Tuchkov Buyan

The island in the channel of the Malaya Neva, later called the Tuchkov Buyan, arose after the flood of 1726 . Soon, a marina was built on the island, and in 1735 hemp storages. In the middle of the XVIII century, the area got its name by the name of Abraham Tuchkov - the builder of the first bridge connecting Vasilievsky Island with Petrograd . On June 29, 1761 ^{[4] the} wooden buildings of the time of Anna Ioannovna burned down, and in 1763–1772 the military engineer A. A. Dyakov built a stone building in their place according to the design of M. A. Dedenev (1763), redesigned by A. Rinaldi ^{[ 3]} . In those years, in the immediate vicinity of the Buyan, Dyakov built the Prince Vladimir Cathedral according to the project of Rinaldi.

The facade of the Buyan, facing the Vasilyevsky Island, is strictly symmetrical. In the center - a compact two-story volume is important (weight office), to the left and to the right of it - four-story storage buildings connected to the most important covered galleries. According to the project, the warehouses were two-story; only during the construction of each of the designed floors was divided into two. In the north, from the side of the Petrograd Island, the now lost two-story, squat building of the chauffeur - premises for sorting flax and hemp ^[3] adjoin importantly.

The Buyan building is painted yellow. A curious episode of 1904 is associated with it: artists who worked in the workshops of the Academy on Tuchkova Embankment actively protested against painting a dilapidated buoyan. A.I. Kuindzhi , M.P. Klodt and others suggested “painting it not yellow, but gray, because it bothers us too much with its yellow color and gives a yellow reflex to our art workshops, which is inconvenient for painting ...” ^[5] .

Until the revolutions of 1917, the Buyan was operated by port services (initially imperial, urban in the 20th century ^[5] ) and was used for its intended purpose as a warehouse, but among the people and among architects and city officials, it was assigned the erroneous name “ Biron 's Palace” " ^[6] . Only in 1908, I. A. Fomin , relying on the opinion of L. N. Benois and G. I. Kotov , refuted the legend in the “ Old Years ” ^[6] . Fomin erroneously dated the construction to the era of Anna Ioannovna; this error was disproved in the 1910s ^[6] .

Until the end of the 19th century, the chain of islands between Tuchkov Buyan and Birzhevoy Bridge was not settled; the inscriptions of the islands on maps XVIII — XIX were constantly changing, the territory of the Cotton Island took shape only by 1858 ^[7] . The coastline of the Petrograd Island had a natural, irregular appearance ^[6] . The marshland north of it is called Mokrushi . Here, in the 1840s, Alexander and Petrovsky parks were divided, and in the 1860s, Aleksandrovsky Avenue (now Dobrolyubova Avenue ) was laid along the canal ^[6] . In the next decade, the active development of Mokrush began on the northern side of the avenue, in 1880, Alexander II approved a plan for the unification of small islands with the Petrograd island. In the new urban area, south of Alexandrovsky Prospekt, four blocks of the correct form were to appear ^[5] .

The project of 1880 was not implemented. On three islands near Tuchkova Buyan, a city nursery of ornamental plants was located; on Cotton Island in 1896–1897, “red barns” of a state-owned wine warehouse and vodka factory were built on the project of R. R. Marfeld ^[8] . V. Ya. Kurbatov , who considered the green islands on the Malaya Neva “one of the most pleasant places in St. Petersburg”, wrote that their “appearance ... was spoiled by a wooden Birzhevoy bridge and a winery” ^[8] . In 1902-1905, the city expanded the dam of Tuchkov Bridge, reliably connecting Tuchkov Buyan with Petrograd Island; in 1908, Nicholas II approved the second official expansion project of the Petrograd Island ^[9] . By 1911, the channels between the Tuchkov Buyan, the islands adjacent to it from the east, and the Petrograd Island were filled up; Only the Cotton Island - the “fortress” of the state-owned wine monopoly ^[10] remained isolated. On maps of the times of World War I, the entire new territory of the Petrograd Island is occupied by the city nursery; active development began here only in the middle of the 20th century.

At the beginning of the 20th century, in the south of the Petrograd side, a new cultural center of the city was formed, oriented to the masses. Until 1897, the first St. Petersburg zoo was operating on the territory of the Alexander Park; in 1899-1900, the first stage of the People’s House was built. In Petrovsky Park , which had been at the disposal of the sobriety society since 1899, a theater, carousels and a boat station were built. It is no accident that the new territories located between the Alexander and Petrovsky parks were considered as a public, public space.

In preparation for the celebration of the bicentenary of St. Petersburg, proposals were repeatedly made to arrange a city museum in the Biron Palace. In 1904, S. A. Tarasov proposed placing the city archive in it ^[4] . In 1905, I.R. Tarkhanov proposed the construction of a sports center, in 1906 I.E. Repin requested that the building be bought for a permanent art exhibition ^[11] . Then, as the canal was backfilled and the territory expanded, the city authorities and the public took up projects to equip the "new" Tuchkov Buyan - from Tuchkov to the Birzhevoy Bridge. The fate of the “old” buoyan, built by Dyakov and Rinaldi, was only to be decided: the city was seriously considering the possibility of demolishing it for the sake of building a new museum and exhibition complex ^[12] . Disputes about the demolition or preservation of the buoyan continued, at least until 1915 ^[13] .

