Peter the Great (111 page)

Once Poltava had dissipated the Swedish threat, the city spread from its original center east of the fortress to other islands and to the mainland. Downstream, on the north side of the main branch of the Neva, lay the largest island of the river delta, Vasilevsky Island, whose leading inhabitant was Prince Menshikov, the city's governor general, to whom Peter had given most of the island as a present. In 1713, on the embankment facing the river, Menshikov had begun construction of a massive stone palace three stories high, with a roof of iron plates painted bright red. This palace, designed by the German architect Gottfried Schadel, remained the largest private house in St. Petersburg throughout Peter's life, and was richly decorated with elegant furniture, ornate silver plate and many articles which, the Danish ambassador commented dryly, appeared "to have been removed from Polish castles." Its spacious main hall was the principal site of the city's great entertainments, weddings and balls. Peter used Menshikov's palace much as he had used the large house built earlier in Moscow for Francis Lefort, preferring himself to live more simply in h
ouses with no chamber sufficientl
y large for mass entertaining. Sometimes, when Menshikov was receiving for the Tsar, Peter would look across the river from his own smaller house, see the lighted windows of Menshikov's great palace and say to himself with a chuckle, "Danil'ich is making merry."

Behind Menshikov's house were the Prince's private church, with a bell tower and a soft chime, and a large, formal garden with latticed walls, hedges and a grove of trees, houses for his gardeners and a farm with chickens and other animals. Being on the north side of the river, the garden made the most of the southern exposure, and, shielded from the wind by trees and hedges, produced fruits and even melons. The rest of the island contained a few wooden houses and grazing fields for horses and cattle, but most of Vasilevsky Island was still covered with forest and bushes.

Always, the heart of the city was the great river, a deep torrent of cold water sweeping silently and swiftly down from the inland sea of Lake Ladoga, past the fortress, past Menshikov's great red-roofed mansion and out through the islands, flowing so vigorously into the Gulf of Finland that the current was still visible a mile from shore. The tremendous surging power of the current, the pressure of winter ice and the crunch of ice floes in springtime all would have made it difficult to build a bridge in Peter's time; but these were not the reasons that no bridge was built. Peter wanted his subjects to learn seamanship and sailing, so he insisted that they cross the Neva by boat—without oars. For those who could not afford a private boat, twenty government-authorized ferryboats were permitted, but the boatmen, most of them ignorant peasants, were often confounded by the rapid current and by strong gusts of wind. Only after the Polish ambassador, a major general and one of the Tsar's own doctors had drowned in successive sailing accidents did Peter relent and allow the ferrymen the use of oars. For the general population, crossing remained risky; if a storm came up, people might be detained on the wrong side of the river for several days. In winter, citizens could easily walk across the ice, but in summer when there were storms, in autumn or spring when the ice was forming or melting, the people on the islands in the Neva were virtually cut off from the rest of Russia. (In April 1712, Peter devised a way to cross the river without much danger from falling through the thinning ice: he had a four-oared rowboat put upon a sled and he sat in the boat; horses and sled might go through the ice, but boat and tsar would float.)

Because of this isolation, government buildings and private mansions began to spring up along the south bank of the river, which was the mainland. The largest of these was the thirty-room palace of General-Admiral Apraxin, which stood next to the Adrniralty on a corner of the site now occupied by the 1,100-rcom Winter. Palace built by Rastrelli for Empress Elizabeth. Upriver along the southern embankment were the houses of Attorney General Yaguzhinsky, Vice Admiral Cruys and the Winter Palace of Peter himself, standing on the ground which Catherine the Great's small Hermitage occupies today. Peter's palace was made of wood, two stories high, with a central building and two wings, but, except for a naval crown over the doorway, it was undistinguished from other mansions along the river. The Tsar felt ill at ease in spacious chambers and preferred small, low ceilinged rooms, but in order to present a symmetrical line in the facades of the palaces along the river, he was forced to make each story of his own house higher than he liked. His solution was to install a false lower ceiling beneath the upper one in all the rooms he inhabited. The first Winter Palace was torn down in 1721 to be replaced by a larger structure of stone.*

