Vyborgsky District, Saint Petersburg

Vyborgsky District, Saint Petersburg Выборгский район (Russian)
Location of Vyborgsky District, Saint Petersburg on the map of Saint Petersburg
Location
Country	Russia
Federal subject	Saint Petersburg
Statistics
Area	354 km2 (137 sq mi)[1]
Population (01.01.2013 est.)	453,759 inhabitants[2]
Density	1,281.81/km2 (3,319.9/sq mi)[3]
Time zone	MSK (UTC+03:00)[4]
Established	1917[5]
Previous names	Vyborgskaya storona[5]
Official website[6]
Vyborgsky District, Saint Petersburg on WikiCommons

Vyborgsky District, Saint Petersburg is an administrative and municipal district (raion), one of the 18 in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

History and present

Overview and early decades

This historical north-western area of St.Petersburg was named after the castle town of Vyborg (Rus. Выборг - a transcription of its Swedish name Viborg) after the latter was taken from Swedish Empire (which then included present-day Finland) by Russian army under Tsar (later Emperor) Peter the Great during the Great Northern War of early 18th century, thus safeguarding the new Russian capital St.Petersburg. This north-western area of the city was the nearest to Vyborg and has been connected to it by major roads which have almost never lost their significance as international transportation routes.

This part of the city, divided in the 20th century longitudinally between Vyborgski and Kalininskiy districts of the city, has been historically known as Vyborgskaya storona - the Vyborg Side (the northern side - bank - of the Neva River delta).^[7]

The south of the district has so far kept most of its traditional brick buildings of both factories, offices and apartment houses dating back to the 21st century - 1950s, while its northern half has been built up as a residential area by 9-12-storey-high apartment blocks since the 1960s, with present-day construction companies encroaching with their apartment 15-20+-storey-tall high-rises on both the older and the newer parts of the district.

Saint Sampson's Cathedral

Vyborgski district has preserved a certain tangible memory of the nation's success in the Great Northern War. The day of the decisive Battle of Poltava in the south (in what is now Ukraine), on which Russians had their first major success in the war, fell on the feast day of Saint Sampson the Hospitable^[8] (June 27, 1709), and a grand cathedral in his honour was built on the road to Vyborg. Completed during the reign of Anna of Russia, Sampsoniyevskiy Sobor (Saint Sampson's Cathedral) is now a museum - a branch of the ring of four museum churches with the head office at Saint Isaac's Cathedral.^[9] Saint Sampson's Cathedral features among the few church buildings preserved from the first half of the 18th century - from the city's first decades of existence.^[10] It replaced an earlier wooden church, whose construction started in 1709 on the Tsar's order, and which was consecrated the following year. The cathedral is interesting architecturally for its admixture of Old Russian (pre-Peter) forms with then-current elements of West European trends, forming together "Anna's baroque" and is also known for its unique carved wooden iconostasis from that time.^[10] For the bicentennial of the Battle of Poltava the ground floor of the bell tower was decorated by memorial plaques citing Peter's selfless encouraging words to his army on the day.^[10] Opposite the building was placed Peter the Great's statue by Mark Antokolsky, taken away during the Soviet years and restored on its place in the early 21st century.

Monument to Peter the Great opposite Saint Sampson's Cathedral. Early 20th century

Early 20th-century view of Bolshoy Sampsoniyevskiy prospekt (Rus. "Greater Sampson's Avenue") between Monument to Peter the Great and Saint Sampson's Cathedral

The place behind the church was used as the city's first official cemetery, being located way off the city's center. Though the place was subordinate to the state Russian Orthodox Church, the name of Sampson the Hospitable was convenient to give the last shelter to remains of many foreigners from Western Europe of other Christian denominations who helped Peter and design and build the city,^[10] such as Domenico Trezzini, Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond and Carlo Bartolomeo Rastrelli. The graves has mostly been lost over the centuries, with most of the former cemetery converted into a quiet public garden. The memory of the city's first architects was commemorated for the city's tricentennial by Mikhail Shemyakin with a monument To First-Builders of Saint Petersburg. The memorial was made of an engraved Gothic granite arch with bronze details such as a drawing desk with the first city plan, an inkstand with a quill, and a memento mori - a human skull. All these bronze details have been since then stolen and never replaced (see photo).

