Ural Federal University: Ekaterinburg in the XVIII Century Was Created in the Half-Timbered Style

In the first decades of the creation of Ekaterinburg the style of the most significant buildings of the city was half-timbered. The main industrial buildings, clerical complex, the estate of Georg Wilhelm de Gennin, the commander-in-chief, were made in the style of Saxon industrial and residential architecture of the XVII-XVIII centuries and resembled houses in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France. Even the church had a prototype of Western European models, repeating the shape of Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. This was told by historians of the Ural Federal University, who designed a dynamic model of Ekaterinburg. This model is extremely accurate and historically reliable visual reconstruction, that shows a landscape of the city, the architecture, the purpose of buildings. The creation of the 3D model was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (Project No. 20-18-00233, “Ekaterinburg in 1733: historical-anthropological and architectural-spatial reconstruction”).

“We started creating the 3D model with the topography. We designed the landscape based on the first real topographic survey of 1850. French engineers-topographers Allori and Bergier shot the entire city in terms of altitude, so we have data on every street in the altitude difference, respectively, the topography of the city is very clearly laid out. It was also important for us to understand how much the relief has changed compared to the middle of the 19th century. It turned out that it has not changed,” says Svetlana Tsemenkova, Associate Professor at the Department of Document Management, Archival Studies and History of Public Administration at Ural Federal University.

Ekaterinburg, like today, was located in a small flat lowland, convenient for proper development. Relief rises from west to east, so the walls around the city were different heights. So, the western part of the wall (located approximately on Vainer street) was about 5.5 meters in height: 2 meters of earthen wall and 3.5 – palisade. The height of the eastern wall (approximately between today’s Tolmachev street and Karl Liebknecht street) was about 3.5 meters.

The city was built “according to the strict German model”. Outside the city walls, the Merchant Sloboda (a section of modern Malyshev Street towards Dobrolyubov street) developed most intensively at that time. One of the first to be created Melkovskaya Sloboda (now it is a district near the metro station Dinamo), where lived retired handworker. In the north-west (Ekaterinburg-city District) was the Ssylnaya Sloboda. The other quarters were extremely functional.

“Ekaterinburg was exemplary also in terms of social topography. Gennin tried to settle everyone so that each professional group was as close as possible to its place of work. Today, urbanists call this the principle of social or natural zoning. Gennin was also anxious about fire safety, which is understandable, since for any city of that time, a fire is a terrible disaster. We still had factory workshops, “fire” production. So he got mad when he saw that the passages between the buildings and alleys were littered with something or did self-construction, violating the prescribed parameters of residential buildings and their location,” explains Dmitry Redin, head of the project and Head of the Laboratory of Primary Sources Research at Ural Federal University.

On the site of the modern Conservatory on 8 March street was the main chancellery of the Siberian Oberbergamt. In the same complex with it were a prison, clerical archive, treasury and assay office. A bit further from the chancellery (in the direction of Plotinka) were scrivener’s courts (housing for clerks). To the north (near Gymnasium 9) was the estate and a small garden of Gennin and commanders’ courts, where mountain officers lived. On the site of Sevastyanov’s house there were also commander’s courtyards. On the church side, where the Church of St. Catherine stood, were placed priest’s courts. Workshop yards for craftsmen and soldiers were were located around the factory and along the walls.

“The creation of Ekaterinburg at that time costed a lot of money. By 1734 about 53.5 thousand rubles with all expenses were spent. This is a very significant amount. It is extremely difficult to draw an analogy with today, but in general I will give some examples for comparison. At that time, the Ural-Siberian voivode received from 100 to 300 rubles per year. The most senior clerks received 100 rubles a year. Gennin was almost at the governor level and received 1000-1200 rubles a year. But he often complained that he did not receive money, wages could not come for years. Food was cheap. For example, in the mid-1720s a quarter of rye (approximately 128 kg) cost up to 26 kopecks, rye flour – up to 28 kopecks. You could buy a ram for 30-80 kopecks, and a cow – for 2-3 rubles”, says Dmitry Redin.

The male population in Ekaterinburg was about a thousand people: factory workers, artisans, mountain officers, and soldiers. Women and children usually were not counted. According to rough estimates only by 1734 in Ekaterinburg lived more than 2,000 people. Apart from them, there were service personnel who were not engaged in production and management: people who brought food and household items. These were Shartash peasants, merchants, retired artisans. By the standards of that time – the beginning of the 1730s – a town with such a population was considered not small. For comparison – in Moscow (one of the major European cities and the largest city in the Empire in the XVIII century) at that time lived 120-150 thousand people. Then followed cities with a population of 10-15 thousand people – the important shopping centers: Yaroslavl, Pskov, Novgorod, Smolensk and others.

“The average Russian city in those days was populated by 1,000 to 2,000 people, but most had less than 1,000 inhabitants. That shows that Ekaterinburg, especially by the realities of the Ural-Siberian region, was not small. But it was completely different in architectural appearance, social structure. Gennin built a remarkable functional and ideologically grounded model city. Gennin at that time, as rightly noted Nikolay Korepanov, was the best specialist in the mining industry, had extensive experience as a fortifier and constructor of industrial buildings. He came to us having behind his back experience in designing the Sestroretsk plants and in managing the Olonets plants of Peter the Great, which he completed and rebuilt. Even earlier he lived in St. Petersburg and reconstructed and completed the Liteiny Dvor, whose existence is now reminded of Liteiny Prospect – at that time the access road from Nevsky Prospect (General Prospect) to the main production sites”, explains Dmitry Redin.

According to Redin, during the three years of creating a 3D model, the team went through the most difficult phase of work – the collection and analysis of information, its processing, the algorithm for creating drawings and 3D images of objects. In the plans of historians (in the presence of financial support) – to improve the model: add details (up to the interior and decoration of the houses inside), diversify perspectives of buildings, to provide sound accompaniment, etc. In the future there is an opportunity to track changes in the appearance of the city to the present day.