In 1710, a mile upstream from the Admiralty, at the point where the Fontanka River flows into the Neva, Trezzini began to construct a beautiful Summer Palace, with wide-latticed windows looking out over water on two sides, with two solid Dutch chimneys and a step gabled roof crowned by a gilded weathervane in the form of St. George on horseback. Peter and Catherine lived here together, and its fourteen light and airy rooms were divided equally between husband and wife, Peter occupying the seven rooms on the ground floor and the seven rooms on the floor above belonging to Catherine. His chambers reflected his own modest taste and practical interests; hers displayed her desire to frame herself in royal luxury and grandeur. The walls of Peter's study and reception room, for example, were covered to window level with hundreds of blue Dutch tiles, each depicting a view of ships or a nautical or pastoral scene. The ceilings of his reception room and small bedroom were decorated with paintings of winged cherubs celebrating "The Triumph of Russia." On the Tsar's desk was an ornate ship's clock and compass of brass and engraved silver, presented to him by King George I of England. Peter's canopy bed, covered with red cut velvet, was large but not large enough for the Tsar to stretch out on; in the eighteenth century, people slept propped up by pillows. The most interesting room on Peter's floor was the Turning Room, where the Tsar kept lathes to

* The Second Winter Palace also vanished, and today it is the fifth Winter Palace which occupies the site and, transformed into the Hermitage Museum, has become the city's center.

use in his spare time. Against a wall of this room stood the carved wood frame, twelve feet high, of a special instrument made for Peter by Dinglinger in Dresden in 1714. Three large dials, each three feet in diameter, showed the time and, by means of rods connected to the weathervane on the roof, the direction and force of the wind. Peter's dining room was large enough only for his family and a few guests; all public banquets were held at Menshikov's palace. Peter's kitchen walls were covered with blue tiles with different floral designs. Water was brought to its black marble sink by the first system of water pipes in St. Petersburg. Most important, a window from the kitchen opened directly into the dining room; Peter liked hot food and hated those large palaces in which food grew cold wending its way from the oven to the table.

On the floor above, Catherine had a reception room, a throne room and a dancing room as well as a bedroom, a nursery with a crib carved as a boat, and her own kitchen. Her rooms had painted ceilings, parquet floors, walls hung with Flemish and German tapestries or Chinese silk wallpaper woven with gold and silver thread, drapes, carpets, furniture inlaid with ivory and mother of pearl, and Venetian and English mirrors. Today, this little palace, superbly restored and filled with original or period objects, decorated with numerous portraits of Peter's family and lieutenants, is—along with the little pavilion Mom Plaisir at Peterhof— the place where one can most intimately sense the lingering presence of Peter himself.

In 1716, another foreign architect arrived in St. Petersburg to leave a permanent mark on Peter's "paradise." This was the French architect Alexandre Jean Baptiste LeBlond. A Parisian and a pupil of the great Le Notre who had designed the gardens at Versailles, LeBlond was only thirty-seven, but was already well known in France for his buildings in Paris and for books he had written on architecture and formal gardens. In April 1716, LeBlond signed an unprecedented contract to come to Russia for five years as Architect General at a guaranteed salary of 5,000 roubles a year. He was also to be given a state apartment and permission to leave Russia at the end of his five-year term without having to pay duty on any of his possessions. In return, LeBlond promised to do his best to pass along his knowledge to the Russians who would work with him.

En route to his new appointment, LeBlond passed through Pyrmont, where Peter was taking the waters, and the two men talked about the Tsar's plans and hopes for his new city. Peter was delighted with his new employee and, on LeBlond's departure, wrote enthusiastically to Menshikov in St. Petersburg:

Welcome LeBlond in a friendly manner and respect his contract, for he is better than the best and a veritable prodigy, as I could see in no time. Besides he is an energetic and intelligent man and highly respected in the ateliers of France, so that we can, through him, engage whomsoever we wish. Therefore, all our architects must be told that from now on they are to submit all their plans for new construction to LeBlond for approval, and, if there is still time, carry out his instructions for correcting the old ones.

