ABSTRACT
Historical St. Petersburg (Russia) was the capital of the Russian Empire up to 1918, and now it is a city of dense historical brick architecture. However, St. Petersburg only became a brick city in the late 18th – mid 19th centuries. Before that, the majority of buildings and structures in the city and suburbs were wooden. By the end of the 18th century, 15% of buildings in total were brick, while the rest remained wooden. Starting in the 1710s, early on during Peter the Great’s reign, considered prestigious (to be like European capitals) and for the fire-safety (to avoid urban fires) requirements that were directly controlled by emperors, empresses and the city administration, extreme efforts were made to forbid wooden buildings and introduce only brick structures. This received continuity by Anne and Elizabeth following the reign of Peter the Great. Furthermore, in as late as the 1760s, following decrees issued by Catherine the Great, this prohibition was implemented more actively in the areas south of the Neva river (where the imperial Winter Palace stood). It was achieved through the forced demolition of all wooden buildings and the transition to solely brick structures (including brick load-bearing walls but retaining an effective system of wooden structures already developed by that time: wooden pile fields, floorings with wooden beams, roofing structures with wooden trusses and rafters). As an intermediary result of this campaign, the transition to brick housing was completed only on the Admiralty side, namely in the area between the Neva and Fontanka rivers, by the early 19th century.