The cemetery later also "accommodated" several members of the opposition to the (Baltic) German rule of Ernst Johann von Biron, made the regent of Russia after Empress Anna's will. The anti-Biron party was headed by her Cabinet minister Artemy Volynsky, who was executed together with architect Pyotr Yeropkin and another member of the group, Captain A.F.Khroushchev. The memory of their patriotic "plot" is marked by an 1880s black monument on their grave.^[11]

Gravestone monument to the executed Volynsky and his comrades next to Saint Sampson's Cathedral

The church gave the name of its title saint to the main thoroughfare of the district - the part of the road towards Vyborg within the city limits, Bolshoy Sampsoniyevskiy prospekt (Rus. "Greater Sampson's Avenue"), with Maly ("Lesser") Sampsoniyevskiy prospekt starting from the cathedral doors to the riverbank of the Bolshaya Nevka, one of the largest distributaries of the Neva.

The memory of the Great Northern War was also kept in the names of several streets in the district, e.g. Nishtadtskiy (Nystat) Prospekt (after the final peace settlement under the Treaty of Nystad, now part of Lesnoy Prospekt) and Neyshlotskiy Pereulok (Nyslot Lane) after a fortress Nyslot (now Savonlinna) taken by Russians after a month's siege in 1714.^[12]

Industrial area

Developing slower than centrally located city areas,^[7] the Vyborg Side yet had by the end of the first third of the 18th century on its land the Naval and Land Forces Hospital, which later grew into the Academy of Military Medicine, and a number of factories: sugar refineries, brick kilns, a spinning yard, Dutch breweries; there were also some army barracks.^[7]

In 1798 was founded the immediate precursor of the Academy of Military Medicine - the Medico-Surgical Academy, and in 1820 - Prince Michael's Atrillery School.

By the end of the 18th century this area had already been joined to the central, left-bank Liteynaya (Foundry) part of the city by a pontoon bridge and with Petergburgskaya side by another one.^[13]

By the late 18th century on this side of the Neva there were artillery laboratory, calico printers, food storehouses, and the riverbank was adorned with nobility's countryhouses and their parks.

1830s saw construction of barracks for Lithuanian (since the 1850s - Moscow) Regiment.

1879 - completion of Liteyniy Bridge.

2nd half of the 19th century makes the area city's biggest industrial area. It had, among others, New Arsenal,^[14] Rosenkrantz's Copper-rolling and piping mill, Phoenix metalworks, Ludvig Nobel and Gustav Lessner's Lessner and New Lessner^{[15][16][17][18][19][20]} machine-building, Ericsson electrotechnical companies et al.^[13]

Industrialists, such as Ludvig Nobel, commissioned building apartment houses for their workers with various degree of comfort inside the living space. Nobel's chosen architect was another Swedish national, well-known locally F.Lidwal, whose Art Nouveau Nobel Block has survived at 20, Lesnoy prospekt. This tradition was upheld in the Soviet 1930s along the same Lesnoy prospekt avenue, only in Constructivism style, while entrepreneurs themselves, like Nobel might live in their nearby mansions or choose a quieter area, at least for summer, as Lessner did.^[21]

Gallery

• 
  A new Monblan (Montblanc) apartment high-rise overshadowing a miniature Nobel family mansion to the left of it with redeveloped former Ludvig Nobel's factory (nationalised and known as Russian Diesel motor works in the Soviet years) to the left of the mansion.
• 
  Redeveloped 19th-century red-brick Ericsson telephone factory (Soviet name Krasnaya Zarya (Red Dawn)) - a typical example of local industrial architecture of the time.
• 
  Central part of Naval and Land Forces Hospital, now a part of campus of Military Medicine Academy.
• 
  Church of St Princess Anna of Kashin.
• 
  Barracks of the Moscow (then Lithuania) Regiment of the Imperial Guards (61, B.Sampsonievsky pr.). 1833-1836. Now buildings of Military Academy of Physical Education.
• 
  Front of a 1950s apartment building with a cinema downstairs now given to the city's Philharmonic Hall for Children and Youth.
• 
  Chapel at Pediatrics Academy dedicated to the martyred last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia.

See also

• Administrative divisions of Saint Petersburg

References

Notes

Sources

Coordinates: 60°03′23″N 30°15′44″E / 60.056300°N 30.262141°E / 60.056300; 30.262141