1950sPodbara
Swimmers in the old canal lock
A masonry lock chamber on the old canal, its walls streaked to the waterline and its timber mitre gates shut across the far end under a light lattice footbridge. A young man is caught in mid dive, arms out and legs still above the surface, and two boys sit on the wide concrete coping at the right with their clothes bundled beside them. More bathers stand along the walls beyond the gates, where a second structure with a railed walkway carries the channel on toward the river. Above the bank at the left a factory chimney, telegraph poles and a line of trees stand against a pale sky, with a woman washing at the water's edge in the shadow of the wall.
About this place
Podbara is one of the oldest quarters of Novi Sad, lying north east of the old centre between Temerinska street, the Danube-Tisa-Danube canal and the river. It was settled in 1718 by villagers from Almaš, who left their marshy land and made a new home on the edge of the Petrovaradin Trench beside a large pond; the pond gave the quarter its name, and the settlers gave it its second one, Almaški kraj. The first houses were wattle daubed with mud and roofed with reed, and the district stayed poor and looked down on by the merchants of the centre, which is one reason its people set out to build the largest Orthodox church in the city, the Almaš church consecrated in 1797. The pond was drained after the canal was dug in 1875 and the ground became pasture and then the city's first industrial zone, which was moved away in the 1960s and replaced by tall housing blocks.
- Date
- 1950s
- Coordinates
- 45.26149, 19.85029
- Source
- Public online source
- Licence
- Public domain
- Size
- 1600 × 1000 px
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