In the 80s of the XIX century, opposite the building of the Povet Zemstvo, which was located at the corner of Yelenskaya (now Ivan Mazepa) and Malaya Meshchanskaya (now Kotsyubinsky) streets, Zemskaya Square was equipped from the side of Cathedral Square. Among the measures taken to improve the improvement of Kremenchug in the period from 1872 to 1885, the creation of this park is indicated. No documents were found about the exact date of foundation. You can establish it approximately, using indirect information. In the private collection of V.V. Antipov, photographs and postcards with views of pre-revolutionary Kremenchug have been preserved. The photo from the album “Kremenchuk: The Flood of 1877” depicting Cathedral Square and the Zemstvo building on Yelenskaya Square is missing. On the postcard “County Congress. Bow from Kremenchug »Publishing House Amchislavsky and Blum Bookstore, Kremenchug # 26. 1901, part of the park is visible with a wooden fence, bushes and a tree, whose age is not older than 15 years. Most likely, the square was founded in the last year of the reporting period – in 1885.
The square had a rectangular configuration with alleys along the perimeter and a diagonal alley that connected two entrances. One entrance was at the beginning of Yelenskaya Street (now the courtyard of the Kremen Hotel), the other was on the side of Cathedral Square, between the one-story guardhouse building and the alley that ran parallel to Kievskaya Street (modern Pobedy Street) behind the square. Over time, when the trees rose, the white house of the guardhouse was literally buried in greenery, which can be clearly seen on the postcard of the early 20th century “Kremenchug. Northern part of the city “. This square has existed for a long time. Common robinia prevailed among the trees. True, the Soviet government, in the revolutionary fervor of renaming, did not bypass this object, giving it the name “Arbor Park”. In the 50s of the XX century, the square was extended to Bohdan Khmelnitsky Street (modern Victory Street), removing one of the buildings of secondary school No. 9 – a former one-story church building that had been found here at one time.
The square, as well as other green spaces of the city, was actively taken care of during subbotniks. This is evidenced by an article in the city newspaper of Kremenchug in 1967, which reported that during the subbotnik workers of a garment factory cut and dug trees, took out garbage, and improved three flower beds. According to the recollections of IO Kuvarzina from Kremenchus, in the middle of the Birzhevoy Square, which was very cute and cozy, a round flowerbed with an alley around it attracted attention. Since 1975, on the site of the Birzhevoy Square in Kremenchug, the Kremen Hotel has appeared.
Source: The book “Smaragdovi shati of Kremenchuk: the history of the city in parks and squares” 2016