In this album you will see the whole University Quay
house by house, from the opposite Neva bank. There were a lot of similar
pictures. At first I wanted to throw away half of them, but then decided
that it would be interesting to show the same houses in different weather
and time of the day.
Let's begin our walk from the end of the
quay, from the Lieutenant Schmidt Quay and go to the right, to the
Dvortsovy Most (the Palace Bridge)
In this picture you can see the last three houses on the quay.
On
the left there's a dohodny house number 25 (Dohodny -the house where
flats were rented used to be called "dohodny house"). A building made of
stone was built there in 1737, then it was rebuilt several times and the
last time it was in 1872-1873. Since 1874 till 1899 there used to live
Rerih family.
In the centre, there's a house number 23. It was built
in the first half of the XVIII century. At the end of the 1940s the
frontage was remade and done in the classic style. In XIX century an
admiral P.I. Ricord used to live there. He's famous for defending
Kronshtadt from Anglo French squadrons in 1856. He also was a governor
on the Far East.
It's a house number 19 on the right. It was built in
the second half of the XVIII century and was rebuilt later. In 1840s
there used to be the management of the 1st railway district. At the
beginning of the XX century there lived Graf I.I. Tolstoy, the
vice-president of the Academy of Arts and the Minister of Education.
The house number 21 is behind those buildings. That's a house of
Domenico Trezini.
That's how the Lieutenant Schmidt Bridge
looks like in the evening.
By the way, soon it will be closed for a
complete overhaul.
Further along the quay is a building of
the Academy of Arts (house number 17)
It was built in 1764-1788 after
the project of Vallin de la Mothe and A. F. Kokorinov. Now it is the
Repin's College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and also the
Scientific Library and the research museum of the Academy of Arts.
In the picture taken in the evening the
silhouettes of sphinxes are seen very clearly. The sphinxes were
repaired for the 300th anniversary of the city.
It's raining heavily.
The pier with sphinxes was built after
the project of K. A. Ton in 1832 - 1834. Those sphinxes were brought
from Egypt, they were found during the diggings in Phoebe. They were
made in XIII BC.
The sphinxes' faces look like the face of the pharaoh Amenhotep III.
The house number 15 is the Men'shikov's
Palace.
It's "the stonest" building on the Vasil'evsky isle. It was built for
A.D. Men'shikov, a politician and general, the first governor of St
Petersburg, whom Peter the I gave the palace on the Vasil'evsky isle.
The central part of the palace was built in 1710-1714 after the project
of D.M. Fontana and G.I. Schadel.
In 1720-1721 the west wing was built (after the project of G.I.
Schadel). In 1768-1769 - the east one.
The west wing.
Now it's the Military Academy of the Rear and
Transport.
Now in the Menshikov's palace there's the Branch of the Hermitage.
The house number 13 is the building of the 1st cadet corps.
Behind it
there is the manege of the 1st cadet corps.
Both buildings were built in 1756-1759 after the project of I.G.
Borhard and I. Yust.
Soldiers used to live there but now, after the repairing, exhibitions
take place there.
St Petersburg State University (former
A. A. Zhdanov's Leningrad State University)
There's a TV aerial on the right.
Now I'll tell you about each University
building in details.
Peter the II Palace (house number 11). Now there are departments of
philology and oriental studies.
Windows in the right part of the
building look like they were real, but it's a canvas with windows
painted on it. The thing is that during the repairs the ap wing
foundered and was fractured so it was covered with the canvas.
In 1710-1714 the 2nd floor house for the
butler of Men'shikov was built (now it's the right side of the
building).
In 1727 the building was to be widened for the palace of Peter the II
(architect D. Trezini) but after the death of the tzar the housebuilding
was stopped. There used to be the Senate, than there lived a Georgian
tsarina Anna.
In 1761 the building was finished and given to the 1st cadet corps. In
1867 there was the Historico-Philological University, where people
studied to be teachers. In 1918 it became pedagogical, later it was
given to the St Petersburg University.
To the right from the Palace of Peter the
II there is the University rectorial ap wing (house number 9). It was
built in 1794 and substantially rebuilt in 1840-1842 by A.F. Schedrin.
In this house a famous Russian poet A.A. Block was born (his grandfather
was the rector of the University)
Also a famous Russian writer N. V. Gogol' lived there in 1842.
I don't know why, but I think that during the times of Peter the II
there were flats to rent.
Now there are administrative services of the University.
There's an interesting building seen behind the rectorial ap wing. It
used to be a "hall to play a ball", one of the oldest St Petersburg gym
halls.
The building wasn't finished. Both sides have pylon-like ledges to which
the rest part of the building could be added. You can see them in the
picture. You also can see the apertures of the corridors. On the other
side of the building you can see such ledges but they are substantially
destroyed. Around 20 years ago the Leningrad State University Alpinist
Team used to practise there.
The main University building is the
building of the Twelve Collegiate Organs (house number 7)
It was built after the project of D. Trezini (lower floors) and T.
Shvertfeger (upper floors) in 1722-1244 for the government departments
(that's why it was called so).
To the right from the building had to be a ship canal but the project
wasn't fulfilled.
The 2nd floor lean-to on the left was built in
1737-1741. The length of the building is 400 meters. There's a corridor
inside it.
It's the University building since 1838 (the order of the Nicholas I)
As the readers told me:
Previously the building didn't have a pass-through and consisted of
12 separate buildings. Than they were connected by a corridor. Before
the revolution students used to gather there for the meetings. So the
authorities wanted to partition the corridor to separate students from
the different departments and do not let them to communicate. Now
there's a similar tendency. 2 out of 3 entrances were closed and this
made it difficult for the students to go, for example, to the library.
In the Petergof University complex the situation is even worse. The
hostel is separated from the departments by the concrete wall. They say
that it's made for security.
In the Building of the Twelve Collegiate
Organs several famous people used to live, among them a chemist D. I.
Mendeleev (in 1866-1890) and physiologist I. P. Pavlov (in 1876-1886)
A great deal more famous people studied there.
Now we'll go to the buildings of the
Academy of Science and the Kunstkamera.
The main building of the Academy of
Science (house number 5).
It was built in 1783-1789 after the
project of D. Quarenghi.
In XIX century many famous scientists lived
there.
In 1925 the Academy was transformed in the Scientific Academy of the
USSR and moved to Moscow.
And in this building was Leningrad Scientific centre of the Scientific
Academy of the USSR. In 1937-1945 there lived a scientist- marine
architect and mathematician A.N. Krilov.
The picture was taken from the very sharp angle so almost all buildings
from University to the Kunstkamera are seen in it.
The Academy of Science and the
Kunstkamera.
The Kunstkamera (house number 3) is one
of the most popular and famous buildings on the quay.
It was built
from 1718 (by the architect I.G Mattarnovi) to 1734 (by M.G. Zemtsov).
There were the Academy of Science, a
library, an observatory and a museum.
During the Elizabeth times the
tower with a Gottorpsky globe burnt down and was rebuilt during Soviet
times, after the war. The new globe has only the same frame.
The building was also painted in the original colours (it used to be
painted in "monotonous whitish")
The Kustkamera was the first museum in
Russia and at first was the personal collection of Peter the I.
Now it's the museum of anthropology and ethnography of Peter the
Great and memorial museum of M.V. Lomonosov, where among other
showpieces you can see the collection of Peter the I.
The Kunstkamera and the Rostral column in
the evening.
The house number 1 is the
South pack-house of the stock exchange building, now it's the Zoological
museum to which I devoted a separate album.
I'm finishing this album with a picture
of the beginning of the University quay near the Dvortsovy Most (Palace
Bridge)
