Pavements

Categories / City Services/Housing and Communal Services
PAVEMENTS have been built in St. Petersburg since the early 18th century. The first pavements were made of boards, later various paving materials were applied, including planks, cobblestones, asphalt, woodblocks, granite, metal, road metal (pebbles), etc. Two types of pavement cut existed: convex camber (for water yield towards sidewalks) and those recessing by the middle (with water runoff in the middle of the street). The first cobblestone pavement appeared on Berezovy (Gorodskoy) Island in 1710, by 1910 the total area of such pavements amounted to 1,700 000 square sazhens (appr. 3621 square km). In 1917, 93% of the streets had cobble paving (on Ryleeva Street, in Grivtsova Lane and a number of other streets the paving had survived until the 1970s). The first asphalt coating was made in 1838 near St. Isaac’s Cathedral and on Politseysky Bridge, though it proved to be nondurable and was virtually not applied from that point on. In 1876 the asphalt roads association paved with asphalt the Fontanka River Embankment, Malaya Sadovaya Street, Malaya Morskaya Street, Konyushennaya Street and a number of other streets; however, the asphalt was unsuitable for horses. The continuous asphalting of the city streets began in 1932. In the 1820s the streets were first paved with wooden blocks (so-called Guryev Pavements, named after inventor V.P. Guryev). Woodblock pavements were carriageable and noiseless, though nondurable. Streets were paved with wood blocks until the early 20th century. In 1916, there were16 woodblock Pavements in Petrograd (Nevsky Prospect, Admiralteyskaya Embankment, Sadovaya Street, Karavannaya Street, etc.). Starting in the 1840s some streets and squares were paved with granite blocks and cubes (Fontanka River Embankment near Anichkov Bridge, Mariinskaya Square, the area near the General Staff Building, Liteiny Avenue, etc.). Cast-iron coating was merely decorative (cast-iron "checks" appeared near Marble Palace in the early 1900s). In 1911-12 a part of Nevsky Prospect near Kazan Cathedral was covered with yellow plates. Road metal was used for coating of "highways" - long city avenues, out-of-city roads (a part of Bolshoy Sampsonievsky Avenue, roads in Petrovsky Park, Shuvalovo, Old Pargolovskya Road etc.). In the 1860s diabasic blocks came to be used for street paving. These pavements proved to be durable but expensive. Diabasic coating in St. Petersburg-Leningrad was used to the 1970s. From the early 18th century to the early 20th century the responsibility to pave the streets across from their houses was imposed on house-owners (building work cooperative associations were usually commissioned for such works), they were also in charge of keeping clean the adjacent pavement (usually done by street cleaners). In the 18th - early 20th centuries pavement cleaning was attended to by the police; and since after 1917 by the municipal department of communal services. Icy roads in winter were often sanded, in spring the ice was chopped off, and in summer pavements were watered. In the 19th century snow ploughs, steam-sander cleaners, water carts and other mechanisms were invented for cleaning of pavements. By 2002 all the streets of St. Petersburg were asphalted. In the early 1990s the works for reconstructing cobble, diabasic (near Summer Garden etc.), and granite (Palace Square) pavements started with the aim of restoring the old city look.

References: Бажанов А. И. История дорожного строительства в Санкт-Петербурге - Ленинграде. СПб., 1996; Светлов С. Ф. Петербургская жизнь в конце XIX столетия (в 1892 г.). СПб., 1998. С. 46-48, 100-102; Платунов А. М. Так строился Петербург. 2-е изд., перераб. СПб., 2000.

Y. N. Kruzhnov. Guryev Valery Petrovich
Admiralteyskaya Embankment/Saint Petersburg, city
Bolshoy Sampsonievsky Ave/Saint Petersburg, city
Dvortsovaya Square/Saint Petersburg, city
Fontanka River Embankment/Saint Petersburg, city
Grivtsova Lane/Saint Petersburg, city
Karavannaya St./Saint Petersburg, city
Liteiny Ave/Saint Petersburg, city
Malaya Konyushennaya St./Saint Petersburg, city
Malaya Morskaya St./Saint Petersburg, city
Malaya Sadovaya St./Saint Petersburg, city
Nevsky prospect/Saint Petersburg, city
Ryleeva St./Saint Petersburg, city
Sadovaya St./Saint Petersburg, city
Платунов А. М. Так строился Петербург. 2-е изд., перераб. СПб., 2000
Светлов С. Ф. Петербургская жизнь в конце XIX столетия (в 1892 г.). СПб., 1998
Бажанов А. И. История дорожного строительства в Санкт-Петербурге - Ленинграде. СПб., 1996 St. Isaac's Cathedral
Zeleny Bridge
Anichkov Bridge
Main Headquarters
Marble Palace
Kazan Cathedral
1710
1838