Cities of Dreams
Turning a vision into a city demands an iron will. Peter the Great created his showplace, but the human cost was heavy
Peter made up for the site's lack of building materials by ordering all arriving wagons and ships to bring building stones with them. The nascent city also needed inhabitants. There again, Peter simply ordered them up. In March 1708, he commanded hundreds of noblemen and wealthy merchants to leave Moscow and their comfy country estates and join him in the north. Peter dictated the size of the houses they were to build, with a nobleman owning more than 500 serfs obliged to build a two-story manse. Plans of approved designs, drawn by Trezzini, were provided.
Wolves at the door. The nobles loathed St. Petersburg. Food was scarce and outrageously expensive. There was no good source of fresh water. The hastily built wooden houses were firetraps. (Peter's lanky form was often seen among the fire crews, wielding an ax to stop the spread of fire by demolishing nearby houses.) There were no bridges across the swift-flowing Neva; noblemen returning from receptions drowned when the small sailboats that Peter deemed proper capsized. And even the adamantine will of the czar couldn't keep nature at bay. The Neva flooded regularly, sweeping the new trees and flowers from Peter's beloved Summer Garden and sending the city's inhabitants clambering onto their roofs. In winter, hungry wolves prowled. In 1715, the creatures devoured a woman in broad daylight on Vasilevsky Island. "Petersburg will not endure after our time," declared Peter's half-sister Maria, one of the city's unhappy involuntary colonists. "May it remain a desert."
When Peter died there in 1725 the city was still rough hewn. But it flourished under his successors, notably Catherine the Great, who assembled much of the extraordinary art collection in the Hermitage Museum in the Winter Palace. Petersburg became achingly lovely, the haven and inspiration for generations of poets, painters, and musicians.
The city's 300th anniversary this year has prompted a much-needed renovation effort, with government, private firms, and foreign organizations sprucing up dozens of historical sites and upgrading basic necessities, like the heating and plumbing in the Hermitage. But the city needs more than a face-lift. Many of Petersburg's Soviet-era factories are shuttered, and Moscow far outstrips it in political and economic clout. Debate now rages over whether Petersburg should pin its hopes on increased tourism or on small businesses and "creative industries" such as architecture, film and video, and publishing. It's an argument that Czar Peter no doubt would have loved to have heard--and would have settled himself.
DRAWING BOARD
CUTTING-EDGE CITY
Before inventing the safety razor, King Camp Gillette envisioned an ideal city in his 1894 book, The Human Drift. "Metropolis" would house most of the country's population in 24,000 close-packed skyscrapers, contain vast public gardens, and run on the natural power of nearby Niagara Falls. Gillette reasoned that if mankind were perfectly organized in such a place, crime and strife would disappear. -David Grimm
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