Meeting Houses (entry)

Categories / City Administration/Police, Prisons
Categories / Architecture/Architectural Monuments/Public Buildings and Edifices
MEETING HOUSES (Meeting Yards), offices of private police officers, located in each of 12 police units. With organization in 1802-03 of regular firefighting service, the Meeting Houses also housed fire brigades headed by brand masters. Initially meeting houses were purchased by the Treasury. In the 1820-30s, architect V. I. Beretti who was in charge of the architectural part of the Committee of City Buildings made an effort to organise construction of special buildings for meeting houses according to the needs of police and firefighters (they included flats for the police officer and the brand master, a flat for policemen, a jail, an ambulance station, a mortuary etc.). Narvsky Meeting House was designed according to these requirements (1834-37, remade by architect A. E. Staubert) and a project of the Meeting house for Malaya Okhta was started (1837). Fire towers dominating over the building looked spectacular. The complex of buildings of meeting houses of Spasskaya unit formed in the first half of the 19th century (the corner of Sadovaya Street and Bolshaya Podyacheskaya Street) is described in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (in the same novel the meeting house of St. Petersburg Unit at 11 Bolshoy Avenue of Petrogradskaya Side was mentioned). Later buildings of the same type include the impressive brick buildings of the fire brigade of Petrovskaya unit at 5 Michurinskaya Street (1872-74, architect N. F. Bryullov) and the building of the fire brigade of Vasileostrovskaya unit on Bolshoy Avenue of Vasilievsky Island, 73 (1882-84, architect V. G. Shalamov).

Reference: Высоцкий И. П., С.-Петерб. столичная полиция и градоначальство (1703-1903), СПб., 1903.

M. N. Mikishatiev. Beretti Vikenty Ivanovich
Bryullov Nikolay Fedorovich
Dostoevsky Fedor Mikhailovich
Shalamov Vladimir Grigorievich
Shtaubert Alexander Egorovich
Bolshaya Podyacheskaya St./Saint Petersburg, city
Bolshoy Ave of Petrograskaya Storona/Saint Petersburg, city, house 11
Bolshoy Ave of Vasilievsky Island/Saint Petersburg, city, house 73
Michurinskaya St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 5
Sadovaya St./Saint Petersburg, city
Высоцкий И. П. Санкт-Петербургская столичная полиция и градоначальство, 1703-1903: Крат. ист. очерк. СПб., 1903