Dorogomilovo District - History

History

This section is based on P.V.Sytin's "History of Moscow Streets"

Original Dorogomilovo sloboda was located on the opposite (eastern) bank of the Moskva River, between Khamovniki and Novodevichy Monastery. Peasants of this sloboda, personally free, were paying their taxes with Yam (mail coach) service on the old road to Smolensk, the main link between Moscow and Poland. Smolensk was annexed by Moscow in the course of the Russo-Polish War, and as a result the road was straightened and a new river crossing emerged on site of present-day Borodinsky Bridge. Dorogomilovo sloboda relocated to the western bank, to present-day Dorogomilovo. For the next two hundred years, the new and the old settlements shared the same name. The only other settlement on the western bank was a fishing village owned by Patriarch.

In 1731–1742, when Moscow city boundary expanded to Kamer-Kollezhsky Val limits, Dorogomilovo sloboda was incorporated into Moscow. Gradually, the once-free coach-drivers were stripped of their liberties and reduced to taxpayer peasant status. Former sloboda population decreased from 117 households in 1699 to 24 in 1801. Instead, Dorogomilovo acquired one of Moscow's largest cemeteries (Orthodox, 1771, Jewish, 1788).

In 1812, old Smolensk road witnessed the retreat of Russian troops and Napoleon's conquest of Moscow. The village of Fili, where Kutuzov made his decision to abandon Moscow, is situated just outside of the modern Dorogomilovo District boundary. The French marched to Moscow in three columns, crossing the river in Fili, Dorogomilovo, and Luzhniki. Meanwhile, wounded at Battle of Borodino where dying and buried at Dorogomilovo cemeteries.

Industrial development of the 19th century was slow, due to the regular floods. The main employers in the area was a brewery set on a hill in 1875, still operating as Badayev Brewery (19th century postcard), a dye factory (1883), and a cement plant (1894). Newspapers, describing 1879 flood, wrote that "brewery workers managed to roll out a beer barrel and floated away from the site"... Development was boosted by construction of Bryansky (now Kiyevsky) railroad terminal, originally built in wood (1900 postcard). In 1912, the city built new Borodinsky Bridge, which still stands. New Kiyevsky Terminal, designed by Ivan Rerberg and Vladimir Shukhov in 1912–1914, was completed during the Russian Civil War, in 1920.

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