today—were endlessly drawn to old Kharkiv. This fascination also extended to Kharkiv’s underground passages. In our previous article, we published a letter from P.I. Shchelkova about Kharkiv’s ancient underground passages, accompanied by an interesting map of their entrances. Today, we are publishing another letter, dated 1900, dedicated to underground Kharkiv. Specifically, it is a highly fascinating article by Mr. Levakovsky on the underground passages of Kharkiv.
On April 5 of this year, the *Kharkiv Vedomosti* published a note from the commission organizing the archaeological conference in our city regarding the underground passages in Kharkiv. Furthermore, the chairman of this committee appealed to individuals with information on the subject to share it. In light of this, I am asking you, Mr. Editor, to publish these lines—which pertain to the underground passages of Kharkiv—in the newspaper you edit.
I feel it is necessary to note that, to ensure greater coherence in the individual details about the various sections of the underground passages, I will follow the outline presented in the note, and where necessary, I will repeat some information already provided in the note.
I will proceed from the eastern corner of the south side of Gostiny Dvor toward the underground passage beneath Goryainsky Lane, into Mr. Pitra’s courtyard, and on to the courtyard of the town hall. To confirm that this underground passage runs beneath Nikolaevskaya Square, I will cite the case of a sinkhole that occurred in the summer of 1891 on the eastern side of Nikolaevskaya Square, slightly north of the doors to the small annex of the building where Shustov’s store is located. This sinkhole was not excavated but was soon filled in.
In the spring of 1894, while digging a hole in the yard of the house opposite which the sinkhole mentioned earlier had formed, an underground passage was discovered; according to one of the house’s residents, a rifle and some coins were found inside it.
But the main evidence of the existence of underground passages beneath Nikolayevskaya Square comes from the discovery of one of them during the renovation of a house—formerly owned by Mr. Kovalev—by its new owner, Ukshe. Here, the underground passage was uncovered while digging a trench for the foundation of a planned addition to the old house, which is located across from City Hall. When the work on that trench had passed through the entire layer of topsoil and a significant thickness of yellow clay, a brick foundation was uncovered in the trench—likely intended for the future addition to the house and forming a continuation of the old house’s foundation, on the wall of which there were even locks designed to connect the new addition to the old house. This foundation, extending four arshins from the old house, reached the underground passage, so that if it had been extended, it would have completely blocked the discovered underground passage. It is a highly unlikely coincidence that the underground passage would end precisely where the foundation was supposed to run, making it plausible to assume that the continuation of the passage was destroyed when the trench was dug for the discovered foundation. This assumption is confirmed, as we shall see below, by the condition of the soil lying along the presumed eastern extension of the underground passage.
The passage that was found runs from Nikolaevskaya Square into the courtyard in question, that is, from west to east; Many people entered it from the square, some carrying candles and others torches, but I heard no definitive opinion regarding its direction or length beneath the square; it was said to extend for ten sazhens, after which there was a drop-off.
In cross-section, the passage resembles the narrow half of a chicken egg, cut lengthwise and crosswise, measuring 2 arshins 8 vershoks at the base and the same in height. Its walls run parallel to each other for only 8 vershoks in height, but as they rise higher, they converge slightly, so that the upper lintel (vault) does not align with the lower part, as we usually see in the windows and doors of stone walls. The walls of the passageway are brick, laid in half-brick courses with lime mortar, very neatly and precisely; the brickwork is laid flush with the surface, that is, the joints are filled with lime flush with the surface of the bricks, rather than being recessed slightly from the edges of the bricks—as walls were typically laid before the current method of using open joints. The color of the lime layer inside the passage is gray. The bricks facing the passages on the outside and at the break are so fresh that they do not even correspond to their age and constant presence in the ground.