Armed with his title of Architect General, his princely contract and the glowing commendation of the Tsar, LeBlond arrived in Russia intending to take charge. In his train, he brought not only his wife and six-year-old son but several dozen French draftsmen, engineers, joiners, sculptors, stonemasons, bricklayers, carpenters, locksmiths, chiselers, goldsmiths and gardeners. Immediately, he established a new Chancellery of Building, an administrative office through which all plans for building would have to pass for his approval. Then, on the basis of his talks with Peter, he began to draft an overall plan which would dictate the major development of the city for years to come.

The most ambitious part of this new scheme was to be the creation of a city of canals, modeled after Amsterdam, on the eastern half of Vasilevsky Island. This would be a rectangular grid of parallel streets and intersecting canals cut through the low-lying marshy ground. Two main canals would run the length of the island and twelve smaller canals would cross it, and even the smaller canals would be wide enough for two boats to pass. Every house was to have a courtyard, a garden and a dock for the householder's boat. In the center of this great watery checkerboard, the Tsar was to have a new palace with an extensive formal garden.

LeBlond began as soon as he arrived in August 1716, using poles driven into the marshy ground to mark the outlines of his new town. That autumn and the following spring, digging of the canals was begun and the first new householders, sternly commanded by Peter's order, commenced construction of their dwellings. All did not go well, however. In wielding his new power, LeBlond had impinged on both the prerogative and the possessions of an even more powerful Petersburger, Menshikov, who was both governor general of the city and the owner of a large part of Vasilevsky Island, some of which was to be taken for LeBlond's new city of canals. Menshikov did not dare oppose directly a plan which Peter had approved, but the Tsar would be away for many months and in the meantime the Governor General would be in overall command of every activity in the city— including the new construction. Menshikov's retaliation came in a typical way. The canals were built, but they were narrower and shallower than LeBlond had called for; two boats could not pass each other, and soon the shallow waterways began to sit up with mud. When Peter returned and went to look at the new construction, he was pleased to see the new houses rising along the canals, but, noticing the dimensions of the waterways, he was astonished and enraged. LeBlond, who by this time knew better than to challenge Menshikov directly, remained silent. With his architect beside him, Peter walked across the island and then, turning to LeBlond, asked him, "What can be done to carry out my plan?"

The Frenchman shrugged. "Raze, sire, raze. There is no other remedy than to demolish all that has been done and dig the canals anew." This, however, was too much, even for Peter, and the project was abandoned, although from time to time Peter would go to Vasilevsky Island to look at the canals and come home sorrowfully without uttering a word. On the south bank, however, LeBlond built the city's main boulevard, the great Nevsky Prospect, cutting straight through two and a half miles of meadows and forests from the Admiralty to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. The Nevsky was constructed and paved by gangs of Swedish prisoners (who were also ordered to clean it every Saturday) and soon became the most famous street in Russia.

LeBlond almost made a remarkable contribution to another famous St. Petersburg landmark, the Summer Garden. Even before Poltava, Peter had begun the garden, which spread over thirty-seven acres behind his Summer Palace at the junction of the Neva and the Fontanka. At the height of his worry about the Swedes, the Tsar constantly issued orders about the garden. Moscow was commanded to send "seeds and roots, together with thirteen young lads to train as gardeners." Books on the gardens of France and Holland were sought. Trees were ordered to line the avenues: lime and elm trees from Kiev and Novgorod, chestnuts from Hamburg, oaks and fruit trees from Moscow and the Volga, cypresses from the south. Flowers arrived from everywhere: tulip bulbs from Amsterdam, lilac bushes from Liibeck, lilies, roses and carnations from other parts of Russia.

LeBlond's contribution to the Summer Garden was water. "Fountains and water are the soul of a garden and make the principal ornament of it," he had written. He pumped water from the Fontanka (the name derives from Fountain) into a new water tower, from which elevation the pressure would cause his new fountains to jet and spray. There were fifty fountains scattered through the garden: grottoes, cascades, plumes of water spouting from the mouths of dolphins and horses. In the basins beneath these fountains, creatures real and mythical—stone gargoyles, real fish and even a seal—swam or splashed. Nearby, rare birds sang in cages shaped like pagodas, a blue monkey chattered and a porcupine and sables stared morosely back at human sightseers.