Active research in new territories began at the turn of 1911-1912 in connection with plans to hold two All-Russian exhibitions in St. Petersburg ^[14] . In 1912, on behalf of the city authorities, the St. Petersburg Society of Architects held the first, open, competition of projects for the exhibition complex; according to its conditions, the “palace of Biron” should have been preserved and adapted to a museum. In 1913, the second, closed competition was held between the projects of M. Kh. Dubinsky (winner of the competition in 1912), O. R. Munts, and I. A. Fomin ^[15] . This time, architects were given the right to independently decide the fate of the Buyan, up to its complete demolition. Fomin in his project retained the main facade of the Buyan, Dubinsky and Munts decided to completely get rid of it ^[16] . Muntz wrote that the building is completely unsuitable for the museum, its restructuring is not justified, and the artistic value is exaggerated: “this is just a barn, which is only by chance, and can be counted on a very distant viewer, given the appearance of a palace. The building was built very solid, but rude in details ... ” ^[17] .

With the outbreak of World War I, holding all-Russian exhibitions became impossible, but the city continued to search for planning solutions. However, by 1915, the opinion of the architectural department turned to the preservation of historical buildings. F. I. Lidval , A. E. Belogrud and others suggested completely abandoning the community center on the Tuchkov Buyan, moving it westward to Petrovsky Island ^[18] . It was this approach that was implemented ^[18] , starting with the construction of the stadium in the 1920s.

Since 1919, the Institute of Applied Chemistry has been housed in the buildings of the former Vodny Island vodka warehouses. Not later than 1942 the canal between the Vatny and Petrograd islands was filled up; the territory of the city nursery on the even side of Dobrolyubov Avenue has long remained undeveloped. The pre-war plans for the demolition of industrial buildings and the breakdown of the “green ray” along Dobrolyubov Avenue ^[19] . In 1958-1960, new concrete buildings of the institute were built in the eastern part of the former nursery; in the western part there was a sports complex "Jubilee" (1967) and the metro station "Sportivnaya" (1997).

The historical complex of Vatnoy Ostrov was recognized as an object of cultural heritage only in 2001. By that time, the fenced and abandoned territory of the institute came under the control of VTB , which planned to build a residential complex “Embankment of Europe” on it ^[20] . According to the project of E. L. Gerasimov (2009), the palace of B. Ya. Eifman was to be located in the center of the territory, along Dobrolyubov Avenue; around it and along the new embankment of the Malaya Neva, eight-story residential buildings were densely located ^{[19] [20]} . The construction of Vatnoy Ostrov lost their conservation status, in 2009–2011 the institute was evicted to Kapitolovo , and in 2011–2012 all the buildings of the 1890s and 1950s were demolished. The development of the pit and the removal of contaminated soil to Krasny Bor began ^[19] . The cadet corps , which occupied the hemp buoy building, was closed; its pupils were taken to Peterhof .

In 2012, with the decision to transfer to St. Petersburg the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, development plans changed significantly. The project of M. B. Atayants (2013), which won the competition of architectural and planning concepts at the beginning of 2014, suggested that all new buildings will be administrative ^[21] , the lost building of the chauffeur will be restored, and an open building will appear between the building of the Eifman Palace and the embankment river park zone ^[22] .

In February 2016, it became known that the Presidential Administration refused to implement the project that won the competition. Instead of Maxim Atayants, Evgeny Gerasimov was appointed the architect of the judicial quarter, whose project did not receive any of the jury votes in 2013, and OJSC Saturn ^[23] , specializing in special communications systems, was appointed general contractor ^{[24] [25]} . The housing plan for 600 apartments for judges and staff of the Supreme Court was returned to the construction plan, although Governor Georgy Poltavchenko said during the competition that the city government supported the idea of ​​moving office housing to another part of the city in order to increase public space ^{[24] [26]} .

By September 2018, only part of the excavations were excavated from the works on the site; completion of construction is expected no earlier than 2021 ^[27] .

In December 2018, it became known that the structures associated with Yevgeny Prigozhin were selected as subcontractors for the construction of the “Judicial Quarter” without a tender ^[28] .

• Bass, V. Petersburg neoclassical architecture of the 1900-1910s in the mirror of competitions. - Publishing house of the European University in St. Petersburg, 2010. - S. 317-325. - 488 p. - ISBN 978-5-94380-093-1 .
• Monuments of architecture and history of St. Petersburg. Petrogradsky district / Ed. B. M. Kirikov. - SPb. : Kolo , 2007 .-- S. 115-123. - 584 p. - ISBN 5-901841-21-2 .