Although, as mentioned above, the ancient foundation found in the ground on the courtyard’s front side extended only as far as the underground passage but did not cross it; rather, it was crossed by the trench dug for the foundation of the house’s most recent renovation. Nevertheless, no continuation of the passage deeper into the courtyard has been discovered. The soil along the length from the end of the passage—that is, from the trench dug for the foundation of the front side of the new addition—is soft, consisting of fill to a depth of 5 ar. At the bottom of this depth, brickwork was discovered—resembling a wall—at an angle to the old house, not much different from a straight line, but nevertheless it does not allow us to consider the discovered wall a continuation of the old house’s foundation for a structure once planned, as we saw on the front side of the courtyard. The earth further inside the courtyard—where a trench was dug for the outer courtyard wall of the new house extension—is also mounded, but the depth of the mound here is slightly less than at the site of the middle interior wall. Furthermore—to the north of the underground passage along the front line of the courtyard, that is, parallel to Nikolaevskaya Square—the soil is solid for only six arshins from the passage. Although it is black earth, it shows no signs of artificial layering and is so dense that, when digging the trenches, it did not require wooden struts, as was the case in other parts of the work. The soil in the rest of the courtyard, along the front line, is fill soil extending all the way to the nearest house and reaches its greatest depth in the middle of this section, increasing as one moves toward the interior of the courtyard. Leaving aside the details of this part of the excavation, as they are only indirectly related to the underground passages, I will mention two accounts from individuals who came to inspect the underground passage.
According to the first account, at the end of this part of the courtyard—that is, in its western corner, but already beyond the property line—there is an underground passage with a well-preserved vault, adapted for domestic use. According to the second account, relayed to me by a Kharkiv native, long ago, when the elderly merchant Kovalev still owned the cellar beneath the southern part of Gostiny Yard, it was possible to walk from this cellar beneath Nikolayevskaya Square into the courtyards belonging to the same owner at the corner of Nikolayevskaya Square and Nikolayevskaya Street.Confirmation of the existence of underground passages in the courtyards of Kovalev, leading to Nikolayevskaya Square, Nikolaevskaya Street, and Petrovsky Lane, was found during excavation work between the house on the corner of Petrovsky Lane and the house on Nikolaevskaya Street. It emerges from beneath the eastern wall of the latter building approximately two-thirds of the way across the excavation, measured from Nikolaevskaya Street, and does not run parallel to it but deviates by 40 degrees, that is, it runs south. For a distance of approximately ten arshins from where it emerges from beneath the neighboring house, it has a vertical vent leading upward and, in addition to its general southeasterly direction, it branches off to the right; in the arch of the latter, at its beginning, according to those who were with me, there is a hook or a nail, as if for hanging something, such as a lantern. Due to its deviation from the direction of Pushkinskaya Street, this passage was last exposed when a section of the house on Petrovsky Lane—the one closest to the gate, i.e., to Moskovskaya Street—was demolished; this side of the house is 1½ times longer than the side where the passage begins.
Externally, this passage resembles the one we described above, discovered in the courtyard of Mr. Ukshe. The interior of the passage is finished with half-brickwork on a lime mortar bed; the bricks also appear very fresh.
In general, this underground passage is identical in shape, construction, and nearly in size to the one leading from Nikolayevskaya Square but running in a southeasterly direction. Given the angle at which it diverges from Nikolaevskaya Street, this latter route would have run under Petrovsky Lane and emerged near the courtyard of the old gymnasium (the courtyard where Mr. Edelberg’s store is located). It also indicates that, in addition to the underground passageway leading to the river mentioned in the note—located below the Jewish synagogue—there is another one running in the direction indicated.
As for what was mentioned in the note about the streets below the synagogue, I can add that in Skrypnytskyi Lane, a little further up from the building belonging to the medical society, a blacksmith’s shop had been set up in a brick structure built into the hillside, and later a beer or wine warehouse was built there. According to one of the craftsmen, in the same lane—but after turning left and walking downhill—there is a vaulted cave on the right-hand side, though without brick facing; it was six arshins deep and two arshins wide, and benches had been carved out of the earth on either side, as if for sitting or lying down.
Now, turning to the streets in the western part of Gostiny Dvor, where new buildings have been erected in recent years, and taking into account the note’s indication that the passage runs westward beneath the area of the official seats, I think it is appropriate to describe the shape that the part of Universitetskaya Hill closest to the bridge leading to the passageway has had since ancient times.
