Slides

Categories / Population/Urban Living
SLIDES, structures erected for public amusement. They represent one of the essential elements of holiday popular carnivals (especially Shrovetide carnivals) in the 18th -19th centuries. The slides looked like wooden open towers up to 18 meters high with a slope up to 100 meters long; chutes were placed so as to form a parallel: one opposite the other. The towers were decorated with fur-trees, flags, wooden sculptures; in the evening they were illuminated with lanterns. In 1735 slides were built in the Winter Palace. In the 18th century Shrovetide slides were constructed on the ice that covered the Neva and the Fontanka, on Tsaritsyn and Admiralteysky meadows, on Sennaya and Teatralnaya Squares and in other places. People slid down the slides in sleds, boats covered with coarse cloth (so-called golovashki - a local word which means fore-carriage), skates and so forth. In the mid-18th century summer slides appeared; they had troughs that directed the track of movement, and with their help people slid down the slides on wheeled carts or special rugs. In the 1740s A.K. Nartov constructed slides in Tsarskoe Selo for Empress Elizabeth (Elizaveta Petrovna). In 1757 architect F. Rastrelli built new slides with a pavilion on the same place. In 1762-74, architect A. Rinaldi erected slides with a stone pavilion in Oranienbaum. Since the end of the 18th century summer slides became a more and more wide-spread part of Easter carnivals. Up to 1867 at popular carnivals slides together with swinging boards were built at the state expense, later the City Duma offered their building for tender. Slides were to be constructed two weeks before a holiday and to be taken down during a week after. Quite often Shrovetide slides stood until Easter holidays. By the end of the 19th century slides had also been constructed on Vasilievsky Island, in Alexandrovskoe Village (the present-day district of Proletarskaya metro station), on Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky places. After Nizhny Novgorod fair of 1896 so-called American slides (rollercoasters) began to appear in St. Petersburg: they represented rail-tracked slides with trolley carts. By 1900 slides were no longer built at popular carnivals, once their organization passed to the jurisdiction of People's Temperance Ward. Permanent slides existed after 1846 in Alexandrovsky Park, in 1913-18, in Luna Park.

References: Некрылова А.Ф. Русские народные городские праздники, увеселения и зрелища, конец XVIII - нач. XX в. 2-е изд., доп. Л., 1988. p. 16-18; Конечный А. М. Петербургские народные гуляния на масленой и пасхальной неделях // Петербург и губерния: Ист.-этногр. исслед. Л., 1989. p. 21-25, 43-45; Свиньин П.П. Достопамятности Санкт-Петербурга и его окрестностей. СПб., 1997.

Y. N. Kruzhnov. Elizaveta Petrovna, Empress
Nartov Andrey Konstantinovich
Rastrelli Francesco de
Rinaldi Antonio
Sennaya Square/Saint Petersburg, city
Teatralnaya Square/Saint Petersburg, city
Свиньин П. П. Достопамятности Санкт-Петербурга и его окрестностей. СПб., 1997
Конечный А. М. Петербургские народные гуляния на масленой и пасхальной неделях // Петербург и губерния: Ист.-этногр. исслед. Л., 1989
Некрылова А. Ф. Русские народные городские праздники, увеселения и зрелища, конец XVIII - нач. XX в. 2-е изд., доп. Л., 1988 Winter Palace
Shrovetide carnivals
City Duma