Not far from Peyzazhnaya Alleya you can see the oldest Kiev bridge, although in fact the first was the Struve Bridge, but it is still there today not preserved. Kudryavsky Bridge is a viaduct and is located above Petrovskaya Street, which almost no longer exists. In the 1960s, people still lived here in private houses and it was possible to drive along it by car, but as of 2018, the street is so overgrown with trees, bushes and weeds that it is difficult to even walk along it. The bridge connected Kudryavskaya Street and Voznesensky Spusk; Voznesensky Yar passes under it. A special feature of the Kudryavsky Bridge is that its spans are made of brick (can be seen in the photo). Even metal beams with rivets that are more than a century old have been preserved. The length of the bridge is 10 meters, height is 4 meters.
The Kudryavsky Bridge was built in 1897 according to the design of the engineer-architect Vladimir Bessmertny (known for his project “House with cats”). The bridge was created for the needs of one of the first Kyiv distilleries – the “State Wine Warehouse”, built in 1896 (currently abandoned).
As soon as the plant’s capacity began to be used to its maximum, the issue of unloading the street became acute, since freight carts standing near the warehouses in line for products created big traffic problems. Not only did they block the street, but when turning and moving back, carts with fragile cargo constantly created traffic jams. The idea emerged that freight traffic near wine warehouses should be one-way. But the street infrastructure of that time did not provide such an opportunity. Kudryavskaya Street made a sharp turn near the warehouse and turned into the equally narrow Podvalny Lane, which ended in a dead end – more precisely, in the upper reaches of Voznesensky Yar, along the bottom of which the street of the same name descended.
Vladimir Bessmertny presented a solution to this problem in the form of a project for a viaduct bridge across Voznesensky Yar. This bridge connected Podvalny Lane with a fairly wide Voznesensky Descent, thanks to which freight carts, one after another, entering from the main streets (Sichev Streltsov and Bolshaya Zhitomirskaya) along Kudryavskaya, then drove out onto the same main streets along Voznesensky Descent. And when electrified transport appeared in Kyiv, a service tram line for a freight tram was laid on the bridge (residents of nearby houses called it “one-tonnka”). Over time, the need for the line disappeared and the rails were dismantled.
Until April 9, 2001, cars were still driving across the bridge, but then it received emergency status, the entrances to it were blocked and it became a pedestrian bridge. In 2002, an attempt was made to restore the Kudryavsky Bridge, but as of 2018, the structure is in extremely poor condition and is rapidly collapsing.
Where is the Kudryavsky Bridge?
Voznesensky Spusk, 7