Saint Petersburg, Russia
1906

Saint Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire and of the government of St. Petersburg, situated on the Neva, the outlet of Lake Ladoga, where that river enters the E. end of the Gulf of Finland, 400 miles NW. of Mosoow. Lat. of the observatory 59° 56' 32" N. ; Ion. 30° 17' 51" E. The Neva here divides into a number of arms, forming a delta, which is embraced within the city limits. There are 4 main arms, the Great and Little Neva and the Great and Little Nevka. The largest of the delta islands is the Vas- sili Ostrov (Basil Island), between the Great Neva on the S. and the Little Neva on the N. The next largest is that formed by the Great and Little Neva and the Great and Little Nevka. This is subdivided by narrow waterways into 4 islands, — the Petersburg, Apothecary's, and Petrov- sky islands, and the islet on which is the fortress of Peter and Paul. The main portion of St. Petersburg is on the main-land, occupying a peninsula washed on the E. by the Neva and on the NW. by the Great Neva. The Vassili Os trov contains the most important insular section of the city. The islands with their gardens and villas are a charming feature of the capital. The various parts of the city are connected by about 120 bridges, most of them spanning narrow canals, the longest, the new Troitsky Bridge, being a little more than one-third of a mile in length. St. Peters burg was built on a swamp. The land has been laboriously reclaimed and is still subject to overflow by the Neva. The water-front is lined with massive granite quays. The city has a circuit of about 30 miles and an area of about 35 sq. m.

St. Petersburg is the administrative head-quarters of the Russian Empire and the seat of autocracy, but it yields to Moscow the distinction of being regarded as the focus of the national life of the Russian people. The city has a modern appearance, having just completed the second oen- tury of its existence. It is regularly laid out, with streets of generous width. It contains within a comparatively small area an extraordinary collection of edifices impres sive by the beauty of their architecture or their great extent, and of imposing sculptural monuments. The quar ters removed from the heart of the city present, however, in great part a dreary expanse of uninteresting streets, whose monotony is broken here and there by an open square or a stately edifice. Whole sections have little to show but a vast agglomeration of low wooden dwellings. The principal section of the city is included between the Great Neva and the curving canal called the Fontanka, a waterway about 50 yards in width. This is divided into 4 quarters, the principal of which is the Admiralty Quarter, extending along the Great Neva. It takes its name from the Admiralty building, a structure dating from the earliest period of the city's history. This edifice, the seat of the ministry of the marine and containing the marine mu seum, has a length of nearly 1600 feet. It faces the attrac tive Alexander Gardens on the SE. On the SW. is the Peter Square, containing the famous colossal equestrian statue of Peter the Great, designed by Falconet, who was commissioned to execute the work by Catharine II. The pedestal is a block of granite about 15 yards long and 5 yards high, weighing 1000 tons or more, whioh had to be transported a distance of several miles. Beyond the Peter Square are the buildings of the Senate and Holy Synod. A short distance from the SW. corner of the Admiralty is the cathedral of St. Isaac, the most magnificent ecclesiasti cal structure of St. Petersburg, erected in the first half of the nineteenth century. With its porticos, whose columns are monoliths of polished red granite over 50 ft. high, and its huge gilded dome, it presents an appearance hardly surpassed by that of any modern edifice. The splendor of the interior corresponds to the external effect. To the NE. of the Admiralty there is an array of palaces extending along the river front. The one nearest to the Admiralty is the famous Winter Palace, a vast pile, facing the Neva on one side and the Palace Square on the other. This build ing, the imperial winter residence, is the work of three empresses, — Anna, Elizabeth, and Catharine II. It con tains a bewildering assemblage of sumptuous apartments adorned with innumerable works of painting and sculp ture. In one of these apartments are the imperial regalia and crown jewels, unsurpassed for their wealth of precious stones. Adjoining the Winter Palace is the Hermitage, dating in part from the reign of Catharine II., but mainly the work of Nicholas I. It contains one of the leading museums of painting in the world, and splendid collections of Greek and Roman sculptures, Greek antiquities, and objects of art, vases, coins, etc. At the end of this series of stately edifices is the so-called Marble Palace erected by Catharine II. The Palace Square, SE. of the Winter Palace, contains the Alexander Column, erected to the memory of Alexander I., the largest monolithio monument of modern times, the eolumnal part having a height of nearly 100 ft. On the SE. side of the square is the imposing building of the General Staff.