A vertical cross-section taken along the entire length of the descent from University Hill, excavated to expand the courtyard of Novo-Sergievsky Row, revealed a layer of fill soil that, at its southern end (near the University Stairs) a thickness of no more than ¾ arshin. Moving north toward the passage, it deepens to its greatest thickness opposite doors 6, 7, and 8 of the row, counting from the north; here the layer’s thickness reaches up to half the height of the cut slope. From there, it begins to decrease in thickness, only to rise more steeply and then descend even more steeply toward the Paschenkinsky Descent, where the iron bridge leads into the passage. And this shape of the alluvial layer indicates that University Hill, in its original form, in the areas corresponding to the greatest thickness of the alluvial layer—that is, opposite the aforementioned NN doors in the row and at the descent toward the iron bridge—consisted primarily of (yellow clay), had gullies, while the main layer between these gullies formed an elevation bounded to the north and south by the aforementioned depressions and to the west by the slope leading down to the Lopani River. The elevated area we have described, bounded on three sides by slopes, must have been of defensive importance to the first settlers on the promontory formed by the watershed of the Kharkiv and Lopani Rivers. Indeed, this elevation (the northern end of Universitetskaya Gorki) contains an ancient structure within its depths, which I must unfortunately describe not based on my own observations, but according to the account of one of the eyewitnesses.
At the point where Universitetskaya Hill slopes down (where a stone wall now stands), directly opposite the eastern corner of the north side of the Novo-Sergievsky Row building, a passage was discovered leading to an underground chamber three arshins wide and the same length. This underground passage splits: one part runs northward, and at its end there is a small slit from which the draft is so strong that it blows out a candle, while the other forms a chamber with blind windows or large openings in its walls and a vaulted opening in the ceiling, as if for climbing out. Once the wall had been built, it was possible to crawl through the opening, as long as the space between the wall and the mound had not yet been filled with earth. A brick from this underground passage weighs up to 20 pounds.
Now let’s set out once more from the southwest corner of Gostiny Dvor, following the directions in the note, toward the monastery courtyard. To do this, of course, the passage must go through the courtyard that belonged to Paschenko-Tryapkin at the time of construction. Indeed, there is evidence that a passage was discovered during the construction of his houses, and the following items were found inside: a small pot, a crust of bread, and the shells of dyed eggs; the presence of these items indicates that the passages remained easily accessible to people until a later time. This information about the passages was conveyed to me by a clergyman, who stated that it had been published at the time in the *Kharkiv Provincial Gazette*.
As for the sinkhole in the monastery courtyard on the west side of the prosvirnya building, I will say that during the excavation work for the construction of the Church of the Ozeryanskaya Mother of God in the monastery courtyard, in May 1893, at the bottom of an excavation five arshins deep, near the very edge of the excavated area, approximately halfway across the width of the excavation, an elongated strip of soft black soil (surrounded by very hard yellow clay) containing broken bricks—that is, likely the backfill of the aforementioned sinkhole. After removing this backfill, a pit two arshins wide and just as deep was formed, extending slightly under the sheer eastern edge of the excavation; that is, along with the removal of the five-arshin layer of soil, the upper part of the cave passage was also cut away. Therefore, to an observer looking down from above, it must appear as a pit. The part of it that, as mentioned above, extended slightly into the sheer eastern edge of the excavation resembled a shallow cave, as if it were the end of the section preceding it; it resembles an ordinary clay pit. Sixteen shogs from the spot just mentioned toward the center of the excavation, with a slight deviation toward the old church, black soil patches were again visible, as if they were a continuation of the filled-in sinkhole. But at a distance of no more than half an arshin from these black patches, a trench one arshin deep had been dug, perpendicular to the line of the possible continuation of the filled-in passage; however, the soil proved to be undisturbed, clayey; consequently, any traces of the collapsed passage’s continuation were lost. In the section described above, there was no brick lining, nor were there any indications of its purpose. However, the size of this collapse, the absence of wall facing, and its location near the shore make it similar to the passage (cave) in Skrypnytskyi Lane, where Shkaff’s house is located.
Further on the same monastery grounds, according to a person who had known the place for a long time, another underground passage ran from the demolished building of the former college (later the consistory) through the site where the new consistory building now stands, specifically beneath the first three windows facing the street, counting from the south, and continued on under Universitetskaya Street to the house that once belonged to Paschenko-Tryapkin. The passage, at the site of the consistory, had a vertical vent. Another witness added that during the collegium’s existence, the section of this passage adjacent to it had been converted into a vegetable cellar.
There is still more to be said about the passageways on the north side of the Gostiny Dvor. I am aware only of the portion that was discovered during the renovation of the space for the Viennese pastry shop and the installation of facilities for the shop’s needs—specifically, for storing ice. According to one of the workers who participated in the renovation of that space, the passageway from the Gostiny Dvor building emerges in the middle of the streets and then turns toward the monastery; however, I do not know whether there is a right turn toward Nikolayevskaya Square.
M. Levakovsky.
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