Holy Ozeryansky Church (more precisely, the Church of the Presentation of the Ozeryanskaya Icon of the Mother of God) is a large Orthodox church in Kharkov, st. Poltava Way, 124.
The chapel on the former border of the city (at present - the territory of a small square in front of house No. 118 with posters of the Kholodnogorsky cinema) was erected in 1847 in connection with the Highest Resolution of the Holy Synod established on the initiative of Kharkov Archbishop Innokenty (Borisov) on October 16, 1843. processions in Kharkov: on September 30 (13), on the eve of the temple feast of the Intercession Monastery, the venerated Ozeryanskaya Icon of the Mother of God (Hodegetria) was transferred there for the winter, which was there after the closing of the Ozeryanskaya Hermitage near Merefa in 1788-1797, and 22 (5) April, on the eve of the temple holiday in the Kuryazhsky monastery, where she had been constantly since 1797, she returned there. The meeting place of the city clergy with the Kuryazh monks and the transfer of the icon was marked by a chapel where a prayer service was served. In 1874, an altar was installed in the rebuilt chapel, but regular services in the new church (on Sundays and holidays) began to be performed only from the end of the 1880s by the monks of the Intercession Monastery, which took care of the church.
The building with a capacity of 100-150 people was cramped for the growing Orthodox population of Kholodnaya Gora, where, apart from it, by that time there was only the cemetery church of All Saints (since 1845, now the territory of the unfinished Labor Reserves stadium on Muranov Street). In addition, it was built of insufficient quality, for a long time there were cracks in the walls and vault of the temple. Since May 1889, the temple officially became a parish and passed into the hands of the parish guardianship, which turned in 1890 to the diocesan architect V. Kh. Nemkin with a request to temporarily expand the church and draw up a plan for the construction of a new church. After the approval of the project plan by the Archbishop of Kharkov Ambrose (Klyucharev) and the search by the guardianship of the necessary funds (fifteen thousand rubles - a third of the required amount), on June 24, 1892, a new church was laid (on the site of the bread shop of the Kharkov Society of State Peasants). The missing amount of money was supposed to be obtained through private donations, while a kind of auction was held: the donor of the largest amount was given the opportunity to choose the name of the saint in whose honor the throne of the southern side aisle would be consecrated (the northern one was consecrated in the name of St. Ambrose of Milan, the patron saint of the archbishop Ambrose). Through the efforts of priest Maxim Ponomarev, the construction of the Ozeryanskaya Church was completed nine years later on September 23, 1901. At the same time, a stone fence with iron bars was erected around it.
The temple, designed by V. Kh. Nemkin, is made of red unplastered brick in eclectic forms of the Byzantine-Russian style. The side apses in the form of trihedrons protrude slightly from the planes of the northern and southern walls, emphasizing the semicircular apse of the main altar in honor of the Ozeryanskaya Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos. The facades of the building are full of architectural details borrowed from ancient Russian religious architecture. The massive, square in plan, four-pillar volume of the church, crowned with a light drum with a spherical dome, is opposed by a slender four-tiered bell tower (about 40 meters), connected to the western vestibule. Located on an elevated place, organically completing the silhouette of the high plateau of the Cold Mountain, the church, thanks to its graceful silhouette, played a dominant role in the development of the western part of the city as one of the main elements of the district's panorama from the historical center of the city.
Subsequently, the temple underwent a major restructuring according to the project of the new diocesan architect V. N. Pokrovsky. Before 1906, on the territory donated by the peasants of the Kharkov volost for a manor for the temple (which was already outside the city limits), there were two wooden houses lined with bricks for a priest and a clergy. The brick building for the clergy, one and a half floors high, was built in 1912, and the wing that existed at that time by 1914 was already in need of major repairs. On the territory of the temple there was also the building of the parish school, opened on September 1, 1902, in which by 1914 there were 89 students (52 boys and 37 girls). The clergy did not receive a salary, living on the percentage of donations. Both parish priests were also engaged in paid teaching activities.
After the revolution, the nationalized temple and church property were transferred to the parish community for permanent free use under an agreement concluded with the Gubernia Executive Committee on February 20, 1925. Parish life was regulated by the current legislation on cults, a Council was elected within the community, general meetings were held where clergy and elders were elected. Until 1933, the church belonged to the Renovationist jurisdiction, in the fall of 1933 it became the residence of the Exarch of Ukraine, Metropolitan Konstantin, and after his transfer to the new capital of the Ukrainian SSR, Kyiv, the cathedral of the Kharkiv diocese. In 1938, the temple was closed, the episcopal chair was transferred to the Kazan Church on Bald Mountain (Leningradskaya St., 78).
Services resumed in 1942 during the Nazi occupation, initially under the jurisdiction of Metropolitan Seraphim (Buldovsky) of the UAOC. After the liberation of Kharkov (August 1943), patriotic work was carried out in the church, funds were collected for defense and for the families of soldiers. During the period from 1943 to 1945. The Ozeryansky temple was overhauled. The restored northern chapel was consecrated in the name of All Saints (in memory of the destroyed cemetery church). In 1954, central heating was installed in the temple.
After 1991, the iconostasis was updated in the church, a capital two-story baptistery building with a Sunday school and an icon shop was built, and the fence was remade.