From the Alexander Garden, in front of the Admiralty, the Nevsky Prospekt, the principal thorou; hfare of St. Pe tersburg, extends in an easterly direction. It is a broad and stately boulevard, one of the handsomest avenues in Europe, lined in part with elegant shops, where the life of the capital reveals itself in its most animated and picturesque aspect. Among the prominent objects on the line of the Nevsky Prospekt, or in close proximity to it, are the mag nificent Kaxan Cathedral (early part of nineteenth cen tury), having in front a great semicircular colonnade of Corinthian columns ; the Duma (or city-hall) ; the Gostiny Dvor, a vast pile of buildings, whose arcades are lined with shops ; the imperial library ; the monument to Catharine II. (on the Aloxandra Square), the fine Alexandra Theatre, the Anitchkoff Palace, and the Anitchkoff Bridge over the Fontanka. In the angle formed by the Neva and the Fon tanka, at the NE. end of the Admiralty Quarter, is an ex tensive open space, comprising the Field of Mars, on which military parades on a vast scale are held, and the Summer Garden, laid out by Peter the Great. S. of the Field of Mars is the Mikhailovsky Garden, with a splendid memo rial ohuroh erected on the spot where Alexander II. was killed. On the S. side of this park is the Russian Museum of Alexander III. (now Michael Palace), one of the finest edifices in the city, in Italian style, devoted to Russian art. On the E. side of the park is a grand palace (old Miohael Palace) devoted to the military engineering service. Among the other notable edifices and monuments in the part of St. Petersburg situated on the main-land are the palace of the Council of State, the building of the Corps of Pages, the Conservatory (seating 4000 persons), the Imperial Bank, the Tauric Palace (with the fine Taurio Garden, presented by Catharine II. to Potemkin), the Ismailoff Cathedral, the Cathedral of the Transfiguration, the Cathedral of the Resurrection (belonging to the Smolny monastery), the Alex ander Nevsky monastery (on the Neva at the SE. corner of the city), an array of great structures devoted to mili tary purposes (constituting a prominent feature of the city), a large number of extensive government buildings, the theatres, the great foundling asylum, the hospitals, many stately buildings devoted to art, musio, and educa tion, the monument to Nicholas I., the monument erected to commemorate the victories in the last war against Turkey, and the Moscow and Narva triumphal arohes. The part of the Vassili Ostrov (Basil Island) facing the Admiralty Quarter contains the splendid Bourse, the buildings of the university and of the Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Arts (with a museum), the Mining Institute, the zoological garden, and the Semenoff gallery of paintings, rich in works of Flemish and Dutch art. On a little island in the Great Neva, opposite the E. end of the Admiralty Quarter, is the fortress of Peter and Paul, dating from the infancy of the city. Here is the cathedral of Peter and Paul, containing the tombs of the Russian rulers from Peter the Great. Near by, on the Petersburg Island, is the little wooden house in which Peter the Great lived when he began to lay out his capital. On the Apothecary's Island is the botanical garden.

St. Petersburg is surpassed by few cities in respect to its educational and scientific institutions and learned bodies. The institutions of learning include the university (about 4000 students), Imperial School of Law, Alexander Lyceum, Historico-Philological Institute, Academy of Military Medioine (an institution on a vast scale), Institute of Ex perimental Medicine, Technological Institute, Mining In stitute (with immense collections), Institute of Civil Engi neers, the Women's Medical Institute (about 1300 student*), the institute of higher studies for women, and the Imperial Academy of Arts. Among the societies for the advancement of science are the Imperial Academy of Soiences, the Rus sian Geographical Society, the Natural History Society, and the Anthropological, Archaeological, Astronomical, Historical, and Physico-chemical societies. The imperial public library is one of the largest collections of books in the world, containing nearly 1,500,000 volumes. At Pulkova, about 10 miles SW. of the city, is one of the leading obser vatories of Europe. St. Petersburg is one of the great industrial centres of Russia. It has numerous cotton- and woollen-mills, iron- foundries, machine-shops, paper-mills, chemical-works, and tobacco-factories, and extensive manufactures of leather and glass. The city is the chief seat of the Russian book-trade. The vast domestic trade is greatly facilitated by the extent of the natural and artificial water communications. The value of the imports from foreign countries in 1901 was 145,000,- 000 rubles, and that of the exports 117,000,000 rubles. Cronstadt is an outer port of St. Petersburg and a great fortress, guarding the approach to the city. Previous to 1885 sea-going vessels could not ascend beyond that place, but in that year a ship canal was opened which enables ves sels of great draught to reach the capital.

The climate of St. Petersburg is on the whole a disagree able one, fluctuations in the weather being frequent, the heat of summer often intolerable, and the number of wet and damp days very large. The winters are not very severe considering the latitude, the mean temperature of January being about 16°. The population of the city, inclusive of its suburbs, in 1002 was 1,487,720. The number of inhabitants more than quintupled in the course of the nineteenth century. About seven-eighths of the population is Russian. The Germans, Poles, Finns, and Jews collectively constitute about 10 per cent, of the inhabitants. Among the suburban places are Tsarskoye-Selo, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Oranienbaum, and Gatchina. St. Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1703, in a territory which he had wrested from the Swedes. In 1712 the place was inaugurated as the capital of Russia. At the time of the death of Peter, in 1725, it had already risen to be a populous city.

Lippincott's New Gazetteer: A Complete Pronouncing Gazetteer Or Geographical Dictionary of the World, Containing the Most Recent and Authentic Information Respecting the Countries, Cities, Towns ... in Every Portion of the Globe Publisher J.B. Lippincott Company, 1906

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