The collection of the Ulyanovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore named after Ivan Goncharov contains a photograph “Karamzinskaya Square from the Spassky Monastery” taken by the famous Saratov photographer Anton Stepanovich (Stefanovich) Murenko. The photograph is part of the series “Photographs of Simbirsk”. This is the first known photograph of the monument to Nikolay Mikhailovich Karamzin in Simbirsk.
The photo was taken during the final stage of building a park around the monument. The photograph shows the plantings of the future Karamzinsky garden — trees and lilac bushes, as well as a metal fence with gilded copper tops around the monument. The fence was installed at the expense of Aurora Karlovna Karamzina (née Stjernvall), the widow of the eldest son of the historiographer Andrey Nikolayevich Karamzin, who died in the Crimean War.
The photograph shows the Nikolskaya (Nikolayevskaya) church in the name of the Icon of the Mother of God of Kazan, built in 1801. The church building combined the features of Russian Revival style and Russian Baroque. In 1870, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) was baptized in the Nikolskaya Church. Near the monument to Nikolay Mikhailovich Karamzin, there is a group of prisoners (figures in light-colored clothes) engaged in landscaping the square under the supervision of police officers (figures in dark-colored clothes).
Anton Stepanovich Murenko (1837–1875) was one of the first local photojournalists and worked in Simbirsk from 1866 to 1867. His series “Photographs of Simbirsk” became one of the first in town. Murenko took this series of views in the summer of 1867. It was published in the form of an album of twelve large-format photographs inside a typographed cardboard folder. Among Anton Murenko’s photographs in the album, the best subject matter and quality can be found in “Cathedrals, the Governor’s House and Nikolskaya Church (the Southwestern View)”, “Karamzinskaya Square from the Spassky Monastery” and “Bolshaya Saratovskaya Street from the Building of the Slepnev Theater”. It is worth noting that the photographs “Prisoners Working on Smolensky Descent” and “The Beginning of Construction of the New Dam” are vivid examples of photojournalism.
